Hawaiian Islands Weather details & Aloha Paragraphs / June 4-5, 2015

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

83 – 75  Lihue, Kauai
88 – 76  Honolulu, Oahu
84 – 71  Molokai AP
87 – 73  Kahului, Maui
85 – 74  Kailua Kona
85 – 70  Hilo, Hawaii

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

1.44  Mount Waialeale, Kauai
2.39  Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.40  Puu Alii, Molokai
0.11  Lanai
0.00  Kahoolawe
0.20  Kula Branch Station, Maui
0.70  Kona International AP, Big Island

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

17  Mana, Kauai – NW
23  Honolulu AP, Oahu – NE
23  Molokai – NE
25  Lanai – NE
27  Kahoolawe – NE
27  Maalaea Bay, Maui – NNE
29  Kealakomo, Big Island – ESE

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 very late season cold front to the northwest of the islands is
approaching  / Category 2 Hurricane Blanca remains active in
the eastern Pacific…there is no threat to the Hawaiian Islands –
more information below

Clear to partly cloudy – looping version of this image

A few showers are falling locally over the islands

Here’s the looping radar image for the Hawaiian Islands

~~~ Hawaii Weather Narrative ~~~

The trade winds will gradually become lighter through the rest of this week…then pick up again 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 large high pressure system well to the northeast of the state…with a ridge of high pressure running west-southwest, ending up to the northwest of Kauai. At the same time, there’s a low pressure system, with its associated trough in the deeper tropics…well to the south-southeast of the islands. Finally, there’s a very late season cold front approaching the state from the northwest, which will push the ridge of high pressure closer to our area. This in turn will further weaken our trade winds into the weekend, with daytime sea breezes. The weather models show the trade winds rebounding early next week.

We’re slowly moving into a convective weather pattern…with localized upcountry afternoon showers. The windward sides will see a few showers too… which will get carried our way on the weakening trade wind flow. A very late season cold front will stall northwest of the state in a couple of days. This front will help to turn the trade winds off, or at least diminish them considerably during the weekend. This will prompt a convective weather pattern, with cloud buildups over and around the mountains during the afternoon hours, along with a few localized showers. The atmosphere will remain quite dry and stable however, limiting the amount of showers through Sunday.  As the trade winds return Monday onwards, they’ll bring back windward showers and more typical late spring weather conditions. I’ll be back with more updates on all of the above, I hope you have a great Thursday night wherever you’re spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Here on Maui...early Thursday morning near sunrise, skies are partly cloudy as far as I can see, as there is some fog hiding my view at the time of this writing.  The air temperature here in Kula at 535am was 61.3 degrees, 73 down at the Kahului  airport, and 46 degrees atop the Haleakala Crater. / At 610am the clouds are clearing quickly here in Kula, and I can see that it’s a lovely day down towards the lowlands and the beaches. /  It’s now 640 and the fog has lifted here in Kula, so I can see that it’s partly cloudy down towards Kihei and Wailea, while mostly sunny to partly cloudy in the direction of Lahaina…and sunny towards Paia and Haiku. / 725pm update has me seeing quickly increasing clouds across the island of Maui / My Kula weather tower is now enveloped in thick fog, so I can’t see out anymore.

– It’s 105pm here in Kula, and our first shower of the day just fell, bringing a several degree drop in our air temperatures…which feels pleasant. By the way, glancing over towards the north shore, it looks totally sunny over there in contrast, with sunny to partly cloudy conditions down in Kihei at the same time.

– We’re into the early evening hours now, with clouds over the mountains, and mostly clear skies over the beaches. Here in Kula, we recently had a very light mist, which put some moisture on my weather deck, although didn’t amount to as much as fell earlier in the afternoon. I expect the clouds will clear over Maui soon after sunset, with skies remaining mostly clear into Friday morning.

>>> 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

Here’s a satellite image of the Caribbean Sea…and the Gulf of Mexico.

>>> Eastern Pacific:

1.) The National Hurricane Center continues issuing advisories on 
Hurricane 02E (Blanca), located about 920 miles south-southeast of
of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Here's the NHC graphical track map.

Maximum sustained winds are near 100 mph with higher gusts...with a 

gradual strengthening over the next 36 hours...then weakening

Here's a looping satellite image of this system - and what the

hurricane models are showing for category 2 Hurricane Blanca

 

A.) A low pressure area is expected to form over the weekend or early
next week a few hundred miles south of the coasts of El Salvador and
Guatemala. Environmental conditions are expected to be generally
conducive for gradual development of this system while it moves
toward the northwest or north.

* Formation chance through 48 hours...low...near 0 percent 

* Formation chance through 5 days...low...30 percent

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 48 hours

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:  El Niños and Bunny Booms – At times during the past 10,000 years, cottontails and hares reproduced like rabbits and their numbers surged when the El Niño weather pattern drenched the Pacific Coast with rain, according to a University of Utah analysis of 3,463 bunny bones.

The study of ancient rabbit populations at a Baja California site may help scientists better understand how mammals that range from the coast to the interior will respond to climate change, says anthropology doctoral student Isaac Hart. He is first author of the study to be published in the July issue of the journal Quaternary Research.

During the past 10,000 years, the number of El Niños per century “correlates very strongly with the total rabbit population in Baja California, as well as relative abundance of the moisture-loving species of rabbits,” Hart says.

“There weren’t many El Niños from 10,000 to 5,000 years ago,” perhaps zero to two per century, says the study’s senior author, anthropology professor Jack Broughton. “After 5,000 years ago, there was a relatively dramatic increase in frequency of El Niños in Baja, and the rabbits go through the roof.”

Broughton says the new study “is the first long-term – in thousands of years – record of vertebrates responding to El Niño or any other climate system” and the resulting rainfall-caused increase in plants the rabbits ate. “Our study contributes to the growing understanding of variables that enable threatened species to persist despite the myriad threats they face in an uncertain climatic future. The longer record we’ve provided here should ultimately allow us to better predict how El Niño will vary in the future, and how animal populations will vary as a result.”

Compared with earlier studies of lagomorphs – rabbits, hares and pikas – in Utah and elsewhere in the Great Basin during the last 10,000 years, the new study shows lagomorphs “are harmed less by temperature changes on the coast than in the interior,” Broughton says. “Threatened species will be more vulnerable as distance increases from both the temperature-ameliorating effect of the Pacific Ocean and the reach of El Niño-based precipitation.”

The study involved analysis of 3,463 cottontail rabbit and hare bones separated from more than 1 million small bird and animal bones deposited over the past 10,000 years at Abrigo de los Escorpiones – Shelter of the Scorpions – a rock cliff shelter near the ocean 95 miles south of Tijuana, Mexico.

Hart and Broughton conducted the study with University of Alberta archaeologist Ruth Gruhn. She excavated the site a decade ago with Alan Bryan, her late husband. Funding was from the Ruth Eleanor Bamberger and John Ernest Bamberger Memorial Foundation via the University of Utah Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (Hart began the study as an undergraduate) and the Natural History Museum of Utah.

Bankers boxes of bones

Fifteen bankers boxes containing 1 million bones of various animals from Shelter of the Scorpions were shipped to Utah in 2008. The rabbit study is the first published on any of the bones. All the bones ultimately will be sent to a Baja museum.

The 3,463 rabbit and hare bones averaged about 2 inches in size, and ranged from one-thirteenth of an inch up to jackrabbit leg bones 4 or 5 inches long.

Hart spent 2010-2014 identifying each bunny bone as one of three Baja species, using 13 skull and jaw measurements, then comparing their proportions to 80 museum specimens of the same species.

“This study shows you can ask really detailed questions about prehistory given the right set of bones,” Hart says.

The study involved bones from two species of cottontail rabbits – Sylvilagus bachmani, the brush rabbit, and Sylvilagus audubonii, the desert cottontail – and one species of hare, Lepus californicus, the black-tailed jackrabbit.

The brush rabbit eats grasses and forbs in or near dense brush, and thrives when there is more moisture. The desert cottontail has a similar diet but can tolerate drier, more open conditions. The jackrabbit thrives in sparse vegetation.

Those three species accounted for all the bunny bones found at the Shelter of the Scorpions, which is not a cave, but a volcanic rock outcrop that forms a cliff on which eagles, hawks, falcons, owls, other raptors and ravens sat and ate their prey. For millennia, the bones fell to the bottom of the cliff and accumulated in deposits called middens. (Gruhn named the shelter for scorpions there when excavation began.)

Ancient humans also used the shelter and left stone tools and ash from fires. The rabbit and hare bones lack burns or cut marks, so they were dumped by birds, not people.

There is no direct record of ancient El Niños at the Baja site. So Hart and Broughton used a detailed, 10,000-year history of the climate phenomenon recorded in lake deposits in Ecuador as a proxy for the Baja site. Hart says El Niño is a global phenomenon, and its characteristic warming of the eastern Pacific results in heavier rains along the Pacific coast of North, Central and South America.

The findings: El Niños controlled Baja bunny populations

The study used four indices of bunny abundance to analyze how the animals responded to El Niños. All four had statistically significant correlations with the number of El Niños per century and higher eastern Pacific sea-surface temperatures.

During centuries with warmer seas and more El Niños, there were (1) more total rabbit and hare bones, meaning higher populations, (2) more abundant moisture-loving brush rabbits relative to the cottontails and jackrabbits, (3) more abundant brush rabbits and desert cottontails together relative to dry-loving jackrabbits, and (4) more unfused, juvenile bunny bones relative to fused, adult bones. That reflects soaring rabbit and hare populations – and a resulting high proportion of juveniles – when El Niños were frequent.

“There’s been much work on the long-term trends in small mammals in western North America,” Broughton says. “Almost all that work has been within interior sites, not the coast. For those interior sites – many are in Utah – temperature change was documented as the most critical factor in influencing small mammal populations over the last 10,000 years. This study is the most detailed of a coastal site over such a long period of time, and it shows precipitation is the dominant factor.”