Hawaiian Islands Weather details & Aloha Paragraphs / March 15-16, 2015

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

78 – 65  Lihue, Kauai
80 – 64  Honolulu, Oahu
75 – 56  Molokai AP
79 – 66  Kahului, Maui
82 – 64  Kailua Kona
79 – 68  Hilo, Hawaii

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

0.02  Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.05  Kamehame, Oahu
0.00  Kamalo, Molokai
0.00  Lanai
0.00  Kahoolawe
0.00  Maui
0.06  Kawainui Stream, Big Island

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

17  Waimea Heights, Kauai – ESE
16  Kii – ENE
20  Molokai – NE
27  Lanai – NE
18  Kahoolawe – NE
12  Hana, Maui – NE
27  Waikoloa, Big Island – NE

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



Stable low clouds streaming towards our area
on the trade winds


Low clouds in places…mostly clear many areas

Mostly dry

Here’s the looping radar image for the Hawaiian Islands

~~~ Hawaii Weather Narrative ~~~

The Mauna Kea Summit…on the Big Island of Hawaii

Easterly trade winds…becoming lighter during the first half of the new 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 profiler of the central Pacific. We find a high pressure system to the west-northwest moving eastward, which will be moving by just to our north. At the same time, we have low pressure systems well to the north and northeast of the islands. As a result of this pressure pattern, easterly trade winds will become much lighter Monday through Wednesday…before trade winds increase again during the second half of the new week ahead.

Clear to partly cloudy skies…nice weather into the first part of the new week. Dry conditions will prevail, with hardly any showers falling for the time being. Classic trade wind conditions are now over us, with just a few windward showers at best. As noted above, these trades will turn much lighter Monday into Wednesday, as more late season storms pass by to the north of the state, perhaps dragging a cold front in our direction by mid-week. This will likely set the stage for an increase in trade winds Thursday onwards…carrying frequent passing showers to our windward sides into next weekend. I’ll be back with more updates on all of the above, I hope you have a great Sunday night wherever you’re spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Here on Maui: The skies are clear over Maui early this morning, with low clouds banked-up along our windward coasts and slopes. The low temperature was 42.4 degrees here at my Kula weather tower at 605am, while it was a considerably warmer 65 degrees down at the Kahului airport, 64 at the Hana airport, and 41 degrees atop the Haleakala Crater at the same time. The warmest low temperature around the state was 71 degrees at Kailua-Kona.

~~~ We’re into the early afternoon hours now at 1250pm, under clear to partly cloudy skies, off and on breezy…and an air temperature of 76.5 degrees here at my Kula weather tower. By the way, just to point out the warmer weather we’re having today compared to yesterday, it was 62 degrees at this same time yesterday – and it was sunny.

~~~ It’s now 545pm on Sunday evening here on Maui, under mostly clear skies. It was a terrific day, with hardly a drop of rain anywhere in the state…along with lots of warm sunshine. Here in upcountry Kula, its clear, with light breezes blowing, and an air temperature of 65.8 degrees. As I was mentioning above, we have good weather conditions coming up for at least the next three days, with minimum shower activity.

Friday Evening Film: There really wasn’t to much that Jeff, Svetlana and I wanted to see in terms of exciting films, so we just picked one that looked like the best of what little there was that caught our eye. It’s called Focus, starring Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Gerald McRaney, Rodrigo Santoro, Stephanie Honore…among many others. The synopsis: A con artist (Will Smith) takes on an inexperienced apprentice in this crime comedy. I’ll let you know what we thought Saturday morning, although none of us have high h0pes. ~~~ We all more or less liked it, with Svetlana giving it a B+, Jeff a straight B, and I gave it a strong B grade. I went in with low expectations, and was pleasantly surprised at how entertaining it was in the end. There were the expected twists and turns…out of a film that promotes itself as a con job. It was fun to know you were about to be fooled once again, and yep, it happened again and again. The lead actress was attractive we all agreed, which helped carry the film in many places. Even the love affair between Will Smith, and this beautiful woman, slid time after time into a new set of lies. Here’s a trailer in case you have a little interest.

>>> 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 03W (Bavi) remains active in the Northwest Indian Ocean, here’s the JTWC graphical track map…along with the NOAA satellite image

>>> South Pacific Ocean:  Tropical Cyclone 18P (Nathan) remains active in the Coral Sea, near Australia, here’s the JTWC graphical track map…along with the NOAA satellite image

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

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

Interesting: What Lake Tahoe tells us about a changing climate – A recently published study on how natural and man-made sources of nitrogen are recycled through the Lake Tahoe ecosystem provides new information on how global change may affect the iconic blue lake.

“High-elevation lakes, such as Lake Tahoe, are sentinels of climate change,” said Lihini Aluwihare, associate professor of geosciences at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) at UC San Diego and co-author of the study. “Small changes in the lake’s chemistry can have big impacts on the entire ecosystem.”

Lake Tahoe’s nitrogen concentration is one of several factors that helps maintain its crystal clear waters. To keep Tahoe blue in the future, the researchers say it’s important to keep a close eye on the nitrogen balance in the ecosystem over time.

“The things we do, as humans, affect change in nature. We know the Lake’s foodweb is changing due to warming and nitrogen inputs. Our marine and aquatic ecosystems across the globe face many of the same environmental stressors. What we’ve learned about how aquatic foodwebs recycle nitrogen in Lake Tahoe may be applicable to the clear waters near Hawai’i,” said Stuart Goldberg, lead author of the study and post-doctoral researcher at the Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education at the University of Hawai’i at M?noa (Goldberg was a post-doctoral researcher at Scripps Oceanography during this research).

The study, published in Nature Communications, tracked nitrogen, including that produced from the burning of fossil fuels, in the Lake Tahoe ecosystem. Nitrogen can affect both the productivity of lake foodwebs and the composition of the microbes that support nutrition for those food webs.

A main goal of the study was to understand how the nutrient is being cycled through the microbial food web. Goldberg compares the foodweb to a cafeteria that sends out a variety of different dining options that support the community as a whole. Nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon come in, and the foodweb changes them into different types of nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon – proteins, sugars, and fats, for example. Some types are easier to eat than others, and are reused or eaten almost instantly. Other types, like the proteins isolated for this study, aren’t easily consumed and accumulate in the Lake.

Using radiocarbon isotope techniques, the researchers dated the molecular components of these proteins and discovered that some nitrogen was preserved in proteins and unavailable for biological consumption for 100 to 200 years.

“It is unusual for organic nitrogen to be sitting around for long periods of time in an ecosystem,” said Aluwihare. “This changes our view of how quickly nutrients are recycled in high-elevation lake ecosystems.”

The findings of this study suggest that something is preventing the efficient recycling of nitrogen in these ecosystems, and one possibility may be phosphorus limitation of the recycling bacteria (bacteria need both nitrogen and phosphorus to live).

The Lake Tahoe ecosystem is experiencing rapid change due to regional warming and shifts in precipitation patterns, as well as increased atmospheric nitrogen deposition, which has begun to alter the nutrient balance in the lake.

“This investigation has found that dissolved organic matter can store nitrogen in lake systems,” said Lina Patino, program director for the Earth Sciences Postdoctoral Fellowship Program at the National Science Foundation, which funded the research. “This result is important because to understand the environmental health of lakes, we need to know the sources of the nutrients and where they are stored.”

Goldberg and colleagues are planning to submit a grant this summer to further understand how the Lake’s foodweb processes nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus