Puna Weather
Wednesday 8th April 2026
This afternoon through Thursday humid with light winds and occasional heavy showers and afternoon thundershowers. VOG is possible.
Friday stormy with gusty south winds and frequent heavy rain and thunderstorms. Widespread flooding is possible.
Saturday and Sunday humid with light winds and occasional heavy showers and afternoon thundershowers. VOG is possible.
Monday frequent heavy rain is possible again.
The trough that brought heavy rain from Kau to Hilo is moving off to the northeast leaving light winds and abundant tropical moisture over us. The light winds will allow daytime heating to trigger afternoon convection Wednesday and Thursday.
Another trough approaches our island chain Thursdy and Friday (200mb chart) maintaining southwesterly flow aloft, which keeps deep tropical moisture over us (mid-level moisture chart). It also brings diverging flow in the upper atmosphere and converging flow near the surface. Latest model runs show winds below 5,000' from the southeast on Friday which would allow for widespread heavy rain. If the winds are instead from the south much of Hamakua would be in the rain shadow of our mountains.
The greatest flooding potential will be under a surface convergence band and those are hard to forecast. It is therefore possible that the worst of Friday's storm could remain over the western portion of our island chain.
The Friday trough moves off to the northeast over the weekend leaving light winds and plenty of moisture over us.
A front is forecast to push down our island chain on Monday. With moisture over 2" still in place, this is likely to generate more heavy rain (precipitation chart for Monday).
