Weather on the Big Island of Hawaii

We cannot guarantee the weather, but it is the consistency of the weather that has made Hawaii so famous over many years. What we can tell you is that the summer months (May to November) will pretty much be in the mid 80’s…70’s in the evenings. The winter months’ temperature will be in the mid to high 70’s during the day, possibly going down to the 60’s in the night. A favorite sweater will be welcome in the winter evenings. You’ll probably pull the light down comforter over you at night in winter…probably not in the summer.

Now, about rain. Our house is on the lush green Hamakua coast. We have beautiful vegetation, waterfalls and double rainbows. This cannot happen without rain. Our side of the island gets approximately 130 inches of rain a year. Most of this falls at night, but some falls in the day too. People ask us: “When is the rainy season?” We cannot answer that based on the years we have owned this property. Usually the winter should have more rain, but two of the past four winters have seen severe drought…not a drop of rain for seven months this past winter. We don’t like it when this happens. This past summer in the six weeks we were there, it rained almost every night…two nights more than six inches, but we only had three rainy days. And on those days, we packed the car and drove to the other side of the island for a great day at the beach.

The other side of the island is a dry desert that receives less than 10 inches of rain a year, so you can almost always find sunny beaches somewhere on the Big Island, even if it is raining in Waipunalei. Of course, it is always possible for a big system to be enveloping all the islands, but it is very unusual.