Hawaiian Islands Weather details & Aloha Paragraphs / July 12-13, 2013

Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures (F) were recorded across the state of Hawaii Friday:

82 Lihue, Kauai
84 Honolulu, Oahu
83 Molokai
88 Kahului, Maui
85 Kona, Hawaii
84 Hilo, Hawaii

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops on Maui and the Big Island…as of 1043pm Friday evening:

Kailua Kona – 79
Hana airport, Maui – 70

Haleakala Summit –  46 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea Summit – 36 (13,000+ feet on the Big Island)

Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live web cam on the summit of near 13,800 foot Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. This web cam is available during the daylight hours here in the islands…and when there’s a big moon shining down during the night at times. Plus, during the nights you will be able to see stars, and the sunrise and sunset too… depending upon weather conditions. Here’s the Haleakala Crater webcam on Maui – if it’s working.

Aloha Paragraphs

Windward side of Oahu


Gusty trades…gradually easing up through the weekend

Passing windward showers at times…a few in the
leeward areas

The following numbers represent the most recent top wind gusts (mph), along with directions as of Friday evening:

25  Port Allen, Kauai – NE
36  Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu – NNE
29  Molokai – ENE
32  Lanai – NE
33  Kahoolawe – ENE
31  Kahului, Maui – NE
35  Waikoloa, Big Island – NW

Here are the latest 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands as of Friday evening:

1.33  Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.97  Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.02  Molokai
0.00  Kahoolawe
0.00  Lanai
0.07  Puu Kukui, Maui
0.43  Glenwood, Big Island

We can use the following links to see what’s going on in our area of the north central Pacific Ocean. Here’s the latest NOAA satellite picture – the latest looping satellite image… and finally the latest looping radar image for the Hawaiian Islands.

~~~ Hawaii Weather Narrative ~~~

Active trade winds…gradually lighter into the weekend. Here’s a weather chart showing a large near 1030 millibar high pressure system located to the northeast of the islands…moving away towards the northeast. At the same time there’s a low pressure system in the western Gulf of Alaska, with a cold front extending south and southwest…to the far northwest of Hawaii. The trade winds will remain active, with those strongest gusts up to 30+ mph in those windiest places through Saturday. These trades may drop down into the light to moderately strong range Sunday and Monday. Small craft wind advisory flags remain up over just those windiest areas around Maui County and the Big Island. These trades will likely spring back into the moderately strong category by the middle of the upcoming new work week.

This trade wind weather pattern will prevail, with windward showers at times. Satellite imagery shows low level clouds over and around the islands…and out to our east and northeast. There’s a bit of high cirrus clouds offshore to our southwest and south. Here’s the looping radar image, showing generally light showers passing by over the offshore waters, and over the islands here and there too. The windward sides of our islands will catch the majority of these showers, although with a few traveling over into the leeward sections on the smaller islands. The bulk of these showers will arrive during the night and early morning hours. I’ll be back with your next new weather narrative from paradise Saturday morning, I hope you have a great Friday night wherever you’re spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Note: I’ll be heading out to southern California next Tuesday, to visit my family in Long Beach for a week. Thereafter, I’ll fly up to Portland, Oregon, meeting a friend, before we drive over to Bend, Oregon. We’ll be there for almost a week, before driving over to the Mendocino coast for four days. As we drive south from there, we’ll likely stop overnight in Sonoma County, and then on to Marin County for several more days. I’ll be gone from the 16th of this month, until the 6th of August. I’ll have more to say about all this, although wanted to give you a heads up before I leave. By the way, all of the latest weather forecasts, for all areas in the state of Hawaii, will continue to be available on this website, more about that too.

Friday evening film: somehow I just can’t let the Superman movie, Man of Steel, come and go at our local theater in Kahului…without getting down to see it! I mean, I grew up on good old Superman comics, and films, and everything else for crying out loud. The synopsis: A young boy learns that he has extraordinary powers and is not of this Earth. As a young man, he journeys to discover where he came from and what he was sent here to do. But the hero in him must emerge if he is to save the world from annihilation and become the symbol of hope for all mankind. It stars Henry Cavil, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Kevin Costner, Diane Lane, Laurence Fishburne, Antje Traue, Ayelet Zurer, Russell Crowe…among man others. As usual, I’ll be letting you know what I thought of this long 2+ hour film in the morning. The critics don’t seem so thrilled by this film, although it seems to be garnering generally B grades from what I can tell. Here’s the trailer for this film, which should be viewable for most folks, nothing too intimidating about it…although its a bit loud towards the end.

Interesting:  According to Louisville Slugger, one of the nation’s oldest and most well known producer of wood baseball bats, it takes nearly 40,000 trees to produce one season’s worth of baseball bats and the company alone produces 1.6 million wood bats each year!  So it’s no surprise that the US Forest Service has decided to team up with Major League Baseball in order to ensure that we preserve as many bats as possible.

U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the results of innovative research by the U.S. Forest Service, and funded by MLB, that will result in significantly fewer shattered baseball bats.

“This innovative research by the U.S. Forest Service will make baseball games safer for players and fans across the nation,” said Secretary Vilsack. “The U.S. Forest Products Laboratory has once again demonstrated that we can improve uses for wood products across our nation in practical ways — making advancements that can improve quality of life and grow our economy.”

Testing and analyzing thousands of shattered Major League bats, U.S. Forest Service researchers at the Forest Products Laboratory (FPL) developed changes in manufacturing that decreased the rate of shattered maple bats by more than 50 percent since 2008. While the popularity of maple bats is greater today than ever before, the number of shattered bats continues to decline.

The joint Safety and Health Advisory Committee of Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association began working to address the frequency of bats breaking into multiple pieces five years ago. FPL wood experts looked at every broken Major League bat from July to September during the 2008 MLB season.

The research team found that inconsistency of wood quality, primarily the manufacturing detail “slope of grain,” for all species of wood used in Major League bat manufacture was the main cause of broken bats. Also, low-density maple bats were found to not only crack but shatter into multiple pieces more often than ash bats or higher-density maple bats. Called multiple-piece failure, shattered bats can pose a danger on the field and in the stands.

Slope of grain refers to the straightness of the wood grain along the length of a bat. Straighter grain lengthwise means less likelihood for breakage.