EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT: We’ve just come through a perfectly good weekend, with the trade winds blowing, and a fairly typical array of windward biased showers at times. The only other feature that stood out was the rather long lasting high cirrus clouds. The small craft wind advisory for those windiest coastal and channel waters around Maui County and the Big Island…are still active for the moment.
It appears that we will start to push into a lighter trade wind flow starting tomorrow. This will likely end the small craft wind advisories, with gradually lighter winds continuing through the work week. The trade winds won’t stop altogether, so that showers will be carried into our windward sides at times. Otherwise, there shouldn’t be all that much difference in our local weather conditions through Friday.
The latest forecast shows that a cold front may drop down into the state later Friday into Saturday morning. It’s interesting that the GFS model shows this clearly happening, with a second cold front approaching the state early next week. In contrast, the Navy’s NOGAPS forecast model doesn’t show this first cold front at all, or at least doesn’t bring it into the state. It’s still a bit early in the week, so that there may be some additional fine tuning as we move through the next several days. It is getting to be that time of the year when we would normally look for more frequent cold fronts to begin arriving…especially as we have a La Nina influence in the Pacific. Typically, La Nina can provide somewhat more than the normal amount of precipitation during our late autumn through spring seasons.
PDC Global Hazards Atlas showing 3 hour rainfall accumulations for the central Pacific around the Hawaiian Islands
Click on the following link for the latest National Weather Service advisories and warnings: Wind/Surf/Flood related advisories or warnings
Broad Overview of Hawaii’s Weather
Our trade winds will remain locally breezy, then mellow out some Tuesday through Friday…picking up again into the weekend. Glancing at this weather map, it shows two near 1023 millibar high pressure systems to our north and northeast. Our locally trade winds will continue in the moderately strong realms through the day. It looks like we’ll start to get into a lighter wind flow going into the middle part of this new week through most of Friday. The trade winds will increase again temporarily during the weekend, before easing off as we push into early next week.
Trade winds continue…the following numbers represent the strongest gusts (mph), along with directions Monday afternoon:
25 Port Allen, Kauai – NE
27 Honolulu, Oahu – NE
28 Molokai – NE
20 Kahoolawe – SE
24 Lipoa, Maui – ENE
16 Lanai – NE
28 South 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 Monday afternoon.Looking at this NOAA satellite picture we find low clouds generally offshore of the islands…although they are being carried over the islands locally. We can use this looping satellite image to see those low clouds moving along in the trade wind flow. There are those high level clouds located offshore, although they have mostly moved away from our local skies at this point. Checking out this looping radar image we see showers over the ocean, moving along in the trade wind flow, impacting the windward sides in places…generally in the light to moderately heavy category.
Here are the 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands as of late Monday morning:
0.13 Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.33 Manoa Lyon Arboretum, Oahu
0.00 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.07 Oheo Gulch, Maui
0.46 Mountain View, Big Island
Here is the latest NWS rainfall forecast
Here are the latest available satellite images:
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 lowering northwest swell Monday, and then begin rising again later by Tuesday morning. Surf along the south shores will lower through Tuesday. The west shores will find generally very small surf, although coming up some due to the northwest swell on Tuesday. The wind swell along the east facing shores will remain small through Tuesday….a little larger locally.
North shores – The northwest swells will keep surfing breaking Sunday into Monday…generally in the lower medium size. A new larger northwest swell will arrive early Tuesday, likely triggering a high surf advisory then for several days. A second northwest swell will arrive early Thursday for several days.
West shores – The south swell will keep waves breaking along these beaches, although dropping through Monday. The northwest swells will keep coming, keeping these beaches breaking. The larger northwest swell starting early Tuesday will bring the surf up even larger then. The second NW swell will bring the surf up again later in this new week.
South shores – The late season south swell will be gradually dropping, becoming very small through Friday. There’s an outside chance of a modest bump Saturday into Sunday.
East shores – As the trade winds remain active, the wind swell waves will keep these beaches in choppy surf….through the first several days of this new week. The trades are expected to slow way down during the second half of the work week, causing a drop in windward swell in turn.
