HILO — East Hawaii continues to experience bouts of heavy rain, despite long-term predictions that the island has a dry winter ahead.
Last month, the National Weather Service forecast that 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 over the last couple 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 tradewinds, said National Weather Service forecaster Matthew Foster.
“There’s just been a lot of moisture being carried in with the tradewinds,” he said Monday morning. “We’ve had some fairly strong tradewinds, 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 Monday and Tuesday, 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.
