DISCUSSION
Satellite imagery this evening continues to show a cold core upper with an area of thunderstorms along its northeastern section roughly 500 miles northwest of the island of Kauai. A weak subtropical jet stream will continue to produce periods of high level cirrus clouds over the state. In the lower levels a weak trough in the easterlies, showing up as cyclonic flow on visible and infrared satellite imagery, will move into the eastern islands and spread slowly westward across the state through Saturday night. Low level lift associated with this disturbance will force to trade wind subsidence inversion to lift to higher heights increasing cloud and shower trends statewide. The best shower coverage will form over windward and mountain areas of each island with some of the stronger showers spilling over into leeward areas.

In the big picture, a strong high pressure system north of the Hawaiian Islands will continue to produce breezy to locally windy trade winds across the region today. The high center begins to weaken this weekend with decreasing wind speed trends into the moderate to breezy range from Saturday to Sunday, and then further weakening to more moderate levels from Monday onward. This change in the wind speed forecast for next week is consistent with the current blend of long range model solutions and represents a high confidence forecast into much of next. At most next week some of the more wind favored areas may see brief periods of locally breezy wind speeds.

Through much of next week expect fairly stable conditions under an upper level ridge will continue to limit vertical cloud heights and shower development into much of next week. One wrinkle in this forecast was mentioned above with the low level trough adding some short range instability to the mix through Saturday night. Otherwise stable and mostly dry weather with trade wind thermal inversion heights in the 4,000 to 6,000 foot height range will prevail across the state.

AVIATION
Breezy trade winds will hold in place through Saturday, strongest and most gusty from mid morning through late afternoon. Low clouds and showers will focus primarily over windward and mauka areas through the period, bringing MVFR cigs/vsbys at times.

AIRMET Sierra is now in effect for mountain obscuration over windward sections of most islands. These conditions will likely remain in place through the night.

AIRMET Tango remains in effect for moderate low-level turbulence over and downwind of the terrain of all islands. This AIRMET will likely continue through Saturday.

MARINE
Strong surface high pressure far northeast of the state will maintain fresh to locally strong trades through the weekend. A Small Craft Advisory is in effect for the typical windier areas around Maui County and the Big Island through Saturday evening. By early next week, the aforementioned high is forecast to drift west and allow trades to ease into the gentle to fresh range.

Overlapping small, medium to long period south swells will continue to provide small surf along south facing shores through Saturday. The enhanced trades will continue to produce rough and choppy surf for the east-facing shores through this weekend. Local wind swell may wrap into select north and south facing shores.
Surf along north facing shores will remain nearly flat, typical of this time of year.

FIRE WEATHER
Gusty trade winds and low relative humidity will keep elevated fire weather concerns into the weekend. Windier trade wind areas and downslope leeward locations such as West Maui and leeward Kohala on the Big Island are of particular concern moving forward.
Trade winds will gradually ease into the moderate to breezy range from Saturday to Sunday, and then down to moderate levels from Monday onward as the pressure gradient over the state relaxes.

Most leeward areas will remain dry. Brief periods of showers will move into windward areas mainly in the overnight hours. Humidity levels will see good to excellent overnight recoveries. Exceptions to this humidity rule will be for elevations in the 4,000 to 8,000 foot range, which may see periods of warmer temperatures with much drier conditions, within and above the subsidence inversion level.

HFO WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES
Small Craft Advisory until 6 PM HST Saturday for Maalaea Bay- Pailolo Channel-Alenuihaha Channel-Big Island Leeward Waters-Big Island Southeast Waters.