Folks in Hawai'i who follow weather trends now have an exclusive, new and colorful tool at their disposal for tracking winds, rains, skies, temperatures and even the prospect of thunderstorms in the Islands.

Thanks to an online program known as Point Forecast Matrix Grafs — created and launched two weeks ago by the National Weather Service forecast office in Honolulu — Hawai'i weather watchers can chart coming wind, rain and sky patterns graphically on the Internet.

"The graphs are a forecast of our best guess of what's coming," said Robert Ballard, science and operations officer for the NWS in Hawai'i.

To find the graphics page, go online to www.prh.noaa.gov/pr/hnl/ and click on Hawaii under "Forecasts" in the left links column. That will lead to a page titled Hawaii Public Forecast Products. From there, at about midpage, click on "Graphs of select Point Forecast Matrix fields" — which leads to the graphs page.

The page was made by creating codes that transform pages of raw, befuddling, eyeball-twisting, black and white Point Forecast Matrix text into colorful, easy-to-comprehend weather graphics.

The page opens with two dozen yellow and red "Winds" forecast graphics for 24 location selections throughout the Islands. But by check-marking one or more of the six weather condition parameters — "Winds," "Precipitation," "Sky," "Temperature," "Thunderstorms," and "Chance of Precipitation" — along with one or more specific location boxes, viewers can create an endless array of forecast possibilities.

Viewers can open their individualized forecast graphs by clicking on "Get Charts" below the location listings.

"For instance, if someone was planning to go to Haleakala Summit on Maui, they could check all the weather parameters along with the Haleakala Summit location, and get the charts," said Ballard. "Then, if they're going to the summit every day, they can bookmark that page and look it up each day to find the latest forecast."

Ballard suggests a simple exercise to illustrate the program's capability. Check all six weather parameters and the single site of Honolulu, and click on "Get Charts."

What pops up is the latest forecast graphs for Honolulu, predictions for conditions coming within the next hours and days.

"You get winds, forecast rainfall amounts, cloud conditions, temperatures, possible thunderstorms and chances of precipitation," said Ballard.

Ballard said he knows of no other NWS Web site that has the Point Forecast Matrix Grafs. But that could change.

"We had an office in Illinois that wrote us and said, 'These graphs are cool — we want to do them,' " Ballard said.

NWS in Hawai'i was happy to comply.

"After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," Ballard said.