Maui's Weather and Climate

A lot of people refer to Hawaii as paradise because of the beautiful year round weather it has. The climate of Maui is characterized by a two-season year, mild and uniform tempatures everywhere (except at high elevations), marked geographic differences in rainfall, high relative humidity, extensive cloud formations, and dominate trade-wind flow.  Maui's weather has a wide range of climatic conditions and weather patterns that are influenced by several different factors in the enviornment.  One of those factors being that half of Maui is situated within 5 miles of the island's coastline.  Another factor is that the gross weather patterns are typically determined by elevation orientation towards the Trade winds. The third factor being that Maui's rugged, irregular topography produces marked variations condtions.  This complex three-dimensional flow of air results in the variations of Maui's wind speed, cloud formation, and formation. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maui#Climate)

Image courtesy of http://www.mauiinformationguide.com/images/maui-weather.jpg

Maui's Sub-regions courtesy of http://www.mauiinformationguide.com/hawaii-weather.php

Maui has many different displays of climatic conditions, each is specific to a loosely defined sub-region of the island.  The sub-regions are known by a major physiographic feature, such as mountains and valleys, and by their location on the windward or leeward side of the island.  Two of the sub-regions of Maui are:

• Windward Lowlands-  This climatic condition is below 2,000 feet on the north and northeast sides of the island.  The conditions are moderately rainy, frequent trade wind-induced showers and skies are cloudly to partly cloudy.  Air tempatures are more mild than the other regions.

Example of Windward Lowland courtesy by hawaiianislands.tv

• Leeward Lowlands- This climatic conditions have daytime tempatures a little high and nighttime tempatures a little lower than windward locations.  Dry weather is common, with the exception of sporadic showers that drift over mountains to windward and during short-duration storms.

Example of Leeward Lowlands courtesy of http://www.traveldestinationinfo.com/maui/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Maui-1.jpg