Puna Weather
Saturday 21st March 2026
Today humid with light to moderate winds out of the south. Widely scattered heavy rain and thunderstorms increasing to widespread later today or tonight.
Sunday humid with light to moderate south winds. Numerous heavy showers and thunderstorms. Some flooding is likely.
Monday light winds with scattered showers and afternoon thunderstorms.
Tuesday light to moderate northeast trade winds with decreasing showers through the day.
Wednesday through Friday light to moderate northeast trade winds with typical windward showers, mostly during the night and early morning hours. Noticably less humid.
Our latest Kona low has been producing extreme rainfall over our western islands. This has been primarily under the area of greatest low level convergence. Models indicate this band shifting over Maui this morning and over Hawaii island tonight, but weakening as it does so. Cold air aloft associated with the Kona low creates unstable conditions with CAPE approaching 1,500J/kg tonight and Sunday. This is sufficient for strong thunderstorms, but adding in the deep tropical moisture already in place, and a low level convergence band moving over our island, some of the activity could be long lived giving us a risk of flooding.
Due to the light south winds VOG may be widespread Saturday through Monday. Cold air aloft today through Monday brings the snow level down to 12,000'.
Models indicate the main Kona low departing the region on Monday. The departing low allows high pressure to rebuild to our north for a return of trade flow out of the northeast. Initially all this tropical moisture over the region makes for wet trades, but eventually drier air is forecast to filter into the region with Wednesday looking much drier with dew points dropping into the lower 60s.
In the long range I'm still keeping an eye on the tropics near the dateline. Long range models continue to hint surface pressures lowering in a week or so. I should research this, but I'm guessing it's a month or two early.
