Puna Weather
Monday 9th March 2026
Today light winds out of the southeast with only widely scattered showers, mostly early this morning and again tonight.
Tuesday light winds out of the southeast increase to moderate and turn to southerly by late in the day. Widely scattered showers, mostly south of Hilo.
Wednesday through Sunday very humid with moderate to strong south winds and scattered heavy showers and thunderstorms, especially for areas south of Hilo. Some of the thunderstorms could be strong with possibly damaging winds and frequent lightning.
Trade winds are fading today as a massive trough to our northwest moves into our region (satellite animation). The trough is strongest in the upper levels and looks to remain to our northwest for 7 to 10 days pumping deep tropical moisture over us from the southwest (700-300hPa moisture chart).
As the trough deepens, colder air aloft moves over our island increasing the risk of heavy rain and thunderstorms beginning Wednesday. During the period moisture levels surge with dew points in the lower 70s and precipitable water values over 2".
This is a long lived event greatly increasing the flooding risk. Given recent events I would not be surprised to see 10 day totals of 1' to 2' and up to 4' in typically favored locations. Depending over transient factors (surface convergence, clusters of thunderstorms, terrain anchoring of rain bands, etc.) extreme rainfall is possible for any location, but the southerly flow at the surface and southwest flow aloft will generally favor areas from Hilo south.
Long range forecasts show the upper level trough transiting to our east around Thursday, March 17 with deep moisture over us until then. A couple of days later models show another Kona low forming (200mb chart) with the potential for prolonged heavy rains once again.
...yes our mountains will get a lot of snow!
