Better established light to breezy trade winds will hold well into next week. While trades are slowly making a come back, overall large scale winds will be weak enough the next couple of days to allow localized sea and land breezes to remain the alpha flow through Sunday morning. This pattern will favor thicker cloud build up with more frequent daily shower activity primarily focused over upslope windward mauka interior areas, partially clearing in the evening per drainage breezes over leeward spots. A westward passing band of more moisture-rich air, along with weak instability brought on by the approach of a vicinity eastern trough or weak area of lower layer convergence, will increase windward rain probabilities through Saturday evening. Broad surface ridging developing north of the state will maintain trades through next week.
Local land and sea breezes will gradually return to light to moderate trade winds tonight, then eventually become locally breezy tomorrow through the weekend. Clouds and showers are expected to build up over leeward and interior areas this afternoon before trade winds push the showers back over the typical windward and mountain areas tonight. One thing to note is that the trade winds could be a little stronger over Kauai and Oahu tomorrow.
VFR conditions will mostly prevail, however some brief MVFR conditions are possible in any showers that could develop this afternoon.
AIRMET Sierra for mtn obscuration is in place over Kauai and Oahu due to lingering showers.
A weak trough east northeast of the islands will keep trade winds light to locally moderate across all local waters today. By this weekend, however, a surface ridge building northwest of the state will bring a return of moderate to locally fresh trades. A Small Craft Advisory may be needed for the typical windy waters surrounding Maui and the Big Island by early next week as the high expands eastward and trade winds strengthen further.
Surf peaked early this morning along north and west facing shores according to nearshore buoy data. The Waimea Bay buoy shows a sustained northwest swell that has reached a plateau since yesterday afternoon, but swell energy is declining to the northwest per offshore buoy data. As a result, the moderate, medium-period, northwest swell will continue to bring elevated surf to north and west facing shores this morning before slowly fading today through the weekend.
A small, long-period south swell should provide a small bump in south shore surf over the next several days.
Surf along east-facing shores will remain slightly below normal today, due to the lack of strong trades over and upstream of the islands. East shore surf will gradually increase this weekend into early next week as trades make a slow return.
None.
