Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / January 11-12, 2010

January 11-12, 2010

Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Monday afternoon:

Lihue, Kauai – 76
Honolulu, Oahu – 82
Kaneohe, Oahu – 77
Kaunakakai, Molokai – 78
Kahului, Maui – 81
Hilo, Hawaii – 82
Kailua-kona – 82

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level around the state – and on the highest mountains…at 5pm Monday evening:

Port Allen, Kauai – 81F
Lihue, Kauai – 73

Haleakala Crater –    55 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 45 (near 14,000 feet on the Big Island)

Precipitation Totals – The following numbers represent the largest precipitation totals (inches) during the last 24 hours on each of the major islands, as of Monday afternoon:

0.02 Anahola, Kauai  
0.30 Waimanalo, Oahu
0.02 Molokai 
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.52 West Wailuaiki, Maui 
0.16 Honokaa, Big Island

Marine Winds – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a dissipating cold front near the Big Island. At the same time we have a high pressure center to our east-northeast. Our winds will be light and variable with a tendency to southeast later Tuesday…then back to the north and northeast Wednesday.          

Satellite and Radar Images: To view the cloud conditions we have here in Hawaii, please use the following satellite links, starting off with this Infrared Satellite Image of the islands to see all the clouds around the state during the day and night. This next image is one that gives close images of the islands only during the daytime hours, and is referred to as a Close-up visible image. This next image shows a larger view of the Pacific…giving perspective to the wider ranging cloud patterns in the Pacific Ocean. Finally, here’s a Looping IR satellite image, making viewable the clouds around the islands 24 hours a day. To help you keep track of where any showers may be around the islands, here’s the latest animated radar image.

Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live webcam on the summit of near 14,000 foot Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The tallest peak on the island of Maui is the Haleakala Crater, which is near 10,000 feet in elevation. These two webcams are available during the daylight hours here in the islands…and when there’s a big moon rising just after sunset for an hour or two! Plus, during the nights and early mornings you will be able to see stars, and the sunrise too…depending upon weather conditions.

Tropical Cyclone activity in the eastern and central Pacific – Here’s the latest weather information coming out of the National Hurricane Center, covering the eastern north Pacific. You can find the latest tropical cyclone information for the central north Pacific (where Hawaii is located) by clicking on this link to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center. Here’s a tracking map covering both the eastern and central Pacific Ocean. A satellite image, which shows the entire ocean area between Hawaii and the Mexican coast…can be found here.

 

Aloha Paragraphs

  Very large breaking waves along the north shores now!

A cold front brought some rather modest showers to the islands…which is dissipating over the Big Island Monday night. This front wasn’t a big rainfall producer, but at least brought some limited precipitation locally. The Big Island windward sides have the best chance for a few showers tonight, with some of the remnant moisture spreading back to the windward sides of Maui at times too. The islands of Kauai and Oahu will see generally fair weather into Tuesday. The next cold front forecast to approach our area, will move in our direction at mid-week. Just exactly what influence this front will have, besides bringing cooler winds our way…is still a bit uncertain as far as rainfall goes. The best opportunity for showers would be over the island of Kauai, closest to the weakening cold front.

As far as winds go, they are slightly cooler from the northeast now…and will be losing strength Tuesday. This air will be relatively dry, especially over Kauai and Oahu…outside the leftover moisture from the retiring cold front further south in the chain. The northeast direction will help to keep those clouds around Maui and the Big Island, hugging the windward coasts and slopes. As the next cold front approaches, our winds will take on a more east and southeast orientation Tuesday. This may once again bring a short period of hazy weather our way, as the volcanic emissions get carried towards the islands of Maui County. As the cold front gets closer, our winds will swing all the way around to south and southwest, and perhaps get locally gusty…especially over the taller mountains on the Big Island. The airflow in the wake of the Wednesday cold front will be brisk, and carry slightly cooler air into our area briefly, before warmer trade winds return.

We saw extra large to giant swells breaking along our north and west facing beaches Monday. This swell will be one of the largest swells of the winter season…although had peaked early Monday morning, and will be slowly diminishing into Tuesday. This winter will have more than the ordinary amount of these larger than normal swells arriving…as we’ve seen since winter started back in December!  Looking further ahead, another very large swell will build late in the day Wednesday, remaining large for a couple of days thereafter. Then, during the second half of this coming weekend, yet another very large NW swell arrive. In between these extra large swell days, we’ll have just plain old large swells breaking along our north and west facing shores. This is the time of year when we often see these frequent high surf episodes, with the current swell being large enough…to keep high surf warning level waves breaking at the time of this writing.

It’s Monday evening, as I begin writing the last section of today’s narrative. As noted above, we have slightly cooler northeast breezes coming into the state now, along with a dissipating cold front over the Big Island. This satellite image, shows the cold front having moved over our southernmost island. Despite the presence of this dissipating cloud band, it has basically run out of water, or at least for the most part. This looping radar image demonstrates this fact quite well, although if you look closely, there are a few showers along the Hamakua coast of the Big Island, stretching across the Alenuihaha Channel onto the east Maui windward slopes as well. This dry weather pattern has become the norm this winter, and will very likely hold true for the next cold front, arriving around Wednesday. This of course isn’t good news for the islands of Maui and the Big Island, or for the other islands as well, which are all drier than normal now. As I’ve mentioned many times lately, this reality goes hand in hand with the El Nino condition, which is keeping us in drought conditions currently. ~~~



















I’m getting a late start on my evening weather narrative update, but at least it’s still light enough here in Kihei, for me to see what’s happening out the window. There’s actually quite a few clouds out there, with what looks like some showers falling along the windward sides here on Maui. The winds are still coming a bit more out of the north than normal, so that there is still a slight chill to the air, in a tropical sense. I’d best be getting on the road, as even leaving now, it will likely be dark, or just before that by the time I get home to Kula. I’ll be back 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.

Interesting: Scientists at NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center published research last week in the Journal of Geophysical Research based on satellite microwave data of seasonal Arctic ice thaw from 1970 to 2009. The study indicates the seasonal Arctic sea ice melt season is now about 20 days longer than it was 30 years ago.

The growing season of thaw is most pronounced in Arctic waters off the coasts of Alaska and Canada, including the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, where the season is 30 days longer now than in 1979. East Greenland and the Hudson Bay also share nearly a month longer of seasonal melt. The Hudson Bay exhibits one of the fastest increases in seasonal melt on the globe.

On average, seasonal melt has increased about 2.5 days per decade and lasts 3.7 days longer — an average of just under 20 days since 1979. "With the exception of the Sea of Okhotsk, all areas in the Arctic show a trend toward earlier melt onset and also a trend toward later freeze up," researchers said in their published report.

Scientists suggest that the longer melt season creates a feedback loop further accelerating warming in the region. When the ice melts, darker ocean water absorbs more heat from the sun. With a longer melt season there is more time for these dark waters to absorb more heat, adding further to ice loss.

The delayed fall freeze also means thinner ice reforms every season, leading to increased ice loss in the coming thaw next season. NASA has recently published research showing that average thickness of Arctic sea ice shrank 2.2 feet between the winters of 2004 and 2008, with the surface area covered by multi-year ice shrinking by more than 42 percent.

Interesting2: It is very cold in most of the US this winter. It brings to mind is it so cold that you can freeze to death as well as what happened to global warming? Cooling as well as warming trends have happened before and will happen again. Back in the 1970’s for example winters turned significantly colder for awhile.

Meteorologists are quick to point out that reliable U.S. weather data goes back only to the late 1800s, so it’s normal for records of various types to be broken every year, somewhere, when dealing with such a relatively brief data set. Any given day or year may set a record. For global warming it is the long term trend that is important. When cold air hits your body, blood will move away from your skin, fingers and toes and towards the inner core.

This process is called vasoconstriction, and it helps limit the amount of heat you lose to the environment. The opposite effect is called vasco-dilation where blood goes to the skin and heat is lost to the cold air (though you feel warm). This is what happens when one drinks too much alcohol. Shivering also occurs when you get cold. Major shivering also occurs when your body core temperature drops very low.

This is called hypothermia. This normally will not happen except under severe and prolonged exposure. If you’re wet and cold, your body loses heat up to 25 times faster. So being in wet clothing may cause more damage than just being in cold weather. Even sweat may do this.

The wind will also cool a person. In summer it a a cool refreshing breeze. In winter it is called wind chill. Normal core body temperature is 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit (F). Mild hypothermia sets in at about 95 degrees F. Below 70 degrees F, you are said to have profound hypothermia and death can occur.

A person in hypothermia may be unconscious and may appear dopey or intoxicated. The record for the lowest body temperature at which an adult has been known to survive is 56.7 degrees F, which occurred after the person was submersed in cold, icy water, according to Castellani of the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine.

Frostbite, an injury caused by freezing, is more common in everyday scenarios. This is because fingers and toes are more easily isolated from the body higher temperatures. Since frostbite is brought on by freezing, you can’t get frostbite if the air temperature is above 32 degrees F. "It takes a wind chill temperature of around minus 15 degrees [F] where you start to see an increase in the incident of frostbite," Castellani said.

Interesting3: A strip of paper infused with carbon nanotubes can quickly and inexpensively detect a toxin produced by algae in drinking water. Engineers at the University of Michigan led the development of the new biosensor. The paper strips perform 28 times faster than the complicated method most commonly used today to detect microcystin-LR, a chemical compound produced by cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae. Cyanobacteria is commonly found on nutrient-rich waters.

Microcystin-LR (MC-LR), even in very small quantities, is suspected to cause liver damage and possibly liver cancer. The substance and others like it are among the leading causes of biological water pollution. It is believed to be a culprit of mass poisonings going back to early human history, said Nicholas Kotov, a professor in the departments of Chemical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering who led the project.

Water treatment plants — even in developed countries — can’t always remove MC-LR completely, nor can they test for it often enough, Kotov said. The biosensor he and his colleagues developed provides a quick, cheap, portable and sensitive test that could allow water treatment plants and individuals to verify the safety of water on a more regular basis.

"The safety of drinking water is a vital issue in many developing countries and in many parts of the United States," Kotov said. "We’ve developed a simple and inexpensive technology to detect multiple toxins." The technology could easily be adapted to detect a variety harmful chemicals or toxins in water or food.

Interesting4: The US Geological Survey reports that earthquake related deaths numbered 1783 worldwide, a big decrease from 2008 when more than 88,000 died, with more than 87,000 of the deaths occurring in the Eastern Sichuan, China earthquake in May 2008. In 2009, the worst earthquake was the September 30th earthquake in Southern Sumatra, Indonesia in which 1,117 people were killed.

Overall, earthquakes took the lives of people in 15 countries on four continents during 2009, including Afghanistan, Bhutan, China, Costa Rica, Greece, Indonesia, Italy, Kazakhstan, Honduras, Japan, Malawi, Samoa, South Africa and Tonga, as well as the U.S. territory of American Samoa. Earthquakes injured people in 11 additional countries, including the mainland United States, where a magnitude 4.4 earthquake on May 2 injured one person in the Los Angeles area.

The biggest 2009 earthquake in the 50 United States was, once again, in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. The magnitude 6.5 earthquake occurred in the Fox Islands on Oct. 13. It was felt at the towns of Akutan and Unalaska, but caused no casualties or damage. The largest earthquake for the year in the contiguous United States was a magnitude 5.2 event on Oct. 2 in the Owens Valley southeast of Lone Pine, Calif.

Because of the sparse population in the epicentral area, this quake caused no damage although it was felt as far away as Merced and Los Angeles, Calif. and Las Vegas, Nev. The past year also marked the five-year anniversary of the magnitude 9.1 Sumatra-Andaman Island earthquake and subsequent tsunami on Dec. 26, 2004. That quake and tsunami killed 227,898 people, which is the fourth largest casualty toll for earthquakes and the largest toll for a tsunami in recorded history.

As a consequence of that earthquake, the USGS has significantly improved its earthquake notification and response capabilities. Improvements include the addition of nine real-time seismic stations across the Caribbean basin, a seismic and tsunami prone region near the U.S. southern border, implementation of a 24×7 earthquake operations center at the USGS National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC), and development of innovative tools for rapid evaluation of population exposure and damage to potentially damaging earthquakes.

The USGS estimates that several million earthquakes occur throughout the world each year, although most go undetected because they hit remote areas or have very small magnitudes. The USGS NEIC publishes the locations for about 40 earthquakes per day, or about 14,500 annually, using a publication threshold of magnitude 4.5 or greater worldwide or 2.5 or greater within the United States. On average, only 18 of these earthquakes occur at a magnitude of 7.0 or higher each year.

Interesting5: Smog in urban areas often makes the news. But truth be told, air quality is often much worse inside our homes than outside. That’s because tens of thousands of chemicals, some synthetic and some found in nature, are used to make products commonly found in buildings. Many of these chemicals are benign, some are highly toxic, and most fall in that wide gray area in between.

When it comes to indoor air contamination, the biggest culprit in our homes is VOCs, a large class of chemicals that can evaporate, or off gas, from stuff that’s all around us, like particle board, carpet, paint, cleaning products, and materials treated with stain-resistant and wrinkle-resistant chemicals.

VOCs can aggravate respiratory ailments like asthma, and have been linked to cancer and damage to nervous and reproductive systems. Will exposure to VOCs and other indoor air pollutants, such as mold or wood smoke, make you sick? This may sound like a cop-out, but the answer is—it depends.

It depends on the nature of the pollutant, your general health, the level of exposure and length of time you’re exposed, whether that pollutant might combine with other pollutants in your home or in your body to create a more dangerous compound, and other environmental and genetic factors.

Without clear answers, health experts say it’s prudent to take commonsense steps to limit your exposure to polluting chemicals. You might want to take extra precautions if there are people in your household who are at higher risk of being harmed by indoor air pollutants. These include infants and children and people with asthma, other respiratory conditions, compromised immune systems, or chemical sensitivities.

Interesting6: A new study by a researcher at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) reveals that physicians’ moods impact the number of prescriptions, referrals and lab tests ordered, as well as the amount of time they spend talking with their patients. The findings of the study "Communicating with Patients, Prescribing Medications and Referring to Tests and Specialists: Associations with Physician Burnout and Moods" were recently presented at the 14th International Conference of the Israel National Institute for Health Policy by Prof. Talma Kushnir, Department of the Sociology of Health, BGU Faculty of Health Sciences.

Prof. Kushnir surveyed 188 primary physicians in Israel to determine whether doctors changed their professional behavior on good mood days, as well as days when they felt stressed, tired or anxious. Physicians’ burnout levels were also assessed. The study asked doctors to rank how their mood affected the extent they talked to patients, prescribed medications, sent them to lab or diagnostic tests and referred patients to a specialist.

Her findings show that a good or bad mood affected all five physician behaviors. On days the doctors felt positive moods, they spoke more to patients, wrote fewer prescriptions, ordered fewer tests and issued fewer referrals. However, when doctors were in a bad mood, they did the opposite. Additionally, if the physicians’ burnout level was higher, their moods more strongly impacted their behaviors.

"The finding that on bad mood days physicians tend to talk less, and may needlessly prescribe and refer more than on good mood days, implies that negative moods may be detrimental to quality and costly to healthcare systems," says Prof. Kushnir. Conversely, positive moods that have the opposite effects may help contain costs."