Light to moderately strong winds through mid-week, a few generally windward biased showers, building surf heights on our north and west shores Wednesday into Thursday.
PDC Global Hazards Atlas centered on the central Pacific Ocean near Hawaii is displaying precipitation accumulation over the last three hours
Hawaiian Weather Synopsis: There are several circumstances that will be influencing our local weather story through the rest of this week, none of which will be as wild as the strong and gusty winds that have occurred this past weekend into Monday. At the moment we have an area of high and middle level clouds moving across our local skies. These are curling around into the islands from a large swatch of these clouds to the south, east, and northeast of the Big Island. This looping satellite image shows this activity quite well.
At the same time we have another large area of high clouds approaching the Kauai end of the island chain. If we open up our view a bit more, but using this next satellite image, we can see this area coming our way. If we look closely, we can see the next cold front edging this way behind those high clouds far to our northwest. Then, down below, at lower altitudes of the atmosphere, we see the lower level cumulus clouds moving along in our still brisk trade wind flow…bringing a few generally light showers.
There are times, such as these, that pointing out the current circumstances is easier than trying to figure out the future ones…with a high degree of certainty that is. Nonetheless, we need to look ahead, and with that in mind, lets try and discern the likely outlook. The cold front noted above is expected to keep coming, and will bring showers to the Kauai and Oahu end of the chain between late Wednesday into early Friday. The computer models don’t show it making it to the eastern islands…and as a matter of fact have it pulling back towards the northwest by later Friday.
Meanwhile, we have that trough of low pressure to our east, which is migrating westward towards us too. This should bring the Big Island end of the chain some showers with time. The models don’t show it moving past Maui, and whether even Maui will see very much of this shower activity is still somewhat of a question. So, these are the most reliable prognostications at the moment, and as you can see…will bring some weather changes our way through Friday. There’s the chance that some of the trough’s showers may remain over the eastern islands into the early part of the upcoming weekend.
Click on the following link for the latest National Weather Service advisories and warnings:Wind/Surf/Flood related advisories or warnings
Details of Hawaii’s Weather – Wind/Precipitation/Surf
As this weather map shows, we find a strong 1034 millibar high pressure system located far to the northeast of the Hawaiian Islands Tuesday afternoon. This high pressure cell has an elongated ridge of high pressure extending southwest from its center, into the area north and northwest of our islands. At the same time, we see a 1014 millibar low pressure system to the northwest of Kauai, moving northeast. This low has a cold front front running from its center southwest across the International Dateline…into the western Pacific. Finally, there’s a trough of low pressure not far to the east of the islands, which is slowly migrating westward.
The following numbers represent the strongest wind gusts (mph), along with directions early Tuesday afternoon:
24 Lihue, Kauai – NE
27 Honolulu, Oahu – NE
25 Molokai – NE
31 Kahoolawe – E
23 Lip0a, Maui – NE
20 Lanai – NE
30 Kealakomo, Big Island – NNE
We can use the following links to see what’s going on in our area of the north central Pacific Ocean early Tuesday afternoon. Looking at this NOAA satellite picture we find that high and middle level cloudiness is located to the north, northeast, east, and southeast of the state…as over the state too. We can use this looping satellite image to see low cloud bands being carried over the islands on the trade wind flow. At the same time, we find a considerable amount of thunderstorm activity far to our southwest over the ocean, with high cirrus clouds flying off the tops of those clouds. Checking out this looping radar image we see very few light showers falling locally over the ocean, not many of which are reaching our shores or mountains,
Here are the 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands as of late Tuesday morning:
0.12 Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.11 Nuuanu Upper, Oahu
0.01 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.28 Puu Kukui, Maui
0.51 Kawainui Stream, 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: Surf along the east shores will remain active into mid-week…gradually dropping into Wednesday. The north shores will be smaller and gradually lowering into early Wednesday…then rising again later Wednesday as a new north-northwest swell arrives. The west sides will be smaller Tuesday, then rising Wednesday along those beaches that have a favorable northerly orientation. South shores will be small, gradually rising slightly into mid-week.
North shores – The current swell will drop into early Wednesday, then a new north-northwest swell will arrive later Wednesday into Thursday…lasting for several days…reaching high surf advisory levels.
West shores – These beaches will gradually drop until a new north-northwest swell arrives by mid-week lasting for several days.
South shores – Small surf through mid-week caused by an out of season south swell, becoming somewhat larger later Thursday or Friday…into the weekend
East shores – Surf remaining active with wind swell waves Tuesday into Wednesday…although gradually lowering in size.
