We address some current issues in the testing of small-scale NWP models which include non-hydrostatic processes. Hawaii is considered as a geographic test bed which includes land-air-sea interactions, complex topography (with > 1:1 aspect ratio in some areas, 14,000 foot mountains in others), orographic rainfall, strong climatological temperature inversion, and two life-threatening, moist-physics forecasting problems: floods and hurricanes. Located in the sub-tropics, small-scale rainfall climatologies include regions of desert in the lee of mountains, along with the wettest (rainfall) spot on earth.

Model validation problems and practices are reviewed, within the context of present observation networks.