1000 miles of clouds?

 We took off at Lihue Airport this morning for a direct flight to SFO (San Francisco International Airport). I had a window seat and because I have piloted planes by myself as far as soloing in my life I like to see what is going on outside the window (sort of like a driver of a car needs to notice things like rain and snow and obstacles on the road whether they be other drivers or road hazards like cones misplaced or pieces of cement or metal or wood in the middle of the road.

But, today I was surprised to see 1000 miles or more of clouds (obviously a huge Rainstorm or something headed for the West Coast. But when I look at KSBW Radar I see the snow coming down into Canada and Montana but not what I was expecting at all. So, maybe this is just more stuff coming. also, I have noticed that the radar only works on the mainland and over Hawaii so it doesn't show all the stuff in between.

also, what is the island to the east of Kauai when heading towards San Francisco. I was really surprised to find a somewhat developed island at least for farming as we headed East towards San Francisco within 1/2 hour to an hour of Kauai? I saw it looking out the window of our passenger plane headed for San Francisco in full daylight?

https://www.ksbw.com/weather/radar

Above is URL for KSBW Radar

After thinking about the island I saw I realized there might not be islands east of Kauai and it could be that the pilot took a route over Nihau or other islands because of the heavy rain falling on Kauai when we left. At 6 am Monday morning it was lightning and thunder on Kauai where we were staying but by 9 am when we drove to return our rental car in Lihue it had settled down to just being cloudy. But then as we waited for our plane from the mainland we saw many workers on open vehicles used for moving planes and cargo getting really pelted by the rain also.