Hawaii’s Weather: Differing Views.

My mainland friends think the weather here in Hawaii is perfect all the time. The truth is, it’s perfect most of the time in most places. Here on Maui, we have micro-climates in different parts of the island. It can be raining hard in Ha’iku where I live, and tourists will be lying on the beach soaking up the sun over on the Lahaina side.
 
But it is true that no matter where you live on the island, the temperature rarely reaches 90 degrees, average temperatures in the winter are only seven or eight degrees cooler than in summer months, and probably 350 days a year, the northeast trade winds blow at 10-20 miles an hour, keeping things very comfortable.
 
Still, people are different and not everyone responds to our benign weather in the same way.

 Years ago, I was working as the public relations officer for the Honolulu Museum of Art. As I was walking back to the museum from lunch on a typically beautiful day, a young man burst out of the entrance of the museum, raced across the lawn and stopped right in front of me. Arms waving and with an expression of what I can only describe as wonder and glee on his face, he shouted, “Isn’t it a great day??”
 
That’s how I first met and became friends with David Cornwell, a delightful character who is also an extremely talented and very successful commercial photographer and artist.
 
And then there was Lou Storey. This would also have been back in the late 1960s when Lou was assistant director at the art museum at the same time I was working there. One morning I encountered Lou on a walkway in one of the open-air courtyards in that beautiful building.
 
“How’s it going, Lou?” I said as we were passing. He stopped, stared at me dourly for a moment, and said, “I’m fine, considering it’s another one of these God damn beautiful days!”
 
Lou was from somewhere back East—Michigan, I think, and he badly missed the change of seasons.