Maui has 7 of the world’s 13 climate sub-zones under the Köppen classification, and 4 of its 5 major zones. Only the Big Island packs in more, and Maui matches it on the major zones, 4 of 5, on an island a fifth the size. The map below marks 8 zones, but two of them are the same Köppen zone drawn in two shades, so the honest count is 7.
Those 7 zones pack into a small island. Leave the near-desert coast at Kīhei in the morning and you can stand in freezing tundra on the summit of Haleakalā by sunrise, a climb of nearly 10,000 feet in under 40 miles of road. Behind Lāhainā, where about 12 inches of rain fall a year, the West Maui summit of Puʻu Kukui collects close to 400. Below, we walk through each of the 7 and where you can stand in it.
How many climate zones does Maui have?
Packing 7 climate zones into about 730 square miles is unusual: most places many times that size never span the same range. The count depends on which system you use, and the most widely used is the Köppen scheme (Wikipedia, or explained in Hydrology and Earth System Sciences). It sorts the planet into 5 major climate zones, splits those into 13 sub-zones, and splits those again into finer groups.
Following the Köppen scheme, Maui has 4 of the world’s 5 major climate zones and 7 of the 13 sub-zones. That is the same major-zone count as the Big Island, on a fraction of the land.
We marked these zones on the map below. The map lists 8 different climate zones, but only 7 are distinct under Köppen. Temperate “summer-dry warm” and “summer-dry cool” both belong to the temperate dry climate, drawn in two shades to show the split by elevation.
Climate map of Maui, Molokaʻi, and Lānaʻi. The map shows 8 labels, but only 7 are distinct under the Köppen system: temperate summer-dry warm and summer-dry cool are one zone.
Which climate zones are NOT on Maui?
Six of the world’s 13 sub-zones do not reach Maui. Only one of them turns up elsewhere in the state:
- Dry arid, true desert (found on the Big Island)
- Temperate winter dry
- Continental winter dry
- Continental summer dry
- Continental continuously wet
- Polar ice caps
The desert line is the one that separates Maui from the Big Island. Maui’s driest coasts, around Kīhei and Lāhainā, land in semi-arid steppe and stop just short of true desert. The Big Island’s leeward pockets cross that line; Maui’s do not.
The 7 Maui climate zones, region by region
Here is each climate you can find on Maui, grouped by major family, with the sub-zones that appear and where to stand in each.
Humid Tropical climate
In these climates every month averages warmer than 64° F (18° C) and rain is plentiful. All three tropical sub-zones show up on Maui, on the windward slopes that catch the trade winds first, sorted by how the rain falls across the year.
Continuously wet
No real dry season. Rain falls all year. This is the windward rainforest that covers the northeast faces the trades hit first. Color on the map
Where to find it on Maui: the windward slopes above Hāna and the road out to them, and the West Maui summit of Puʻu Kukui at 5,788 feet, one of the wettest places on earth.
Monsoon
A short dry season, but enough rain the rest of the year to keep the ground wet. It shows up as a thin band on the windward slopes, between the rainforest and the drier country below. Color on the map
Where to find it on Maui: the upper windward slopes above Haʻikū and the wetter stretches of the Hāna Highway.
The Road to Hana is a supremely scenic 64.4-mile-long stretch of Hawaii Routes 36 and 360 which connects Kahului to the town of Hana in east Maui. Image: Hawaii Tourism Authority (HTA) / Tommy Lundberg.
Dry
A clear dry season, here in the summer. This is the transition belt where the land dries out as it drops from the wet summits toward the leeward coast. Color on the map
Where to find it on Maui: the mid and lower leeward slopes of both mountains, and the edges of the central isthmus around Kahului.
Dry (arid and semi-arid) climate
In this climate the yearly evaporation outpaces the rainfall. Maui reaches the semi-arid step but never crosses into true desert, which is where it parts ways with the Big Island.
Dry semi-arid (steppe)
A dry grassland climate, drier than the tropics but wetter than desert. On Maui it lines the leeward coasts that sit in the mountains’ rain shadow. Color on the map
Where to find it on Maui: the leeward beaches from Kīhei and Wailea in the south up to the Kāʻanapali and Lāhainā coast in the west, plus the whole of Kahoʻolawe, which sits deep in the rain shadow.
Located in south Maui at only minutes from Wailea and Kihei and also known as Big Beach, Makena Beach is known for its beauty and spaciousness. Photo by Pawan Thapa on Unsplash
Temperate climate
The coldest month averages between 64° F (18° C) and 27° F (-3° C), and the warmest month is above 50° F (10° C). Two sub-zones appear on Maui.
Summer dry
At least three times as much rain in the wettest winter month as in the driest summer month. Our map splits it by elevation into a warm version lower down and a cool version higher up. Both are a single Köppen zone, which is why the map’s 8 labels count as 7. Color for the warm version. Color for the cool version
Where to find it on Maui: upcountry Kula and Makawao for the warm version, and the higher ground toward Polipoli, where nights drop into the 40s, for the cool one.
Continuously wet
At least 30 mm of rain in the driest month, with a smaller swing between wet and dry than the summer-dry zone. These are the greener mid-elevation windward slopes. Color on the map
Where to find it on Maui: the mid-elevation windward slopes around Makawao and upper Haʻikū.
Polar climate
Polar climates average below 50° F (10° C) every month of the year. One sub-zone reaches Maui.
Polar tundra
The ground stays frozen much of the year, with the warmest month between 32° F (0° C) and 50° F (10° C). On Maui this is the summit zone. Color on the map
Where to find it on Maui: the summit of Haleakalā, above about 9,500 feet, where sunrise crowds gather in the cold. The peak tops out at 10,023 feet and runs roughly 30° F colder than the coast below it. Before dawn it drops below freezing, and it has seen snow. Maui and the Big Island are the only Hawaiian islands that reach this zone.
Panorama of the Haleakala summit crater. Image credit: Anita Gould, source.
How we counted the zones
The count of 7 sub-zones on Maui uses the most common form of the Köppen classification, the same one the Big Island article uses. Köppen is a 3-tier system: 5 main climates in the first tier, splitting into 13 sub-zones in the second, and into 28 or 30 finer groups in the third. When we say Maui has 7 of the world’s 13, we mean the second tier.
The map carries 8 labels because we split one zone in two for readers: temperate summer-dry is drawn as a warm version and a cool version by elevation. Collapse that pair and you are left with 7 distinct Köppen zones. The same kind of split is why the Big Island map shows 10 labels for its 8 zones.
Our zones are computed from the University of Hawaiʻi Rainfall Atlas (Giambelluca et al. 2013) and Evapotranspiration Atlas (Giambelluca et al. 2014) at 250 m resolution. We feed the monthly rainfall and temperature for every 250 m pixel through the standard Köppen decision rules set out by Peel, Finlayson, and McMahon (2007): the same thresholds that separate an Af from an Am, or a steppe from a desert, applied the same way everywhere. That resolution is fine enough to catch a strip of steppe along the Lāhainā coast, or the tundra cap on Haleakalā, that a coarser map would smooth away.
The base period is 1978 to 2007. Climate zones are built on 30-year normals, so they barely shift between one recent period and the next. What sharpens the map is resolution, not which decade you average.