Hawaiʻi Island Alerts

Current National Weather Service watches, warnings and advisories for Hawaiʻi Island, loaded live when you open this page, plus Hawaiʻi County Civil Defense, the one county agency in the state that publishes live incident data.

What the alert words mean

The National Weather Service uses these terms precisely, and the difference between two of them is the difference between packing and leaving.

• Watch means conditions are possible, usually within 48 hours. This is your window to prepare, fuel up and decide where you would go.
• Warning means conditions are expected, usually within 36 hours. Finish preparations and be where you intend to ride it out.
• Advisory means conditions are expected to be inconvenient or hazardous, but below warning criteria.
• Emergency, used rarely, means a particularly dangerous situation is underway.

A watch upgrading to a warning is not a small change in wording. Treat it as the signal to stop preparing and start doing.

Plan before the next one

• Live hazards, closures and evacuationsHawaiʻi County Civil Defense hazard impact map
• Look up your evacuation zoneCounty of Hawaiʻi address lookup
• Look up your lava hazard zoneCounty of Hawaiʻi
• Civil DefenseCounty of Hawaiʻi announcements
• The Food BasketHawaiʻi Island food bank

Civil Defense: 808-935-0031. Sandbags and Public Works: 808-961-8349. For a life-threatening emergency, call 911.

The one county with live incident data

Hawaiʻi County Civil Defense publishes road closures, hazards, evacuations, flooding and shelter locations as live map layers that county staff edit during an event. That is why the live map is far richer on Hawaiʻi Island than on the other three counties, which publish static geodata only.

It also means the data is only as fresh as the last edit. During the response to Tropical Storm Lala the county shelter layer went 28 hours without an update while the event was still active. The live map flags any layer older than six hours for exactly this reason. A county roster is a report, not a live reading.

A refuge area is a last resort, not a first choice. Your own home, a friend or family member's home, or even your workplace may be safer than a public hurricane refuge area, because those are ordinary buildings that were never built or retrofitted to a storm shelter standard. Pick two places outside your evacuation zone now, and go to a public site only if you have no safer option. This is the county's own guidance.