Puna Weather
Tuesday 8th September 2026
Today very warm and humid with periods of heavy rain. Thunderstorms are possible. Winds moderate to breezy from the south. Some flooding is possible.
Wednesday light winds and humid with scattered showers. VOG is possible.
Thursday moderate easterly trade winds with scattered to numerous windward showers.
Friday through Sunday less humid.
Lowell began its slow turn to the left at 10am yesterday which kept the storm's center just 40 miles off Kauai's coast last night. Peak gusts occured between 11pm and 1am. Lihue Airport recorded 74mph. Barking Sands reported 84mph before the site went offline at 8:35pm. A peak gust of 92mph was recorded at 3,000' elevation in the Waimea Canyon. Peak for Hilo was 31mph around 5pm. The peak of moisture over us was at 2pm yesterday when the dew point hit 79F.
Since 2pm yesterday the moisture has been decreasing over windward Hawaii Island, but models continue to advertise additional moisture headed our way from the south with precipitable water well above 2" for the next couple of days. This afternoon and tonight CAPE is forecast to be around 1,500J/kg, enough to thunderstorms. This is up from the forecast yesterday which was closer to 1,000J/kg.
Therefore, despite the limited rainfall so far, it looks likely that heavy rains are still in our future.
Winds return to easterly on Thursday pushing remnant moisture up against our mountains for windward showers. Drier air is forecast to return on light easterly trade flow Friday through Sunday.
Next week a weak low to our southeast and another from the eastern Pacific combine to bring more tropical moisture our way. This time winds are likely to be from the east which means more rain, possibly heavy and long lived, but either way, very humid.
