Hawaii is in for a wetter-than-average summer, forecasters said Tuesday.
Hawaii is in for a wetter-than-average summer, forecasters said Tuesday.
But that’s mainly for windward areas of the Hawaiian Islands because of prevailing northeasterly tradewinds, said Kevin Kodama, senior service hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Honolulu.
Leeward areas across the state can expect dry weather to persist through September, Kodama said. The Big Island will see the driest conditions develop this summer in leeward Kohala, the southern areas of South Kona and the west side of Ka‘u.
As of May 19, most of the leeward side of the Big Island was listed as abnormally dry, experiencing moderate drought or experiencing severe drought. No areas in the state faced extreme or exception drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, which is kept by the National Drought Mitigration Center in Lincoln, Neb.
“The existing drought can be expected to worsen, or possibly even spread,” he said. “And, areas that don’t have drought right now will see some development of drought.”
However, areas of mauka Kona, primarily the famed Kona Coffee Belt, will be the exception, Kodama said. One theory as to why the leeward Big Island area gets rain during the summer is that onshore sea breezes are more prevalent, ascending the mountain slopes, and interacting with descending trade winds through the saddle, producing local showers usually in the late afternoon, he explained.
“This is the only area in the state of Hawaii that actually has the wet season during the summer months,” he said. “They will be an anomaly from the rest of the state.”
Hawaii started the wet season, which runs October through April, with Hurricane Ana, a tropical cyclone that brought nearly 12 inches of rain to the Mauna Loa slopes as it passed south of the Big Island, Kodama said. While El Nino did set in mid-season, several cold fronts passed through the state, helping bring rain to dry areas.
“As the wet season evolved, we continued to see several cold fronts. Fortunately, even though the leeward areas were dry, we did get enough rainfall that kind of prevented some of the drought areas from worsening and also spreading,” he said.