Rain, cold to persist

By JOHN BURNETT

Tribune-Herald staff writer

A winter storm that caused a voluntary evacuation of Mauna Kea on Tuesday morning likely will continue throughout the week, bringing more rain and chilly temperatures to East Hawaii.

“The weather (near the summit) was quickly deteriorating, the wind was blowing and the snow was drifting up,” Stewart Hunter, general manager of Mauna Kea Observatories Support Services, said late Tuesday afternoon. “And there was a danger when our road crew started plowing for the end of the day that it would drift up significantly and vehicles with chains wouldn’t be able to get down.”

A winter storm warning that was issued Tuesday by the National Weather Service in Honolulu is in effect until 6 a.m. today.

Winds were more than 40 mph on the summit Tuesday morning, although they had subsided somewhat by 5 p.m., according to the Mauna Kea Weather Center website. The summit temperature at 5 p.m. was 27 degrees Fahrenheit, which is below freezing.

“It doesn’t look too good right now; there’s a lot of freezing precipitation,” said Ryan Lyman, a forecaster for MKWC. “The atmosphere is looking pretty unstable over the rest of this week, so we could get … little flurries here and there for the rest of the week. But this is the big stuff going on right now.”

Lyman said the snow was “about a foot deep” in places.

The warning is for Big Island summits over 10,000 feet in altitude, which means Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, where the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the weather service’s parent agency, has its own observatory, which was also evacuated voluntarily.

“It was getting pretty bad up there so our guys came down early,” said John Barnes, the Mauna Loa facility’s station chief.

The Mauna Kea Access Road remained closed Tuesday beyond the Visitor Information Station, at the 9,000-foot level, while the visitors’ station itself remained open.

Hunter said there were drifts of “three to four feet” on Tuesday morning. He said an evaluation would be made this morning as to whether to reopen the Mauna Kea road, although he wasn’t optimistic. For information on Mauna Kea Access Road conditions and closures, call 935-6268.

The NWS warning predicted another one to three inches of snow overnight.

“There’s plenty of showers and moisture upstream and it’s getting up as high as 30,000 feet. It hits the summits and the freezing level’s as low as 10,000 feet, and you get frozen precipitation,” said NWS Forecaster Victor DeJesus. “It’s gonna be pretty snowy up there for the next 18-24 hours, then it should back off, and it could potentially happen again this weekend.”

Much closer to sea level, rain has drenched Hilo and vicinity over the past few days. DeJesus warned that it’s not time yet to put away the umbrella.

“There might be a short time maybe Thursday into Friday where it mellows out a bit, but right now it’s looking wetter for the weekend,” he said.

DeJesus said the wet weather could last “possibly into Monday or so.”

“The high pressure to the north is maintaining the trades, but aloft there is an upper level low (pressure system), so that adds instability to the atmosphere and it allows showers to become more robust,” he said.

Hilo International Airport logged 2.09 inches of rain in the 24-hour period ending 2 p.m. Tuesday. That’s slightly more than the 2.07 inches total reported for the entire month of January. During the same 24 hours, Glenwood reported 2.41 inches and Mountain View, 2.26 inches.

It will continue to be chilly, as well, NWS said. Overnight lows in Hilo are forecast to be in the lower 60s for the remainder of the week. In Mountain View, those lows are predicted to be in the lower 50s, while in Volcano, 3,600 feet above sea level, overnight lows in the upper 40s are expected.

Email John Burnett at
jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.