Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures (F) were recorded across the state of Hawaii Saturday…along with the minimum temperatures Saturday:

79 – 58  Lihue, Kauai
81 – 65  Honolulu, Oahu
76 – 56  Molokai AP
79 – 57  Kahului, Maui
82 – 70  Kailua Kona
82 – 62  Hilo, Hawaii

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

0.02  Kokee, Kauai
0.03  Pupukea Road, Oahu
0.00  Molokai
0.02  Lanai
0.00  Kahoolawe
0.06  Puu Kukui, Maui
0.05  Kapapala Ranch, Big Island


The following numbers represent the strongest wind gusts (mph)…as of Saturday evening:


12  Mana, Kauai – NW
14  Waianae Valley, Oahu – NW
12  Molokai – NW
16  Lanai – NW
16  Kahoolawe – NW
12  Kaupo Gap, Maui – NW
20  Upolu AP, Big Island – NNE


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.



Aloha Paragraphs

 http://www.atmos.washington.edu/images/ir/201502080730.gif
Low pressure systems to the north and northeast…cold
fronts dangling down to the southwest from their centers


http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/west/hi/ir4.jpg
Dry and stable low clouds in our vicinity…locally clear too –
with areas of volcanic haze (vog)


http://radar.weather.gov/Conus/RadarImg/hawaii.gif
Limited showers…quite dry for the time being



~~~ Hawaii Weather Narrative ~~~

 

Small Craft Advisory…for elevated seas through tonight –
coastal waters around Kauai, and windward Maui and Oahu

High Wind Advisory…Big Island Summits – west winds
40-55 mph…with gusts to over 80 mph

High Surf Advisory…north and west shores of Kauai, Oahu,
Molokai, and for north shores of Maui


Generally light northwesterly…increasing from the southwest later Sunday. Here’s the latest weather map, showing the Hawaiian Islands, and the rest of the North Pacific Ocean, along with a real-time wind profiler of the central Pacific. We find high pressure systems to the well to the east, with another much closer moving eastward across the state…with a ridge of high pressure just to our south. At the same time, we have several low pressure systems to the northeast through northwest. Generally light breezes through most of Sunday, although another cold front arriving early in the new week, will prompt strengthening kona winds late Sunday into Monday. The winds will come in from the west to northwest in the wake of that cold front. As we get into later next week, strong and gusty kona winds will develop ahead of yet another cold front…arriving next Friday into the weekend.

Generally dry and pleasant weather conditions, although locally voggy…then another batch of clouds and showers Monday and Tuesday. Here’s the looping radar image showing very few showers falling in our area. We have dry air coming into the state today into Sunday. Showers will remain limited, before another cold front arrives right after this weekend. We may see prefrontal showers along our leeward sides later Sunday into Monday on Kauai and Oahu. This next front will be more of a shower producer than the recent ones we’ve seen, bringing rainfall later Monday into Tuesday. Looking even further ahead, the models continue suggesting that yet another cold front will arrive next Friday into Saturday…stay tuned. I’ll be back with more information on all of the above, I hope you have a great Saturday night wherever you’re spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Here in Kula, Maui:  It’s mostly clear early this Saturday morning, with cool air over the island chain. The winds are generally calm here at my place. The air temperature near its minimal reading was near 46 degrees here in Kula. At the same time, it was 59 degrees down at the Kahului airport near the ocean…with 39 degrees atop the Haleakala Crater. While over on the summit of the Big Island, it was an even colder 30 degrees atop Mauna Kea. Just for contrast, the temperature at the same time was a warmer 73 in Kona…on the Big Island.

~~~ We’re into the afternoon hours now at around 1pm, with a new visitor to our Maui County skies…being the intrusion of volcanic haze. My neighbor David and I went down to Paia to shop this morning, and we passed through some drizzle at one point, although that is gone now. It’s cloudy up here in Kula, although it doesn’t have that feeling of moisture in them at the moment. The winds are light, and the air temperature is 70 degrees. It’s 78 degrees down at the Kahului airport at the same time, with a 52 degree reading up atop the Haleakala Crater.

~~~ It’s early evening here in Kula, and looking down the mountain I see lots of vog! Skies are mostly clear otherwise, with just some minor low clouds around the edges. The air temperature is a relatively cool (for this time in the evening) 57 degrees. I expect a low temperature early Sunday morning to be well down into the 40’s, as it was this morning.


World-wide tropical cyclone activity:


>>> Atlantic Ocean: The last regularly scheduled Tropical Weather Outlook of the 2014 Atlantic hurricane season…has occurred. Routine issuance of the Tropical Weather Outlook will resume on June 1, 2015. During the off-season, Special Tropical Weather Outlooks will be issued as conditions warrant.


Here’s a satellite image of the Atlantic Ocean

>>> Caribbean Sea: The last regularly scheduled Tropical Weather Outlook of the 2014 Atlantic hurricane season…has occurred. Routine issuance of the Tropical Weather Outlook will resume on June 1, 2015. During the off-season, Special Tropical Weather Outlooks will be issued as conditions warrant.


>>> Gulf of Mexico: The last regularly scheduled Tropical Weather Outlook of the 2014 Atlantic hurricane season…has occurred. Routine issuance of the Tropical Weather Outlook will resume on June 1, 2015. During the off-season, Special Tropical Weather Outlooks will be issued as conditions warrant.


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

>>> Eastern Pacific: The last regularly scheduled Tropical Weather Outlook of the 2014 North Pacific hurricane season…has occurred. Routine issuance of the Tropical Weather Outlook will resume on May 15, 2015. During the off-season, Special Tropical Weather Outlooks will be issued as conditions warrant.


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


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


>>> Central Pacific: The central north Pacific hurricane season has officially ended. Routine issuance of the tropical weather outlook will resume on June 1, 2015. During the off-season, special tropical weather outlooks will be issued as conditions warrant.


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


>>> Northwest Pacific Ocean: Tropical Cyclone 02W (Higos) remains active in the western Pacific, here’s the JTWC graphical track map…along with a NOAA satellite image.


 >>> South Pacific Ocean: There are no active tropical cyclones

>>> North and South Indian Oceans: Tropical Cyclone 11S (Fundi) remains active in the Mozambique Channel, here’s the JTWC graphical track map…along with a NOAA satellite image.

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

 

Interesting: Pigeons are smarter than you think! – The more scientists study pigeons, the more they learn how their brains–no bigger than the tip of an index finger–operate in ways not so different from our own.


In a new study from the University of Iowa, researchers found that pigeons can categorize and name both natural and manmade objects–and not just a few objects. These birds categorized 128 photographs into 16 categories, and they did so simultaneously.


Ed Wasserman, UI professor of psychology and corresponding author of the study, says the finding suggests a similarity between how pigeons learn the equivalent of words and the way children do.


“Unlike prior attempts to teach words to primates, dogs, and parrots, we used neither elaborate shaping methods nor social cues,” Wasserman says of the study, published online in the journal Cognition. “And our pigeons were trained on all 16 categories simultaneously, a much closer analog of how children learn words and categories.”


For researchers like Wasserman, who has been studying animal intelligence for decades, this latest experiment is further proof that animals–whether primates, birds, or dogs–are smarter than once presumed and have more to teach scientists.


“It is certainly no simple task to investigate animal cognition; But, as our methods have improved, so too have our understanding and appreciation of animal intelligence,” he says. “Differences between humans and animals must indeed exist: many are already known. But, they may be outnumbered by similarities. Our research on categorization in pigeons suggests that those similarities may even extend to how children learn words.”


Wasserman says the pigeon experiment comes from a project published in 1988 and featured in The New York Times in which UI researchers discovered pigeons could distinguish among four categories of objects.


This time, the UI researchers used a computerized version of the “name game” in which three pigeons were shown 128 black-and-white photos of objects from 16 basic categories: baby, bottle, cake, car, cracker, dog, duck, fish, flower, hat, key, pen, phone, plan, shoe, tree. They then had to peck on one of two different symbols: the correct one for that photo and an incorrect one that was randomly chosen from one of the remaining 15 categories. The pigeons not only succeeded in learning the task, but they reliably transferred the learning to four new photos from each of the 16 categories.


Pigeons have long been known to be smarter than your average bird–or many other animals, for that matter. Among their many talents, pigeons have a “homing instinct” that helps them find their way home from hundreds of miles away, even when blindfolded. They have better eyesight than humans and have been trained by the U. S. Coast Guard to spot orange life jackets of people lost at sea. They carried messages for the U.S. Army during World Wars I and II, saving lives and providing vital strategic information.


UI researchers say their expanded experiment represents the first purely associative animal model that captures an essential ingredient of word learning–the many-to-many mapping between stimuli and responses.


“Ours is a computerized task that can be provided to any animal, it doesn’t have to be pigeons,” says UI psychologist Bob McMurray, another author of the study. “These methods can be used with any type of animal that can interact with a computer screen.”


McMurray says the research shows the mechanisms by which children learn words might not be unique to humans.


“Children are confronted with an immense task of learning thousands of words without a lot of background knowledge to go on,” he says. “For a long time, people thought that such learning is special to humans. What this research shows is that the mechanisms by which children solve this huge problem may be mechanisms that are shared with many species.”


Wasserman acknowledges the recent pigeon study is not a direct analogue of word learning in children and more work needs to be done. Nonetheless, the model used in the study could lead to a better understanding of the associative principles involved in children’s word learning.


“That’s the parallel that we’re pursuing,” he says, “but a single project–however innovative it may be–will not suffice to answer such a provocative question.”