- Starting this weekend, honey rain could hit parts of the Hawaiian Islands, especially the Big Island.
- This closer pass of Hone means more moisture and possibly stronger rainbands.
- This could result in debris landing on top of the burn scars.
- While gusty winds are expected at times, this weather pattern is not as severe as the wildfire weather pattern last August.
Hawaii is threatened by Tropical Storm Hone, but the weather pattern will be different than the one that caused the devastating wildfires on Maui last August.
The country’s worst wildfire in over a century raged in Lahaina, killing at least 102 people, leaving 12,000 people homeless and causing an estimated $5.7 billion in damage to thousands of homes, businesses and vehicles.
(MORE: Storm forecast | One year later, the survivors continue)
Hawaii Governor Josh Green (center) points out the damage as he speaks with Deanne Criswell, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), during a tour of wildfire damage in Lahaina, Hawaii, Saturday, August 12, 2023.
(AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, file)
While parts of Hawaii are experiencing renewed drought, there are several key differences between the pattern of this latest tropical system and what occurred a year ago.
Narrower, wetter route: Hone (pronounced “HOH-neh”) is forecast to pass south of the islands, as shown by the forecasted route on the map below.
But that’s probably close enough to produce rainbands on at least the Big Island and possibly other parts of the island chain, including Maui. The Central Pacific Hurricane Center is forecasting several inches of rain through Monday, mostly on the windward side of the islands.
Despite its Category 4 status, Hurricane Dora a year ago moved much farther south, more than 500 miles south of the Big Island. This kept the damaging eyewall winds away from Hawaii, but also kept the rain away.
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Projected course, precipitation forecast
(The red shaded area is the forecast track of the tropical system. The purple line shows the track of Hurricane Dora from last August. The latest precipitation forecast for the next five days over Hawaii and the Central Pacific is also shown.)
Print pattern weaker: A year ago, the aforementioned Hurricane Dora did not directly contribute to fanning the flames of the Lahaina wildfire.
As we discussed in our detailed post-fire dive, subtropical high pressure was stronger and farther south than usual in early August 2023, with its center just north of Hawaii.
This created a much larger pressure difference than usual, which generated stronger winds. The air was also much drier than usual, and the sinking warm air created an inversion that constricted and compressed the winds into a flat layer, thus strengthening them.
In this upcoming case, while gusty winds are possible with Hone, the subtropical high north of Hawaii is not expected to be as strong and will be located much farther north of Hawaii, so the background pressure difference is not expected to be as extreme as it was a year ago.
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Conclusion: While we expect stronger winds with Hone, the proximity to the islands, the likelihood of rainbands, and weaker background pressure conditions suggest that the fire danger in this situation is likely to be much lower than that which led to the disaster last August.
Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Contact him at X (formerly Twitter), Topics, on facebook. And Blue sky.
