HONOLULU - Hurricane Lane, threatening a direct hit as Hawaii's worst storm in a quarter century, churned toward the main island of Oahu on Thursday as schools, government offices and business closed while residents stocked up on supplies and boarded up homes.

Lane, classified as a powerful Category 4 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane strength, was packing sustained winds of up to 145 miles per hour (230 km/h) and could dump as much as 20 inches of rain over parts of the US Pacific island state, triggering flash flooding and landslides, the National Weather Service (NWS) warned.

As of 5 pm (0300 GMT), the storm was centered 260 miles (415 km) south of Kailua-Kona as it moved northwest at about 8 miles per hour, the weather service said.