Puna Weather
Thursday 1st January 2026
Today mostly dry with light southeast winds.
Friday into early Saturday scattered windward showers with light to moderate easterly trade winds.
Sunday increasingly humid with scattered showers south of Hilo and only widely scattered showers north. Winds moderate and from the southeast.
Monday humid with scattered showers, possibly heavy at times. Winds moderate from the southeast.
Tuesday and Wednesday humid with scattered showers, possibly heavy at times. Winds moderate to breezy from the east.
Isolated thunderstorms and mountain top snows are possible late Sunday into Tuesday afternoon.
A narrow band of enhanced low level moisture associated with an old frontal boundary sags south and over us Friday into early Saturday (moisture anomaly animation) bringing the threat of showers to windward locations.
Sunday into Wednesday we see an upper level trough dive south (200mb animation) and form a closed low aloft with a surface low under it (850mb animation). This vertically stacked system is short lived with the upper level portion shearing off to the east while the surface feature gets caught up in the background zonal flow and moves off to the west Tuesday/Wedneday.
Cold air aloft combines with ample moisture to bring the threat of widespread rain to our island. This is further enhanced by low level convergence and upper level divergence over us. The southeast flow is not ideal for orographic lifting, but instability is likely to overcome this obstacle.
This is an instance when the ECMWF was much closer than the GFS... interesting.
