Live from the National Weather Service

Hawaii Storm Alerts

Active National Weather Service hail, wind, thunderstorm, tornado, tropical and winter storm alerts covering Hawaii, with the counties each one names and the office that issued it — plus what the state’s severe-weather season looks like and how each of these events actually damages a roof.

Below that, in its own lane, the smoke and fire family: fire weather, dense smoke, air quality, blowing dust and volcanic ashfall.

1 active alert · read from the National Weather Service at Aug 26, 2:23 AM EDT · refreshed every 10 minutes

This page is informational and is not a safety resource. It exists to show roofing professionals where storm damage has been reported, and it is refreshed on a ten-minute cycle, so it can lag the Weather Service.

During an active weather event, the authority is weather.gov and your local emergency management agency. Follow them, not this page.

Active storm alerts in Hawaii

Reproduced exactly as the National Weather Service issued them. Alerts frequently cross state lines, so a county list may name counties in a neighbouring state. Smoke and fire alerts are reported separately, in their own lane below.

Special Weather Statement

ModerateUrgencyExpectedCertaintyObserved

Issued by NWS Honolulu HI

In effect from Aug 25, 11:25 AM local · until Aug 26, 12:30 AM local

Counties named in this alert

Big Island Interior
Big Island Summit
Big Island South
Big Island Southeast
Big Island East

Read the full National Weather Service text

NWS headline

Special Weather Statement issued August 25 at 11:25AM HST by NWS Honolulu HI

NWS description

Episode 54 of lava fountaining in Halemaumau began at 10:30 HST this morning. Web cams and radar data indicate that occasional small bursts of volcanic ash continue to emanate from Halemaumau Crater. Low level trade winds will push ash toward the southwest, and any ash fallout will likely occur over the Kau District and Highway 11 southwest of the town of Volcano. This includes the communities of Pahala, Wood Valley, Naalehu and Ocean View. Avoid excessive exposure to ash which is an eye and respiratory irritant. Those with respiratory sensitivities should take extra precaution to minimize exposure.

View this alert on weather.gov

Radar over Hawaii

Straight from radar.weather.gov and regenerated by NOAA roughly every two minutes.

National Weather Service radar for Hawaii, covering the Hawaiian islands. — Where precipitation is falling over Hawaii right now. The National Weather Service publishes these mosaics by region rather than by state, so the frame runs past the state line and neighbouring states are visible in it. Radar shows precipitation, not damage — a return over a county is not evidence that any particular building was hit.
Radar imagery: the National Weather Service. Served directly from radar.weather.gov, a free US Government service, and regenerated by NOAA roughly every two minutes — your browser picks up new frames on its own. This site does not process, re-colour or re-time the imagery; it is the Weather Service’s own mosaic, unmodified. weather.gov
This radar is informational and is not a safety resource. During an active weather event, the authority is weather.gov and your local emergency management agency. Follow them, not this page.

Smoke & fire lane

Smoke & fire alerts in Hawaii

The National Weather Service issues a separate family of alerts for fire weather, dense smoke, air quality, blowing dust and volcanic ashfall. This lane reports that family for Hawaii, kept apart from the storm alerts above because the two answer different questions.

Wildfire smoke is what drives smoke-damage losses, and it reaches a building through the same vents that keep an attic dry — which is why it belongs on a roofing page at all. Alerts describing particulate already in the air are listed ahead of fire-weather forecasts; that ordering is this lane’s own and is not a Weather Service ranking.

0 active smoke or fire alerts · read from the National Weather Service at Aug 26, 2:23 AM EDT · refreshed every 10 minutes

No active smoke or fire alerts

The National Weather Service has no active fire weather, dense smoke, air quality, blowing dust or volcanic ashfall alerts covering Hawaii as of this refresh.

An empty list here is the ordinary reading, not a fault and not a gap in the data. Most of the country carries nothing in this family on most days, and this lane fills itself the moment the Weather Service issues something.

The 12 alert types this lane reports

Every one is a National Weather Service product and is listed under the name the Weather Service gives it. Grouping them into families is ours; the names are not.

Fire weather: Fire WarningExtreme Fire DangerRed Flag WarningFire Weather Watch
Dense smoke: Dense Smoke Advisory
Air quality: Air Quality Alert
Blowing dust: Blowing Dust WarningDust Storm WarningBlowing Dust AdvisoryDust Advisory
Volcanic ashfall: Ashfall WarningAshfall Advisory

The Weather Service defines each of these products and this site does not attempt to. What any one of them means, and the criteria an office issues it under, are at weather.gov.

This lane is informational and is not a safety resource. It reports which National Weather Service smoke and fire alerts are active and where, on a ten-minute refresh cycle, so it can lag the Weather Service.

During an active weather event, the authority is weather.gov and your local emergency management agency. Follow them, not this page.

Smoke exposure and air quality are health matters, and this page does not address them. It does not tell you whether it is safe to be outdoors or to work, what an air quality index number means for you or for anyone in your household, or what respiratory protection to use. Those questions belong with a clinician and with the agency that issued the alert. The federal air-quality authority is airnow.gov.

What smoke does to a roof assembly

An active alert is a record of conditions, not a finding about any building. These are the standing references on the building-assembly side of a smoke or fire loss.

Smoke odor in roof decking and attic insulationWhy odour outlives the visible repairs — deposition into bare decking and framing, insulation acting as a reservoir, and the difference between cleaning, sealing and removing. The article that covers wildfire smoke reaching an attic through the vents, with the roof itself untouched.Fire damage to a roof assemblyDirect flame against radiant heat, shingle distortion and mat delamination, charred sheathing and loss of section, and why a roof that looks intact from the ground can still be condemned.Roof replacement after a fireHow the repair-or-replace decision is built on a fire loss: partial against full deck replacement, the boundary between charred and heat-affected wood, matching, and the code upgrades a repair can trigger.Ventilation holes and fire department roof damageFire crews cut the roof on purpose. What vertical ventilation is for, how tactical damage is separated from fire damage in a scope, and what an opened deck needs in the meantime.Smoke Mitigation Network — directory listingLaboratory smoke damage testing and documentation, listed under Restoration & Mitigation → Smoke Damage Testing & Assessment. Whether a building is contaminated is established by sampling rather than by looking at it. The listing discloses that it shares ownership with this directory.

Severe weather season in Hawaii

Peak season

June–November (Central Pacific hurricane season); Kona lows in winter

Hawaii’s tropical threat runs during the Central Pacific hurricane season, which NOAA dates June 1 to November 30. Outside it, the winter Kona low — a system that reverses the usual trade-wind flow — is the pattern that brings sustained wind and heavy rain from an unfamiliar direction, which is exactly the direction a roof detailed for the trades is least prepared for. Persistent trade winds and salt exposure age fasteners and metal accessories independently of any single storm.

Seasons describe a pattern, not a schedule. The National Weather Service issues these products year-round, and the live list above is the only authority on what is actually running in Hawaii right now.

What NOAA has recorded in Hawaii

The archived record, not the live feed. Severe weather logged by the National Centers for Environmental Information over the covered years, split into the events NOAA keys to a county and the events it keys to a forecast zone.

Between 2016 and 2026, NOAA recorded 15 county-level severe-weather events across Hawaii: 13 thunderstorm wind events and 2 hail reports. Of the two hail reports carrying a measured size, one were 1.00 in across or larger.

A further 233 events over the same period were recorded against National Weather Service forecast zones rather than counties — 112 strong wind events, 96 high wind events, 12 hurricanes, 5 winter storms and 4 tropical storm events. A forecast zone is not a county: it can span several or subdivide one, so these are reported here at state level and appear in no county total on this site.

County-keyed events

2016–2026

Zone-keyed events

233

statewide, not county-attributable

Hail 1.00 in or larger

of 2 sized hail reports

Tornadoes

in the county record

Counties with the heaviest record

Ranked by the number of county-keyed events NOAA recorded, 2016–2026. 4 of Hawaii’s counties carry a record in this dataset.

Honolulu County5largest hail 1.25 in (Quarter - Half Dollar) · peak gust 53 kt (about 61 mph)
Maui County5peak gust 56 kt (about 64 mph)
Hawaii County3largest hail 0.88 in (Penny / Nickel) · peak gust 52 kt (about 60 mph)
Kauai County2peak gust 50 kt (about 58 mph)

County figures and state figures. County figures count events NOAA recorded against a county (hail, thunderstorm wind and tornadoes). High wind, winter storms, ice storms, blizzards, heavy snow, hurricanes and tropical storms are recorded against National Weather Service forecast zones rather than counties, so they are reported at state level instead. Counts reflect events that were observed and reported.

Source. Archived figures come from the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information Storm Events Database, covering 2016 through May 31, 2026. Reports after that date come from NOAA Storm Prediction Center preliminary storm reports. Both are US Government works in the public domain. This is a record of past weather; the live alert list at the top of this page is the only authority on what is running in Hawaii now.

What these storms do to a roof

The damage mechanisms that matter in Hawaii, in the order they generate work here.

Straight-line wind

Wind damage on a shingle roof usually starts as a broken seal rather than a missing shingle. Uplift pressure is highest at the edges — rakes, eaves, ridges and hips — and along any line where the roof plane changes, so that is where tabs lift and the factory sealant strip lets go first. Once the seal is broken, a shingle that still looks fine from the ground is no longer bonded to the course below it and every later wind event works on the same spot. Wind also drives debris, and impact damage from a branch or from another roof’s material is a separate mechanism from uplift.

Tropical systems

A tropical system combines two things an ordinary thunderstorm does not: wind that lasts for hours instead of minutes, and rain driven sideways into every seam at the same time. The duration matters because uplift is cumulative — a seal that survives one gust may not survive the same gust repeated for six hours. Wind-driven rain also finds its way through vents, ridge products, flashings and wall-to-roof transitions that shed ordinary vertical rain without difficulty. Inland states see the same mechanism at reduced strength when a system tracks in from the coast.

Why the storm date matters

Property insurance works from a date of loss — a specific storm on a specific day over a specific area, not a general observation that a roof looks worn. That is why the county list and the effective and expiry times on each alert above are the useful part of this page: they are the National Weather Service’s own record that a given event covered a given county at a given time.

It also matters because hail damage is frequently latent. A fractured shingle mat can take a long time to become a leak, so the gap between the storm and the discovery can be considerable — and by then, establishing which storm did it is a records question rather than an observation. An alert naming a county is not evidence that any particular building was damaged; it is evidence of what the weather was doing over that county, which is where an assessment starts rather than where it ends.

Next steps in Hawaii

Roofing contractors in HawaiiBrowse the Hawaii directory by city and county.Hawaii licensing rulesWhether roofers must be licensed here, which board issues it, and the bond and insurance rules.Storm damage roof repair guideHow hail and wind damage is identified, documented and repaired.National storm centerActive alerts across all 50 states and DC, busiest first.

Source: the National Weather Service. Every alert on this page comes from the NWS public alerts feed at api.weather.gov, a free US Government service, and is reproduced as the issuing office wrote it. The office that issued each alert is named on the alert itself.

This site does not edit, summarise or re-grade Weather Service text. Alerts are filtered into two separate lists — the event types that affect roofs, and the smoke, fire and airborne-particulate family — and each list is sorted. Nothing else is changed, and no alert is moved between the two lists to suit a heading.

weather.gov