A Bow Echo and Severe Weather Associated with a Kona Low in Hawaii

Abstract

On 2 November 1995 a kona low formed to the northwest of Hawaii. During the following 48 h a series of convective rainbands developed on the southeastern side of the low as it slowly moved eastward. On the afternoon of 3 November 1995 Hawaiian standard time (HST), a bow-echo signature was identified in the reflectivity observations from the recently installed WSR-88D located on the south shore of Kauai, and led to the first severe thunderstorm warning ever issued by the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Honolulu, Hawaii. Subsequent to the warning, winds of 40 m s?1 (80 kt) were observed at Nawiliwili Harbor on the southeast side of Kauai. The goals of this paper were to (i) document, within the constraints of the observational data, the synoptic and mesoscale environment associated with the formation of the bow echo and severe weather in Hawaii and contrast them with investigations of similar phenomena in the midlatitudes and Tropics, and (ii) provide a discussion of the implications of the availability of data from the new WSR-88D radars in Hawaii to operational forecasting of severe weather in the central Pacific.