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

85 – 74  Lihue, Kauai
88 – 75  Honolulu, Oahu
8472  Molokai AP
88 – 73  Kahului, Maui
86 – 73  Kailua Kona
85 – 70  Hilo, Hawaii

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


0.18  Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.81  Schofield East, Oahu
0.20  Puu Alii, Molokai
0.03  Lanai
0.00  Kahoolawe
0.24  Haiku, Maui
0.98  Kawainui Stream, Big Island


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


21  Poipu, Kauai – NE
30  Kuaokala,
Oahu – NE
28  Molokai – NE
28  Lanai – NE

24  Kahoolawe – NE
23  Maalaea, Maui – N

28  Pali 2, Big Island – NE


Hawaii’s MountainsHere’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://weather.unisys.com/satellite/sat_ir_enh_west_loop-12.gif
Low pressure systems with cold fronts north of the islands
thunderstorms in the deeper tropics to our southwest


http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/west/hi/ir4.jpg
Low clouds being carried our way on the trade wind flow,
northern fringe of cirrus to our south and southwest –
Looping version of this image


http://radar.weather.gov/Conus/RadarImg/hawaii.gif

Showers…mostly along the windward sides and over
the nearby ocean –
Here’s the looping radar image 


Small Craft Wind Advisory
…Alenuihaha Channel


~~~
Hawaii Weather Narrative ~~~



Moderately strong trade winds will continue, gradually losing strength into the weekend…on into early next 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. We should see moderately strong trade winds continuing, becoming somewhat lighter this weekend into next week…due to periodic cold fronts moving by to the north of the state.

Trade wind weather conditions will prevail…with occasional increases and decreases in showers. The windward sides will see the most frequent showers, mostly at night, although there will be a few leeward showers on the smaller islands…and some interior showers during the afternoon hours locally too. Looking ahead, if the trades falter later in the week as expected, we would see a modified convective weather pattern taking over then into early next week. This would show up as afternoon clouds leading to localized showers, clearing back during the nights for the most part. I’ll return 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…it’s 530am Tuesday morning, with mostly clear to partly cloudy conditions over Maui, except there are lots of low clouds banked-up against the windward sides…dropping showers locally.
The air temperature here in Kula, at my upcountry weather tower, was 55.9 degrees, while it was 74 down at the Kahului airport, 72 out in Hana…and 46 up at the summit of the Haleakala Crater at near the same time.

We’re into the mid-afternoon time frame, under partly cloudy skies in general. The trade winds are blowing in the moderately strong category, and afternoon temperatures here on Maui are running about normal for this time of year. Here in Kula it was 76.6 degrees, while it was 86 down in Kahului, 84 in Kapalua, 81 in Hana…and 57 atop the Haleakala Crater. / It’s now 405pm, and we just started to have a light drizzle falling here at my weather tower in Kula. I can see down to the north shore…and it looks mostly sunny there.

It’s now early evening, and as I swing around in my seat here in the Kula weather tower, it all looks pretty normal for this early summer period. There are partly cloudy conditions, with a few showers over along the windward sides. The leeward sides in contrast look nice, with sunshine still beaming down as we press towards the sunset hour.

A beautiful nature video…with lovely Erik Satie classical music accompaniment – I watched it in full screen


>>>
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 across the Vietnamese coast and is dissipating over land – here’s the JTWC graphical track map, along with a satellite image Final Warning


>>>
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.