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

82  Lihue, Kauai
85  Honolulu, Oahu
81  Molokai
87  Kahului, Maui
85  Kailua Kona
79  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 743pm Tuesday evening:

 

Kailua Kona – 80
Hana, Maui
– 72


Haleakala Summit –   41
(near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea Summit – 32 (13,000+ feet on the Big Island)


Hawaii’s MountainsHere’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.

 


Aloha Paragraphs



http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/84/cf/d1/84cfd14c0157c9e1f1ae1e84d55e7a04.jpg
Contemplating beach things

Strengthening trade winds, continuing through
the rest of this week


The trade winds will bring off and on windward
showers – a few heavy showers or even a
thundershower on the Kona slopes…generally
nice weather along our leeward beaches


Small Craft Wind Advisory…over the windiest
coasts and channels
around Maui County and
the Big Island


 




The following numbers represent the strongest wind gusts (mph), along with directions…as of Tuesday evening:


22  Port Allen, Kauai – NE
32  Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu – NNE
29  Molokai – NE
30  Lanai – NE
33  Kahoolawe – NE
23  Kahului,
Maui – NE
28  PTA Keamuku, Big Island – NE


Here are the latest 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands…as of Tuesday evening (545pm totals):


0.92  Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.35  Kamananui Stream, Oahu
0.01  Molokai
0.00  Lanai
0.02  Kahoolawe
0.62  Puu Kukui, Maui
1.11  Puho CS, 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 ~~~



Our trade winds are firmly established in our islands now…which will be moderately strong this week. Here’s the latest weather map, showing the Hawaiian Islands, and the rest of the North Pacific Ocean, along with a real-time wind profile of the central Pacific…focused on the Hawaiian Islands. We have a strong, near 1038 millibar high pressure system far to our northeast…with well established ridges to the northwest and northeast. Between Hawaii and the high pressure cell, there’s a trough of low pressure, up north of 30 degrees north latitude. As a result of these weather features, our local air flow will be strengthening from the trade wind direction. This more normal, late May trade wind episode will continue through the remainder of this week. There are some models that are trying to mellow our winds out again early next week, as another upper level low pressure system gets near our islands…stay tuned.

Satellite imagery shows fewer clouds over and around the state…signaling a more normal weather pattern is trying to get back over us.
Looking at this larger satellite image, we see clouds most focused over the ocean to our northeast, and over the waters not far southwest of Maui County and the Big Island too. Meanwhile, we have a swath of high clouds riding up from the deeper tropics to our southwest…moving by to our south and southeast. Here’s a looping radar image, showing generally light showers being carried along in our trade wind flow, impacting the windward sides locally. There are still a couple of light to moderately heavy showers falling over the ocean, although they are becoming less notable now. We’re seeing more cloud free skies around the state now, allowing sunshine to beam down…which should increase even more with time.

Trade winds, some windward showers, and more sunshine along our leeward beaches. We’ll find strengthening trade winds continuing, at least through the end of the weekend. This will bring showers to our windward sides in an off and on manner. The leeward sides should have pretty nice weather, with generally dry conditions, and lots of warm sunshine beaming down. The Kona slopes may see some locally generous showers again the afternoons for the next few days. Otherwise, our weather will finally settle down, and begin to match climatology for a change. I’ll be back again early Wednesday morning with your next new weather narrative, I hope you have a great Tuesday night wherever you’re spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Here on Maui, at the 3,100 foot elevation, at my upper Kula, Maui weather tower, the air temperature was 54.5 degrees at 550am on this Tuesday morning. Skies are mostly clear, although there were some clouds over along the windward sides now. Kihei and Lahaina were both mostly clear, and should have a nice warm day…with good beach weather. Update at 750am, its a beautiful morning here on Maui! Update a 10am…clear to partly cloudy, light trades, with an air temperature of 74.3 degrees.

We’re now into the early afternoon, at 1235pm, under partly cloudy skies, and an air temperature of 77.9 degrees. This is the first day that it actually looks like what it’s suppose to look like, here in the islands, during late May. We may finally be heading into the driest time of the year, after this unprecedented wet spell we’ve been seeing lately. June is typically our driest month of the year, at least in most areas of the state.

It’s now the early evening at 530pm, under partly cloudy skies, a few large drops coming down, with an air temperature of 72.1 degrees. The trade winds became quite gusty today in places, topping 30+ mph locally. At the time of this writing, there had been a 35 mph gust at the small island of Kahoolawe…a short distance offshore from Maui.

Here’s a weather product that I produced for the Pacific Disaster Center this morning.


World-wide tropical cyclone activity:


Atlantic Ocean:
The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1st through November 30th. Here’s the 2013 hurricane season summary


Here’s a
satellite image of the Atlantic Ocean


Caribbean Sea:


Gulf of Mexico:


Here’s a satellite image of the Caribbean Sea…and the Gulf of Mexico.

Here’s the link to the National Hurricane Center (NHC)

Eastern Pacific:
Tropical storm Amanda remains active offshore west of the Mexican coast. Here’s the NHC graphical track map, with a broad satellite picture of the northeastern Pacific…along with a close-up satellite image of this system. Here’s what the computer models are showing for this still strengthening hurricane. Amanda is now the strongest May hurricane on record (category 4) in the eastern Pacific basin during the satellite era. If Amanda would have reached an intensity of 140 knots, it would have become the earliest category 5 hurricane on record, beating out Hurricane Ava of 1973. This tropical cyclone has now weakened back into a tropical storm at the time of this writing.


Here’s a wide satellite image that covers the entire area between Mexico, out through the central Pacific…to the International Dateline.


Central Pacific Ocean:
The Central Pacific hurricane begins on June 1st…and runs through November 30th. Here’s the 2013 hurricane season summary / Information about the 2014 hurricane season in the central Pacific Ocean.


Here’s a link to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center (CPHC)


North Pacific Ocean: There are no active tropical cyclones


South Pacific Ocean:
There are no active tropical cyclones

North and South Indian Oceans:
There are no active tropical cyclones

Here’s a link to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC)


Interesting: Ancient soils found to contain significant amounts of carbon Soils that formed on Earth’s surface thousands of years ago and that are now deeply buried features of vanished landscapes have been found to be rich in carbon, adding a new dimension to our planet’s carbon cycle.


The finding, reported in the journal Nature Geoscience, is significant as it suggests that deep soils can contain long-buried stocks of organic carbon which could, through erosion, agriculture, deforestation, mining and other human activities, contribute to global climate change.


“There is a lot of carbon at depths where nobody is measuring,” says Erika Marin-Spiotta, a University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professor of geography and the lead author of the new study. “It was assumed that there was little carbon in deeper soils. Most studies are done in only the top 30 centimeters. Our study is showing that we are potentially grossly underestimating carbon in soils.”


The soil studied by Marin-Spiotta and her colleagues, known as the Brady soil, formed between 15,000 and 13,500 years ago in what is now Nebraska, Kansas and other parts of the Great Plains. It lies up to six-and-a- half meters below the present-day surface and was buried by a vast accumulation of windborne dust known as loess beginning about 10,000 years ago, when the glaciers that covered much of North America began to retreat.


The region where the Brady soil formed was not glaciated, but underwent radical change as the Northern Hemisphere’s retreating glaciers sparked an abrupt shift in climate, including changes in vegetation and a regime of wildfire that contributed to carbon sequestration as the soil was rapidly buried by accumulating loess.


“Most of the carbon (in the Brady soil) was fire derived or black carbon,” notes Marin-Spiotta, whose team employed an array of new analytical methods, including spectroscopic and isotopic analyses, to parse the soil and its chemistry. “It looks like there was an incredible amount of fire.”


The team led by Marin-Spiotta also found organic matter from ancient plants that, thanks to the thick blanket of loess, had not fully decomposed. Rapid burial helped isolate the soil from biological processes that would ordinarily break down carbon in the soil.


Such buried soils, according to UW-Madison geography Professor and study co-author Joseph Mason, are not unique to the Great Plains and occur worldwide.


The work suggests that fossil organic carbon in buried soils is widespread and, as humans increasingly disturb landscapes through a variety of activities, a potential contributor to climate change as carbon that had been locked away for thousands of years in arid and semiarid environments is reintroduced to the environment.


The element carbon comes in many forms and cycles through the environment — land, sea and atmosphere — just as water in various forms cycles through the ground, oceans and the air. Scientists have long known about the carbon storage capacity of soils, the potential for carbon sequestration, and that carbon in soil can be released to the atmosphere through microbial decomposition.


The deeply buried soil studied by Marin-Spiotta, Mason and their colleagues, a one-meter-thick ribbon of dark soil far below the modern surface, is a time capsule of a past environment, the researchers explain. It provides a snapshot of an environment undergoing significant change due to a shifting climate. The retreat of the glaciers signaled a warming world, and likely contributed to a changing environment by setting the stage for an increased regime of wildfire.


“The world was getting warmer during the time the Brady soil formed,” says Mason. “Warm-season prairie grasses were increasing and their expansion on the landscape was almost certainly related to rising temperatures.”


The retreat of the glaciers also set in motion an era when loess began to cover large swaths of the ancient landscape. Essentially dust, loess deposits can be thick — more than 50 meters deep in parts of the Midwestern United States and areas of China. It blankets large areas, covering hundreds of square kilometers in meters of sediment.