He also feels the heat of business as his phones ring off the hook with air-conditioning orders.

"Business is 150 percent more than last year," said Duggan, owner of Aire 1 Air Conditioning.

There may be relief from the hot and virtually windless conditions soon, forecasters said, but these air-conditioner customers don't want to wait for nature to take its course.

Duggan today was at the will-call window of Admor HVAC Products Inc., a Sand Island supplier of cooling equipment for commercial and residential accounts.

This morning, traffic was heavy, said company owner Drew Santos. "The heat came earlier this year than last year," he said. "We started seeing sales in March... and we're double what we were this time last year."

What's unusual this year, according to the National Weather Service, is less the actual temperature (today's high at the Honolulu airport was forecast to hit 88 degrees) than the long-running lackluster performance by prevailing tradewinds.

"We've had two months of very light winds," said lead forecaster Hans Rosendal. "Normally, springtime is very breezy."

Yesterday's wind, clocked at around 5 to 15 mph from the southeast, fell far short of the 15-20-mph variety that usually sweeps some coolness from the northeast across the Islands, Rosendal said. The cause: the absence of a high-pressure system to the north that generates the Islands' famous trades.

But there's hope, said Rosendal. Some 800 miles away, such a weather system is forming.