EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT: The trade winds will hold steady in the rather strong and gusty realms through mid-week or Thursday. This is keeping our small craft wind advisory active over those windiest coastal and channel waters in Maui County and the Big Island. As the high pressure area now to our north, moves eastward through the week…our local trade winds will taper off gradually into the weekend.
Meanwhile, our island skies will remain cloudier than usual, with a combination of high cirrus clouds above, and lower level clouds being carried our way on the breezy trades. As the trade winds peak in strength over the next few days, they will continue to carry somewhat more showery clouds our way, generally arriving along the windward coasts and slopes. The leeward sides may eventually see a few showers being carried over that way on the locally strong and gusty trade winds.
The weather related feature during this first half of the week, which will have the greatest impact…will be the larger than normal south swell along our leeward beaches. We have an active high surf advisory along those beaches…likely lasting through Wednesday. Large surf in respect to these south and west facing beaches, will necessitate caution for our local visitors and others too. At the same time, we’ll find wind swell waves kicked up by the trade winds on our east shores, and some waves from the north through northwest breaking along our north shores too.
The NWS forecast office in Honolulu keeping the Red Flag Warning active for parts of the state, mainly the leeward sides. This is being caused by the combination of strong trade winds, low relative humidity, warm daytime temperatures, and the expectations for limited rainfall along those dry sides of the islands. This isn’t a forecast for fire, just noting the higher than normal risk for fires starting along those south and west facing coasts and slopes.
PDC Global Hazard Atlas showing the Hawaiian Islands, with three hour acculation of precipitation
Click on the following link for the latest advisories and warnings: Wind/Surf/Flood related advisories or warnings
Broad Overview of Hawaii’s Weather
Our trade winds will be somewhat strong through Thursday, then mellow out a little Friday into the weekend. Glancing at this weather map, it shows a moderately strong 1028 millibar high pressure system to the north of the islands. Our local winds will become a bit more gusty through the next fews. Small craft wind advisories are active over those windiest coasts and channels in Maui County and the Big Island. These stronger trade winds will last through Thursday, with a gradual weakening into the weekend.
Trade winds continue…the following numbers represent the strongest gusts (mph), along with directions Tuesday afternoon:
27 Port Allen, Kauai – NE
27 Waianae, Oahu – NE
25 Molokai – NE
35 Kahoolawe – ESE
33 Kapalua, Maui – NE
13 Lanai – NE
40 Upolu Point, Big Island – NE
We can use the following links to see what’s going on in our area of the north central Pacific Ocean Tuesday afternoon. Looking at this NOAA satellite picture we find scattered low clouds generally offshore of the islands…although they are congregating over and around the mountains and windward sides locally. At the same time we see lots of high cirrus clouds to our west and southwest, spreading over the islands. We can use this looping satellite image to see just low clouds moving along in the trade wind flow. There are those thick high level clouds coming our way from the west and southwest too. Checking out this looping radar image we see some showers over the ocean, moving along in the trade wind flow, impacting the central islands most generously at the time of this writing.
Here are the 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands as of late Tuesday morning:
0.54 Mount Waialeale, Kauai
1.27 South Fork Kaukonahua, Oahu
0.15 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.07 Kahoolawe
1.01 Puu Kukui, Maui
0.49 Kawainui Stream, Big Island
Here is the latest NWS rainfall forecast
Here are the latest available satellite images:
Big Blue
Hawaii Infrared satellite image
Animated Satellite image of Hawaii region
Latest satellite image – Close-in visible satellite view
Latest radar image – Looping
SURF OUTLOOK: The north shores will find a modestly rising north-northwest swell Tuesday into Wednesday. Surf will be rising Tuesday into Wednesday on the south shores. The west shores will find rising surf into mid-week…although smaller in generally than on the south shores. The wind swell along the east facing shores will be gradually rising through Wednesday.
North shores – A new north-northwest bump Tuesday…continuing off and on into the weekend…generally small to medium from the northwest direction.
West shores – The new larger south swell will bring much larger waves to these beaches Tuesday into midweek…then dropping through most of the rest of this week.
South shores – A new large to very large south swell will bring substantial surf our way from the southern hemisphere Tuesday into Wednesday – attaining high surf advisory levels…then dropping Thursday onwards.
East shores – As the trade winds increase now, the wind swell waves will be on the rise in turn.
