Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures (F) were recorded across the state of Hawaii Monday…along with the minimums Monday:
84 – 73 Lihue, Kauai
89 – 74 Honolulu, Oahu
85 – 71 Molokai AP
88 – 71 Kahului, Maui
86 – 74 Kailua Kona
83 – 69 Hilo, Hawaii
Here are the latest 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands, as of Monday evening:
1.25 Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.58 Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.10 Puu Alii, Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.01 Kahoolawe
0.23 Kula 1, Maui
0.76 Kawainui Stream, Big Island
The following numbers represent the strongest wind gusts (mph)…as of Monday evening:
21 Waimea Heights, Kauai – ENE
24 Kuaokala, Oahu – NE
25 Molokai – NE
28 Lanai – NE
30 Kahoolawe – NE
29 Maalaea Bay, Maui – N
25 Upolu AP, 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
Low pressure system with a cold front north of the islands…
thunderstorms in the deeper tropics to our
southwest
Low clouds being carried our way on the trade wind flow –
Looping version of this image
Showers…mostly along the windward sides
and over the nearby ocean
Here’s the looping radar image for the Hawaiian Islands
~~~ Hawaii Weather Narrative ~~~
Moderately strong trade winds will continue…although gradually losing strength through 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 profiler of the central Pacific. We find a moderately strong high pressure systems to the northwest through northeast of the state. At the same time, there’s a low pressure system far northeast, with the tail-end of an associated dissipating cold front over the ocean to the northeast of the state. We should see moderately strong trade winds through Wednesday…then becoming lighter later Thursday into the weekend.
Trade wind weather conditions will prevail…with increases and decreases in windward biased showers. The windward sides will see the most frequent showers, mostly at night, although there will be a few interior showers during the afternoon hours locally too. Fairly typical trade wind weather conditions should continue through the week, with a few slightly more dynamic shower areas moving through here and there at times. Looking even further ahead, if the trades falter later in the week as expected, we would see a convective weather pattern taking over Friday for a few days. This will manifest as afternoon clouds leading to localized showers, clearing back during the nights for the most part. I’ll be back with more updates on all of the above, I hope you have a great Monday night wherever you’re spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Here on Maui...it’s 545am Monday morning, with mostly clear conditions over Maui for the most part. There’s a sugar cane burn down in the central valley, which is spewing out lots smoke into the air. The air temperature here in Kula, at my upcountry weather tower, was 53.8 degrees, while it was 73 down at the Kahului airport, 68 out in Hana…and 46 up at the summit of the Haleakala Crater at near the same time.
– As is often the case here in upcountry Kula, clouds formed this morning, and have become darker this afternoon. There hasn’t been any showers yet, although it wouldn’t surprise me to see a few as we go through the rest of this afternoon. The air temperature here at my weather tower is 72.9 degrees, while at the same time down in Kahului, it was 86, with 84 in Kapalua, 79 in Hana…and a cooler 55 degrees atop the Haleakala Crater. / now at 215pm, under cloudy skies, there’s a very light misty drizzle falling, helping to keep the temperature much more comfortable than I’ve had up here in Kula over the last 4-5 days. It looks sunny to partly cloudy down near the beaches at the same time. / Oops, now at 220pm, it’s coming down about twice as hard, and will have my weather deck wet in no time at this rate.
– We’re into the early evening hours, and skies have cleared to the west of here…so that sunshine is beaming down in Kula.
>>> Atlantic Ocean: There are no active tropical cyclones
Here’s a satellite image of the Atlantic Ocean
>>> Caribbean Sea: There are no active tropical cyclones
>>> Gulf of Mexico: There are no active tropical cyclones
Tropical cyclone formation is not expected during the next 5 days over the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean Sea or Atlantic Ocean
Here’s a satellite image of the Caribbean Sea…and the Gulf of Mexico
>>> Eastern Pacific: There are no active tropical cyclones
No tropical cyclones are expected through the next five days
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: There are no active tropical cyclones
No tropical cyclones are expected through the next two days
Here’s a link to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center (CPHC)
>>> Northwest Pacific Ocean: Tropical Depression 08W (Kujira) has moved over the Gulf of Tonkin from Hainan Island, heading for the mainland China coast and dissipation soon – here’s the JTWC graphical track map, along with a satellite image
>>> 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: What is the value of bees? – What are bees worth to our economy? A group of researchers have attempted to do the math, and the result shows exactly why we need to protect our pollinating bees but also why we can’t rely on economic worth alone to make our arguments for saving threatened species.
It may sound slightly abhorrent to put a price on a living creature–and, to an extent, it is. But calculating the monetary worth of wildlife and, in particular, their place in the overall economy has become a useful way for researchers to communicate to governments and even businesses that they need to take a closer look at preventing species die-out. When it comes to bees however, researchers have found an interesting fact that they say shows the worth and the shortcomings of this approach.
Publishing in the journal Nature Communications, researchers detail how they set about this task by following data from nearly 74,000 bees across 780 bee species that was collected as part of over 90 research projects that are investigating the way bees pollinate and interact with crop fields.
What they found was that the bulk of pollination was actually done by just two percent of bee species in the study, and that they contributed up to around 80 percent of the overall pollinating activity.
In total, the researchers calculated that for agricultural security as well as the central task of pollinating crops, wild bees may be worth as much as $3,250 per hectare per year. As the Guardian points out, that’s more than managed honeybee colonies which still account for an impressive but lower $2,913 a hectare.
As the researchers point out, the figure is so attractive that we can’t help but highlight it, but it throws up an important topic: talking purely in terms of economic worth, there appears little reason to preserve the other bee species, and currently many governments focus only on the primary pollinators as part of their environment management strategy.
However, researchers say that is a mistake. Professor Simon Potts of the University of Reading, which was involved in this study, is quoted as saying that it would be an error to think that we can just invest in certain bee populations and that protecting other species doesn’t matter: “It is critical to protect a wide range of bees and other insects now so that […] we can call on the pollinating species which are best suited to the task. We can’t just rely on our current starting line-up of pollinators. We need a large and diverse group of species on the substitutes’ bench, ready to join the game as soon as they are needed, if we are to ensure food production remains stable.”
The researchers in the above study say that their work demonstrates that when we talk about conservation, we need to look at not just the short term benefits that species bring but the long term need to protect diversity. As such, we need to target our conservation efforts not just at the species that are most common or those we deem most useful right now, but also those that might appear less productive but are no less important for long term agricultural security.
This research comes at a time when the UK’s Conservative government, which as part of the previous coalition government proved hostile to many environmental policies, is considering whether to give its backing to farmers who want to start using neonicotinoids again, a substance that until relatively recently was part of many insecticides. It has been identified as one of the reasons behind colony collapse disorder and other problems that wild bees have faced in recent years that have seen bee numbers fall, sometimes dramatically, across the globe, and so was banned by the Europe.
The UK government’s stance has previously been that the European wide ban is not backed by overly convincing science despite a consensus emerging that insecticides are at least playing a part in bee die-off, and now environmental campaigners are concerned that the Conservative government may snub what science actually shows and instead cave to farmers and the big agricultural businesses that have previously offered to bring business to the UK.
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