Puna Weather
Saturday 22nd August 2026
Today moderate northeast trade winds and very humid with scattered showers, possibly briefly heavy at times.
Sunday moderate to breezy northeast trade winds and very humid with periods of heavy rain. Some flooding is possible.
Monday moderate southeast trade winds and very humid with periods of heavy rain (should be less persistent than Sunday).
While the humidity continues to be elevated from regional tropical moisture, the moisture depth increases from 5,000' to 14,000' by early Sunday morning as Tropical Storm Moke passes by to our south.
Over the past 12 hours shear has relaxed some over the storm allowing convection to fire closer to the center of rotation. As such, Moke has taken advantage of warmer than normal sea surface temperature to strengthen. The last pass by the hurricane hunters last night recorded a central pressure of 994mb. A new flight is headed towards the center now and could very well find an even lower pressure.
While Moke will pass well to our south, its low pressure combined with building high pressure to our northeast place us in breezy to gusty winds today through Monday. Initially the winds are from the northeast, but as the storm continues to the west our winds turn to southeasterly Sunday afternoon. Winds are not expected to be as strong as Lala because Moke's forecast path is a couple of hundred miles to our south, whereas Lala was close enough to brush our southern shores with her eyewall winds.
A large area of deep moisture accompanys Moke with precipitable water values over 2" early Sunday through all of Monday. The most recent run of the GFS is more ambitious with moving Moke's moisture field off to the west, showing dew points below 70F on Tuesday. I remain skeptical and think Wednesday is more likely.
Long story, short... onshore winds and lots of deep tropical moisture combine to bring periods of heavy rain. Area getting more persistent activity are likely to see some flooding and as such we are under a flood watch through Monday afternoon.
Into the long range I am watching the models for development of a potential tropical low south of Baja early next week. The MJO is exiting the region around that time, and this may be her last enhancement for 3 or 4 weeks.
