Julie McLean moved to Ewa Beach with her husband five years ago to escape the frigid cold of the East Coast. She has since basked in the warmth of Hawaii while fully acclimating to its mild winters.
This year’s a different story.
“It kind of feels like fall in Upstate New York,” said McLean, who has a medical condition that makes her sensitive to temperature extremes.
There have been times, she said, when she’s found herself bundling up like she’s bracing for a raging nor’easter. In bed at night she wears socks, a beanie, hoodie and sweatpants under three blankets. She’s even donned gloves — inside the house.
“For the first time in five years, I’m really cold,” she said.
One doesn’t have to have a medical condition to know Hawaii has been on the chilly side in recent weeks. After experiencing a relatively warm holiday season and a near-normal January, the islands have fallen under a cold spell over the last month or so.
State climatologist Pao-Shin Chu said dueling areas of high and low pressure generally have been parked to the north and northeast of the islands, generating a near-steady blast of cold wind and unstable conditions since about the beginning of February.
While it is not an unusual weather pattern, he said, the recurring phenomenon has persisted much longer than normal.
A look at the daily mean and daily minimum temperatures at Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in Honolulu over the last month reveals a prolonged trend of below-normal conditions, said Chu, a University of Hawaii-Manoa meteorology professor.
And that doesn’t even consider the wind chill factor, which makes temperatures feel even colder, Chu said.
“I don’t remember a February this cold,” he said. “A few days ago it was really cold.”
Glenn James, senior weather specialist with the Pacific Disaster Center on Maui, said this winter has been far from typical. Frequent cold fronts have brought clouds and showers, he said, and colder air from northern climes has rushed here in their wakes.
The wintry atmospheric conditions have brought snow and high winds to the tallest mountains in Hawaii. On Maui, snow fell to record-low elevations, dusting Polipoli Spring State Recreation Area at the 6,200-foot level not far from homes in the Keokea and Ulupalakua areas.
Extra-blanket time
In recent weeks many residents have been reaching for their sweaters and jackets and putting on socks with their slippers, especially in those early morning and evening hours.
James said sea-level locations have experienced a number of days with high temperatures remaining in the 70s rather than edging up into the more comfortable lower to middle 80s.
The author of the Hawaii Weather Today website, James said he’s heard from scores of local residents astonished by the prolonged cold spell.
Visitors haven’t been complaining all that much.
“I guess that’s because despite the chilly weather we’ve been having, tropically speaking, it’s way warmer than where they are coming from on the mainland,” he said in an email. “It’s our Hawaii folks who have ‘suffered,’ having to shut their windows, put on their socks, and pull up that extra blanket.”
Meanwhile an employee at the University of Hawaii bookstore in Manoa said there’s been a run on sweatshirts, hoodies and windbreakers.
“A lot of people are coming in and grabbing our sweatshirts because it’s so cool outside. We have to restock every day,” the customer service representative said.
Elsewhere the cold snap has made space heaters hot items at City Mill hardware stores. In fact, five of eight stores have sold out of the only model of portable electric space heater the local retailer carries.
City Mill’s marketing manager, Shannon Okinishi, said the company has sold twice as many space heaters in the last two weeks than it sold in an entire month at about this time last year.
More heaters have been ordered and are on their way. “There are not a lot more coming, but more are coming,” Okinishi said.
While recent storms have significantly lessened the impacts of drought in Hawaii, a few agricultural concerns are forced to cope with the weather.
Affecting crops
Brian Miyamoto, Hawaii Farm Bureau executive director, said the combination of cold, cloudy and windy conditions has negatively affected production at some agricultural operations, including a ti leaf grower in Kahuku and an orchard on Kauai.
“But we haven’t seen anything drastic,” Miyamoto said. “We haven’t seen any major disruption in food production.”
The colder temperatures might even help the growth of some crops, he added.
The National Weather Service said breezy to locally windy trades are likely to continue through the weekend, with showers expected to increase tonight through Monday mostly in windward areas. Forecasters said winds should gradually back off starting Monday.
But dew points, or the temperatures below which dew can form, shouldn’t change much, according to the forecast. That means that “cool feel” will likely continue for at least a few days with daytime high temperatures at or just below normal.
