Windy, wet weather to continue through Thanksgiving

Wet and windy weather over Oahu will likely continue through this afternoon, affecting firefighters battling a wildfire in Waianae. The winds and wetter than usual weather are forecast to continue through Thanksgiving.

This morning’s rains reached the Leeward Coast, where a wildfire has been burning in the Waianae mountains since Thursday night.

But the rains are being blown leeward by strong tradewinds, which are helping to spread the flames.

“A little bit of showers are reaching the Waianae Coast this morning,” said Matt Foster, a meteorologist with the Honolulu office of the National Weather Service. “The wind obviously helps to spread the fire, but the showers are obviously dropping water over it too. So yeah, it’s kind of good and bad.”

This morning’s rains are part of an old weather front moving over the islands and being blown over leeward areas by east winds of 15 to 25 mph with gusts to 40 mph.

“It (rains) may let up a little bit sometime this afternoon,” Foster said.

Sunday should be drier than today, but scattered showers will continue into next week, he said.

“It’s not going to be completely dry,” Foster said. “It (scattered showers) doesn’t really go away completely.”

Most of the showers should fall on windward and mauka areas. But the strong winds will blow some rain over leeward areas.

The “windy, kind of blustery, kind of mixed in with showers” weather will continue through Thanksgiving, Foster said.

The forecast for Honolulu and south shores of Oahu calls for a 40 to 50 percent chance of rain through Friday.

Wind should lessen slightly Sunday and Monday, but will likely pick up again on Tuesday, with 20- to 30-mph winds with stronger gusts through the end of the week.