East Hawaii continues to experience bouts of heavy rain, despite long-term predictions the island has a dry winter ahead.
East Hawaii continues to experience bouts of heavy rain, despite long-term predictions the island has a dry winter ahead.
Last month, the National Weather Service forecast the current wet season, which lasts from October to April, would be unusually dry because of a strong El Niño weather pattern.
But rainfall totals during the past couple of weeks show business as usual in East Hawaii, with above-average rainfall in some areas.
A rain gauge at Hilo International Airport measured 11.58 inches of rain from the first of the month through Monday at 8:45 a.m. That puts Hilo just a few inches away from its total average November rainfall of 15.5 inches.
Meanwhile, the Mountain View gauge logged 18.18 inches, and Laupahoehoe’s totaled 13.51 inches.
Leeward areas, however, had “almost no precipitation for much of the past week,” according to a crop weather update from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The heavy rain in East Hawaii was the result of strong trade winds, said NWS forecaster Matthew Foster.
“There’s just been a lot of moisture being carried in with the trade winds,” he said Monday morning. “We’ve had some fairly strong trade winds, and when you combine that with the topography of the island, you see a lifting of that moisture, trying to lift up over the mountains, and you see a lot of rain.”
Foster said forecasts called for things to dry out a little by Monday and today, with another system developing tonight and into Wednesday with more rain.
“That should be a fairly wet pattern for couple days,” he said. “As the trough moves east to west, it will focus mostly over Kauai and Oahu for most of the week. Then, it will go outside our forecast area.”
The November rains come after an above-average October.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture-maintained Island Dairy rain gauge, located to the northwest of Laupahoehoe, recorded the largest rainfall total for the month, accumulating 31.62 inches, more than 330 percent of its average rainfall. The site also put up the largest single-day rainfall total of 8.01 inches Oct. 7.
Totals from the Kamuela and Laupahoehoe gauges broke records for the wettest October, and the site at Honokaa reported its highest October total since 1995.
Sites in Ka‘u and the North and South Kona districts experienced below-average rainfall.
Email Colin M. Stewart at cstewart@hawaiitribune-herald.com.