Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures (F) were recorded across the state of Hawaii Tuesday…along with the minimum temperatures Tuesday:
77 – 57 Lihue, Kauai
80 – 58 Honolulu, Oahu
74 – 56 Molokai AP
77 – 57 Kahului, Maui
81 – 65 Kailua Kona
76 – 65 Hilo, Hawaii
Here are the latest 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands, as of Tuesday evening:
0.04 Lihue, Kauai
0.01 Moanulua, Oahu
0.02 Puu Alii, Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.05 Kaupo Gap, Maui
0.42 Honokaa, Big Island
The following numbers represent the strongest wind gusts (mph)…as of Tuesday evening:
18 Mana, Kauai – NE
18 Makua Range – NNE
21 Molokai – NE
20 Lanai – NE
18 Kahoolawe – NE
18 Kula 1, Maui – WNW
27 Kealakomo, Big Island – NNW
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
The swath of thick clouds, oriented more or so northeast
to southwest…is starting to migrate back over the state now
There are rainy clouds to the south of the state…
which will be shifting northwards over us
Most of the showers are located over the ocean just to the
south through east of the Big Island…generally
dry at the moment everywhere
Here’s the looping radar image for the Hawaiian Islands
~~~ Hawaii Weather Narrative ~~~
The Mauna Kea Summit…on the Big Island of Hawaii
Blizzard Warning…on the Big Island summits – snow and ice
accumulations, and freezing fog / 5-8 inches of snow / west
winds 45-65 with gusts over 85 mph
The cool north winds will continue through Thursday…then finally shift back towards a more customary easterly trade wind direction Friday into the weekend. 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 far to the northwest and northeast of the islands. At the same time, we have gale low pressure systems more or less to the north of the islands. The placement of these low pressure areas, along with an associated front just south of the Big Island, will keep cool north breezes blowing across our area into Thursday. As we get into Friday and the weekend, a more easterly trade wind air flow will finally arrive...ushering in warmer weather.
The state is cool and dry for the time being, however showers will return tonight on the Big Island…and then Maui into Thursday. The considerable cloud cover that has plagued the state over the past several days, shifted just south of the state. This allowed a pretty nice day to occur Tuesday across most of the state. The drier conditions will be short-lived, at least over the Big Island and Maui. The forecast calls for showers to arrive over those eastern islands later tonight into Thursday. The bulk of this rainfall will focus over the Big Island, and to some degree Maui County, with fewer showers elsewhere across the state. The models suggest the return of more classic trade wind conditions Friday into the weekend, with drier and warmer conditions in general. I’ll be back with more updates on all of the above, I hope you have a great Tuesday night wherever you’re spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Here on Maui: The skies are clear over Maui early this morning, with just a few low clouds along the north and northeast windward coasts and slopes. The winds are generally quite light, although as they’re still arriving from a more northerly direction than usual…keeping a definite chill in the air. The low temperature was 39.7 degrees here at my weather tower in Kula. It was 59 degrees down at the Kahului airport, 61 at the Hana airport, and 39 degrees atop the Haleakala Crater at the same time. The warmest low temperature around the state was 68 degrees in Kailua-Kona on the Big Island…while the coolest was 58 at the Lihue AP on Kauai.
~~~ Tuesday afternoon was nice, with lots of sunshine beaming down finally…along with lighter winds in general here in Maui County.
~~~ We’re into the early evening hours at 625pm, with the temperature already falling fast…standing at 58.6 degrees. Here in Kula early this morning, that unusually low 39.7F degrees was sooo cold! My friends up the hill some 900 feet, said they had frost on the ground this morning! There are clouds coming up from the south now, which should hold in some of the daytime heat tonight, so temperatures should be somewhat warmer Wednesday morning. Although, the north winds that we still have blowing now, won’t let it get that much warmer in the morning! Check out the nice sunset this evening…
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 03W is now active in the Northwest Indian Ocean, here’s the JTWC graphical track map…along with the NOAA satellite image
>>> South Pacific Ocean: Tropical Cyclone 17P (Pam) remains active in the Southwest Indian Ocean, here’s the JTWC graphical track map…along with the NOAA satellite image
Tropical Cyclone 18P (Nathan) is now 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: Tropical Cyclone 19S (Olwyn) is now active in the South Indian Ocean, here’s the JTWC graphical track map…along with the NOAA satellite image
Here’s a link to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC)
Interesting: CO2 increase may intensify future droughts in tropics – A new study suggests that increases in atmospheric CO2 could intensify extreme droughts in tropical and subtropical regions — such as Australia, the southwest and central United States, and southern Amazonia — at much a faster rate than previously anticipated, explains University of Texas at Austin professor Rong Fu in a commentary in the March 9 edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences..
Fu, a professor at the university’s Jackson School of Geosciences, writes about a new study by William K.M. Lau of the University of Maryland and Kyu-Myong Kim of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, explaining that it shows for the first time through computer climate modeling that the Hadley Circulation will intensify as the world warms. The study, “Robust Hadley Circulation changes and increasing global dryness due to CO2 warming from CMIP5 model projections,” was posted online Feb. 23.
The Hadley Circulation, associated with the prevailing trade winds in the tropics, is an atmospheric air current centered around the equator that affects areas between the latitudes of about 30 degrees north and 30 degrees south.
The Hadley Circulation influences the distribution of rainfall, clouds and relative humidity over half of Earth’s surface. It can expand or contract in a warmer or colder global climate, leading to substantial changes of regional rainfall. Such changes have been linked to the collapse of the ancient Maya civilization.
During the past decade or two, the Hadley Circulation has become stronger and expanded toward the poles at a rate faster than predicted by global climate models, contributing to increased droughts over many subtropical regions and increased rainfall in equatorial regions. Past studies have attributed the intensifying of the Hadley Circulation to natural decadal climate variability, because climate models have predicted that the Hadley Circulation will weaken in the future as climate changes. But Lau’s and Kim’s work found that the Hadley Circulation intensified in warmer climate, which is expected to continue.
“This is the first study that suggests a possible intensification of droughts in the tropic-subtropical margins in warmer climate. The finding is critical to understanding what the world will be like as the climate continues to change,” Fu said. “Will the Hadley Circulation continue to expand? Could the intensification of droughts over the tropics and subtropics be a new norm? These are questions that need to be answered.”
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