Hawaiian Weather Synopsis: The trade winds will continue, although will be going through some changes going forward. They are blowing in the light to moderately strong range at this point, and as such…the National Weather Service has discontinued their small craft wind advisories around Maui County and the Big Island. They will remain a bit softer than they have been into Friday. As we get into later Friday into Saturday they will pick up some, and in the process push a weak cold front down into the state. This in turn will increase our windward biased showers, and may even carry some of them into the leeward sides locally.
Following this frontal passage on Saturday, the air will dry out and may feel slightly cool for a short period. It won’t be long before our local winds begin to veer from north-northeast or northeast, around to east…and perhaps all the way around to the south later Sunday or Monday. We haven’t seen southerly kona winds since way back earlier in the year, although this of course accompanies the beginning of our tropical rainy season. This second cold front might turn out to be the more generous of the two, in terms of precipitation. We still have time to fine tune the exact details over the next several days.
PDC Global Hazards Atlas showing the Hawaiian Islands in the central Pacific...along with the past three hours of accumulated precipitation
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 today although becoming gradually lighter through Thursday. Glancing at this weather map, it shows a strong 1038 millibar high pressure system far to our northwest, with a weaker 1022 millibar high pressure cell to our northeast. There’s an elongated cold front coming off the mainland, which runs southwest to near the International Dateline. We’ll start to get into a lighter wind flow going into and through the middle part of this week. This will occur due to the cold front pushing our trade wind producing ridge down closer to the Aloha state. The trade winds will increase again temporarily Friday and Saturday, pushing the cold front down into the state then. Slightly cooler air from the northeast will blow through Saturday night, giving way to yet another slow down in the wind flow….as a second cold front approaches from the north and northeast…prompting light southerly breezes ahead of that second cold front early next week.
Trade winds continue…the following numbers represent the strongest gusts (mph), along with directions Tuesday morning:
21 Port Allen, Kauai – NE
20 Honolulu, Oahu – NE
22 Molokai – NE
30 Kahoolawe – ESE
25 Kapalua, Maui – NE
00 Lanai
29 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 Tuesday afternoon. Looking at this NOAA satellite picture we find low clouds generally offshore of the islands…although they are being carried over the windward sides of the islands locally. We can use this looping satellite image to see those low clouds moving along in the trade wind flow. There are lots of high level clouds located offshore, sweeping across the islands at the time of this writing…especially over Maui County. Checking out this looping radar image we see just a few showers over the ocean, moving along in the trade wind flow, impacting the windward sides in places.
Here are the 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands as of late Tuesday morning:
0.36 Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.19 Manoa Lyon Arboretum, Oahu
0.00 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.10 Kahoolawe
0.32 Oheo Gulch, Maui
0.31 Kealakekua, 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 rising northwest swell today, and then lowering already on Wednesday. Surf along the south shores will lower through Wednesday….locally flat. The west shores will find generally small surf, although coming up a bit more locally due to the northwest swell. The wind swell along the east facing shores will remain small through Wednesday.
North shores – The northwest swells will bring the surf up today…generally in the medium size category….dropping Wednesday. A second northwest swell will arrive early Thursday for several days.
West shores – The northwest swells will keep coming, keeping these beaches breaking. The larger northwest swell starting early Tuesday will bring the surf up…with a second NW swell bringing the surf up again Thursday or so.
South shores – The recent late season south swell activity will be nearly gone now, becoming very small to flat through Friday. There’s an outside chance of a modest bump again this weekend.
East shores – As the trade winds remain active, the wind swell waves will keep these beaches in surf….through these first several days of thisweek. The trades are expected to slow way down thereafter, causing a drop in windward swell in turn.
