Hawaiian Islands Weather details & Aloha Paragraphs / March 25-26, 2015

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

74 – 68  Lihue, Kauai
85 – 69  Honolulu, Oahu
79 – 61  Molokai AP
82 – 64  Kahului, Maui
84 – 71  Kailua Kona
82 – 65  Hilo, Hawaii

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

3.71  Kilohana, Kauai
0.72  Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.11  Puu Alii, Molokai
0.00  Lanai
0.14  Kahoolawe
0.20  Kaupo Gap, Maui
0.18  Saddle Quarry, Big Island

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

38  Barking Sands, Kauai – NNE
28  Kaneohe MCBH – NE
20  Molokai – N
28  Lanai – NE
25  Kahoolawe – NW
25  Kapalua, Maui – NNE
25  Kohala Ranch, 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



A cold front is moving down through the islands


The leading edge of the cold front has passed Kauai and
Oahu…and is slowing down and weakening as it pushes
over Maui County towards the Big Island tonight

Light to moderate showers are evident over the nearby ocean,
especially around Oahu and Molokai

Here’s the looping radar image for the
Hawaiian Islands

~~~ Hawaii Weather Narrative ~~~

The Mauna Kea Summit…on the Big Island of Hawaii

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

Our winds are strengthening…bringing a north-northeasterly air flow over the islands into Thursday. 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 well to the northeast and north-northwest of the state, with a ridge of high pressure offshore in both those directions. At the same time, we have a low pressure system far to the north of the islands, with an associated cold front moving through the islands now. As the cold front moves down through our area, we’ll find gusty north-northeasterly winds blowing into Thursday…gradually becoming light to moderately strong easterly trade winds Friday into the weekend and beyond.

Cloudy periods and an increase in showers…as a cold front crosses Maui County into the Big Island tonight. This cold front reached Kauai early this morning, dropping most of its heaviest rains in a few places there. It passed over Oahu during the afternoon hours, with considerably less intense rainfall. The front will slip down through the rest of the islands during the night, bringing showers mostly to the windward sides. There continues to be a noticeable increase in winds along the cold front and in its wake, which will carry some showers into the leeward sides on the smaller islands here and there. As the trade winds become lighter Friday into the weekend, there will be fewer off and on windward showers, mainly over the eastern islands. This trade wind weather pattern will extend into early next week, with little change through the middle of next week. I’ll be back with more updates on all of the above, I hope you have a great Wednesday night wherever you’re spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Here on Maui: The skies are mostly clear to partly cloudy over Maui early this morning. The low temperature was 49 degrees here at my Kula weather tower at 540am, while it was 70 degrees down at the Kahului, 63 at the Hana airport, and 43 degrees atop the Haleakala Crater at the same time. The warmest low temperature around the state was 73 degrees at Kailua Kona on the Big Island.

~~~ We’re into the early evening at 520pm on this Wednesday, under increasing clouds, and some showers are starting to arrive as well. The winds have picked up as expected, and are blowing through the approaching cold front. This front, according to the latest satellite imagery, seems to be losing some of its integrity, as it plows down across the island chain. The leading edge seems to be just impacting the western side of Molokai at the time of this writing.

~~~ Here’s a weather product that I produced for the Pacific Disaster Center (PDC) this morning

>>> 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: 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:  Fish face pollution a mile deep – Deep-water marine fish living on the continental slopes at depths from 2,000 feet to one mile have liver pathologies, tumors and other health problems that may be linked to human-caused  pollution, one of the first studies of its type has found.

The research, conducted in the Bay of Biscay west of France, also discovered the first case of a deep water fish species with an “intersex” condition, a blend of male and female sex organs. The sampling was done in an area with no apparent point-source pollution, and appears to reflect general ocean conditions.

The findings have been published in Marine Environmental Research, by scientists from Oregon State University; the Center for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science in the United Kingdom; and other agencies. It was supported by the European Union.

The research is of particular interest, OSU researchers said, when contrasted to other studies done several years ago in national parks of the American West, which also found significant pollution and fish health impacts, including male fish that had been “feminized” and developed eggs.

“In areas ranging from pristine, high mountain lakes of the United States to ocean waters off the coasts of France and Spain, we’ve now found evidence of possible human-caused pollution that’s bad enough to have pathological impacts on fish,” said Michael Kent, a professor of microbiology in the OSU College of Science, co-author on both these research projects and an international expert on fish disease.

“Deep in the ocean one might have thought that the level of contamination and its biological impact would be less,” Kent said. “That may not be the case. The pathological changes we’re seeing are clearly the type associated with exposure to toxins and carcinogens.”

However, linking these changes in the deep water fish to pollution is preliminary at this time, the researchers said, because these same changes may also be caused by naturally-occurring compounds. Follow up chemical analyses would provide more conclusive links with the pathological changes and man’s activity, they said.

Few, if any health surveys of this type have been done on the fish living on the continental slopes, the researchers said. Most past studies have looked only at their parasite fauna, not more internal biological problems such as liver damage. The issues are important, however, since there’s growing interest in these areas as a fisheries resource, as other fisheries on the shallower continental shelf become depleted.

As the sea deepens along these continental slopes, it’s been known that it can act as a sink for heavy metal contaminants such as mercury, cadmium and lead, and organic contaminants such as PCBs and pesticides. Some of the “intersex” fish that have been discovered elsewhere are also believed to have mutated sex organs caused by “endocrine disrupting chemicals” that can mimic estrogens.

In this study, the health concerns identified were found in black scabbardfish, orange roughy, greater forkbeard and other less-well-known species, and included a wide range of degenerative and inflammatory lesions that indicate a host response to pathogens, as well as natural cell turnover. The fish that live in these deep water, sloping regions usually grow slowly, live near the seafloor, and mature at a relatively old age. Some can live to be 100 years old.

Partly because of that longevity, the fish have the capacity to bioaccumulate toxicants, which the researchers said in their report “may be a significant human health issue if those species are destined for human consumption.” Organic pollutants in such species may be 10-17 times higher than those found in fish from the continental shelf, the study noted, with the highest level of contaminants in the deepest-dwelling fish.

However, most of those contaminants migrate to the liver and gonads of such fish, which would make their muscle tissue comparatively less toxic, and “generally not high enough for human health concern,” the researchers wrote.

The corresponding author on this study was Stephen Feist at the Center for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science in Weymouth, England.

In the previous research done in the American West, scientists found toxic contamination from pesticides, the burning of fossil fuels, agriculture, industrial operations and other sources, which primarily found their way into high mountain lakes through air pollution. Pesticide pollution, in particular, was pervasive.

Together, the two studies suggest that fish from some of the most remote parts of the planet, from high mountains to deep ocean, may be impacted by toxicants, Kent said.