Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / August 11-12, 2008

Moisture pockets being carried along in the trade wind flow, will keep showers falling at times along the windward sides…less showers along the leeward sides in general. Satellite imagery shows more of these passing showers on the horizon, so expect more of the same at times. The leeward sides will have fewer showers, although there may be a few around even there. We don’t expect anything too unusual in terms of precipitation, although the north fringe of a tropical system moving by to our south should increase showers later this week…most generously on Maui and the Big Island.

The Central Pacific Hurricane Center (CPHC) continues tracking tropical depression Kika, located far to the southwest of the islands Monday night. Here’s a looping satellite picture, showing this tropical cyclone moving away towards the west. Here’s a storm tracking map showing this tropical system in relation to the Hawaiian Islands. Looking to the of Hawaii, you will also see recently downgraded tropical storm Hernan in the eastern Pacific. Hernan is a gradually weakening tropical cyclone, which will dissipating in strength, as it moves over cooler water through the remainder of its life cycle. Despite all this tropical activity, neither of these storms will have any influence on our local weather here in the Hawaiian Islands. There is a chance that whatever leftover moisture, which may be involved with, what will then be former tropical cyclone Hernan…may bring some showers to the southern part of the state next week.

~~~ This satellite image shows the two main areas of interest around the Hawaiian Islands. The area to the southwest, to the lower left of the islands, is tropical depression Kika…no problem there as this system remains on course towards the west. The area of disturbed weather to the east-southeast, is a region of tropical moisture, around a vortex of low pressure. All the computer models show this tropical disturbance moving towards our islands, then turning westward…remaining to the south of Hawaii. There remains the good chance of showers arriving later this week, and that our local trade winds will accelerate as this tropical system moves by Friday into the weekend.

It’s early Monday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin writing this last section of today’s narrative. The new work started off in a pretty good way, with the trade winds still quite snappy, along with more of those common windward biased showers.























The strongest wind gust that I saw at 5pm was once again, which isn’t the slightest bit unusual…at Maalaea Bay on Maui, at 40 mph. The island of Lanai wasn’t too far behind, with the cup anemometer there twirling to the tune of 37 mph. Looking ahead, Tuesday will be a transition day, with our local trade winds finally starting to calm down. They will remain on the lighter side through Thursday, due to storms filing by in the middle latitudes to our north. Friday will be another transition day, as the trade winds surge again, and with quite a few showers riding in on the strengthening trades. The source of these showers will be an area of disturbed weather moving by to the south of Hawaii. I’ll be back very early Tuesday morning with your next new weather narrative from paradise, I hope you have a great Monday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Note: I will be flying to Honolulu late Wednesday afternoon, to attend a Climate Conference on Oahu Thursday and Friday. Friends on Oahu, who live on the windward side in Kailua, have invited me to spend some time with them Friday night, Saturday and Sunday. I will fly back to Maui late Sunday afternoon. This means that I























will not be doing my tv weather show on Thursday, and then again not on Friday…which is a local state holiday. I will not be updating, or at least not regularly, this website during that time frame. The daily forecasts, in the upper left hand column on this and all other pages, will continue to have the latest weather forecasts however. Glenn

Information about tonight’s Perseids Meteor shower

Interesting:

A new variety of premium grapes debuted in Japan on Monday, with a single bunch fetching as much as 100,000 yen, or $910. A Japanese hotel manager paid that amount, or about $26 per grape, for a 1 1/2 pound bunch of the Ruby Roman grapes to serve guests at an upscale hotel, officials said. "We believe the price was probably a record high," said local agricultural official Hirofumi Isu. "They’re delicious – sweet but fresh at the same time, very well balanced." The tomato-colored grapes made their debut at an auction in Japan‘s northwestern Ishikawa prefecture, where they have been under development since 1994 in a state-led project. The bunch that fetched the top price had about 35 grapes, each slightly smaller than a pingpong ball, Isu said.

The average price for the Ruby Roman grapes at Monday’s auction was about $245 a bunch. Isu said local farmers hope to sell 1,500 bunches, or 1 ton, of the grapes by mid-September. Fruit is generally expensive in Japan, and people often buy grapes, peaches and melons as luxury gifts. Japanese are often willing to pay top prices for high-end fruits, especially for the prestige of owning the very first ones of the year. Monday’s prices far exceeded those for the most popular premium variety, Muscat of Alexandria, which sell for as much as $90 a bunch at Tokyo‘s Ota fruit market, the country’s largest, according to Koichi Kato, an official at fruit wholesaler Tokyo Seika Co. "It could be a congratulatory price for its debut," Kato said of Monday’s auction in Ishikawa. "Tokyo‘s largest fruit market is very competitive."

Interesting2:

Already threatened by a thaw of ice around the North Pole, the polar bear’s title as the top Arctic predator may under challenge from a shark. Scientists researching how far sharks hunt seals in the Arctic were stunned in June to find part of the jaw of a young polar bear in the stomach of a Greenland shark, a species that favors polar waters. "We’ve never heard of this before. We don’t know how it got there," Kit Kovacs, of the Norwegian Polar Institute, told Reuters of the 10 cm (4 inch) bone found in a shark off the Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Svalbard. "We can’t say whether or not the shark took a swimming young bear" or ate a carcass, she said. "We don’t know how active these sharks are as predators." Most shark experts contacted said it was likely the bear was dead before the shark found it. Even a young, two- or three-year-old bear would be a ferocious opponent for a Greenland shark, which can grow to up to 7 meters (23 feet) and weigh more than a tonne. "It sounds like a scavenge," said Steve Campana, head of the Canadian shark research laboratory at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

He said he had not heard of a shark eating a bear before and it was a "million dollar question" for researchers as to whether Greenland sharks attack live bears. Bits of animals including caribou have been found in Greenland shark stomachs in the past — scavenged or attacked swimming. Campana said there was even a myth that the sharks could leap out of the water and seize caribou standing on ice. "There’s no possibility a Greenland shark could predate a live adult white bear unless it was injured or seriously ill," said Jeffrey Gallant, co-director of a Canadian-based Greenland shark education and research group. Sonja Fordham, deputy chair of the shark specialist group of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, said more research was needed into the Greenland shark’s habits. "Greenland sharks do seem quite sluggish … but they have been known to move very quickly when they are eating," she said.

Interesting3:

As the Arctic Ocean warms this century, shellfish, snails and other animals from the Pacific Ocean will resume an invasion of the northern Atlantic that was interrupted by cooling conditions three million years ago, predict Geerat Vermeij, professor of geology at the University of California, Davis, and Peter Roopnarine at the California Academy of Sciences. Climate models predict a nearly ice-free Arctic Ocean by 2050. That will restore conditions that last existed during the mid-Pliocene era around three to 3.5 million years ago. Several north Pacific species have relatives in the north Atlantic, and the fossil record shows a lot of invasion from the Pacific to the Atlantic at that time, Vermeij said. When cold conditions returned, the Arctic route was cut off, mostly by a lack of food. As the ice melts, productivity in the Arctic will rise and the northward march of the mollusks will resume where it left off three million years ago. Vermeij and Roopnarine reviewed literature on mollusks found in the Bering and Chuckchi seas between Alaska and eastern Siberia.

At least 77 molluscan lineages, about a third of the species of shallow-water shellfish in the Bering Sea, have the potential to spread to the Atlantic, they concluded. Three factors drove the one-way traffic across the North Pole during the Pliocene, Vermeij said. The Bering and Chukchi seas are very productive, with abundant food; there is a net northward flow of water from the Pacific through the Bering Strait; and strong competition in the Bering Sea means bigger, tougher animals. But the invaders will not wipe out native species, Vermeij said. The fossil record shows that invasions rarely lead to species extinction in marine environments, he said. Instead, the invasion will add new species and hybrids and increase competition in the North Atlantic. "The composition and dynamics of north Atlantic communities will change," Roopnarine said. "But whether that will help or harm local fisheries is an open question. Humans may have to adapt as well."

Interesting4: If wind energy converters are located anywhere near a residential area, they must never become too noisy even in high winds. Most such power units try to go easy on their neighbors’ ears, but even the most careful design cannot prevent noise from arising at times: One source is the motion of the rotor blades, another is the cogwheels that produce vibrations in the gearbox. These are relayed to the tower of the wind turbine, where they are emitted across a wide area — and what the residents hear is a humming noise. "People find these monotone sounds particularly unpleasant, rather like the whining of a mosquito," says André Illgen, a research associate at the Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology IWU in Dresden.

If the wind energy converters hum too loudly, they are only permitted to operate under partial load: They rotate at a slower speed and generate less electricity. In some cases the operators have to install additional damping systems or even replace the gearbox — an expensive business. However, the effectiveness of the passive damping systems used until now is somewhat limited: They only absorb noise at a certain frequency. Since modern wind energy converters adapt their rotational speed to the wind velocity in order to generate as much electricity as possible, however, the frequency of the humming sound also varies. Despite noise attenuation measures, humming noises penetrate the surrounding area.