Puna Weather
Friday 4th September 2026
Today through early Sunday light to moderate easterly trade winds with widely scattered showers.
Late Sunday through Tuesday... maybe Wednesday very warm and humid with scattered showers, possibly heavy at times. Winds light from the east, becoming southerly.
Lowell is still struggling with easterly shear, note the limited upper level outflow on the northeast side of the storm in the water vapor loop. Nonetheless Lowell is maintaining deep convection around a sometimes clear eye and ADT has strengthened the storm from 963mb to 938mb (also validated by hurricane hunter flight) over the past 12 hours, so Lowell remains a formidable CAT4 hurricane. If the shear is coming from Karina's outflow it may still be another 12 to 24 hours before it abates as Karina is still a CAT2 storm with a very large eye capable of pumping a tremendous amount of air up into the upper atmosphere. The NHC has Karina still a CAT1 at 36 hours and all the time the distance between them is getting closer, so I guess it's possible the easterly shear could become northeasterly shear and then there's shear to the northwest of Karina as an upper level trough digs into the region from the northeast Sunday through Tuesday. So Lowell's got some challenges ahead, but the storm is over very warm waters and that's a lot of energy.
Lowell's big turn to the north is because of that upper level trough and a jet streak on it's southeast flank. The GFS is continuing to trend farther to the west with this feature and also the tracks for Lowell are trending west. All models show Lowell passing a safe distance from Kauai, except for the HWRF, which I usually discount unless it's only 24-48 hours away. That in no way means Lowell will not hit Kauai, but it does mean something would have to change for that to happen.
For windward Hawaii Island, we don't really see much effect from Lowell until late Sunday, but before that Karina will be interrupting our trades and our winds will become light. Once Lowell and Karina begin to merge they pull deep tropical air over us from the ITCZ (moisture chart animation) for very warm and muggy conditions late Sunday through Tuesday, maybe Wednesday too. I don't know about rain, because the winds are likely to be light, so I just put in chance of heavy showers. I'll try to pin that down as we get closer.
