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

85 – 72  Lihue, Kauai
87 – 74  Honolulu, Oahu

8270  Molokai AP
8471  Kahului AP, Maui
86 72  Kailua Kona
81 – 67  Hilo AP, Hawaii

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

1.97  Kilohana, Kauai
0.19  Hakipuu Mauka,
Oahu
0.40  Puu Alii, Molokai
0.00  Lanai
0.00  Kahoolawe
0.76  West Wailuaiki, Maui
0.42  Kawainui Stream, Big Island

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

30  Port Allen, Kauai – ENE
38  Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu – SE
29  Molokai – NE
31  Lanai – ENE

35  Kahoolawe – NE
30 
Kahului AP, Maui – NNE

39  Puu Mali, Big Island – ENE

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
A low pressure system over the ocean far to the northeast…
along with its trailing cold front

http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/west/cpac/ir4.jpg
A ragged cold front just north of Hawaii…thunderstorms
southwest of the state

 

http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/west/hi/ir4.jpg
Clear to partly cloudy…a few cloudy areas locally, with
the nearby low clouds associated with a weak cold front

 

http://radar.weather.gov/Conus/RadarImg/hawaii.gif
Just a few showers falling locally –
Looping radar image

Small Craft Advisory…for the Kaiwi Channel, Maalaea Bay,
Pailolo Channel, Alenuihaha Channel, Big Island leeward
waters, and waters southeast of the Big Island

 

~~~ Hawaii Weather Narrative ~~~



Trades winds continuing…with a possible break beginning Thursday. Here’s the latest weather map, showing the Hawaiian Islands, and the rest of the North Pacific Ocean. We find a high pressure system well offshore to the north-northeast of the state.
At the same time, we see a low pressure system far northeast, along with its trailing cold front just to the north of the islands. Trade winds will continue over the next few days. It looks like we may see a late season cold front approaching the state later this week. As this happens, we’ll see our winds become lighter, and even southeasterly Thursday through Saturday morning. As we know, if the winds swing around to the southeast as expected…we would see increased volcanic haze arriving over the smaller islands. The trade winds should return during the weekend, ventilating the vog away then.

Here’s a wind profile…of the offshore waters around the islands – with a closer view

Here’s the Hawaiian Islands Sulfate Aerosol animated graphic showing vog forecast

The trade winds will keep off and on showers…focused along the windward sides. The leeward beaches will remain generally dry, with a few exceptions here and there at times. A generally pleasant trade wind pattern is well established, lasting through mid-week. There’s a good chance for an increase in windward showers around Wednesday, which might spill over into the leeward areas locally. The models go on to suggest a late season cold front approaching the islands by Thursday-Friday. As this weather feature calms our winds down, we should see some afternoon clouds with localized upcountry showers developing. Then, as the trade winds return over the weekend…showers will gravitate back over to the windward sides.

Marine environment details: A small craft advisory (SCA) remains posted for the windier waters around Maui County and the Big Island, as well as the Kaiwi Channel. The SCA will remain active into Tuesday night, before winds decrease and veer out of the southeast during the second half of the week. Look for trade winds to rebound over the weekend.

A small northwest swell will slowly decline through Tuesday. A new small west-northwest swell is expected to arrive Wednesday and linger through Saturday. Elsewhere, expect south swell through the week before a noticeable bump in surf heights along south facing shores for the weekend. Trade winds will produce choppy short period surf along east facing shores through midweek.

 

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Hanalei Bay…Kauai


Here on Maui
– Before sunrise on this Monday morning, we find partly to mostly cloudy skies along the windward coasts and slopes…stretching up over the West Maui mountains. These clouds are dropping a few showers, as the trades carry moisture ashore. Elsewhere around the island, skies were mostly clear to partly cloudy. Here in upcountry Kula, it was calm and clear, with an air temperature at my weather tower of 47.4F degrees. At near the same time, the Kahului AP was reporting 73 degrees under clear skies, while it was 70 out in Hana, 73 at Maalaea Bay…with 45 atop the Haleakala Crater.

Late afternoon, day after day of summer like weather prevails, the kind of weather that the Chamber of Commerce really loves!

Early evening, what can I say? More very nice weather through mid-week!

 

World-wide tropical cyclone activity:

>>> Atlantic Ocean: The last regularly scheduled Tropical Weather Outlook of the 2015 Atlantic hurricane season…has occurred. Routine issuance of the Tropical Weather Outlook will resume on June 1, 2016. During the off-season, Special Tropical Weather Outlooks will be issued if conditions warrant. Here’s the 2015 hurricane season summary

Here’s a satellite image of the Atlantic Ocean

>>> Caribbean Sea: The last regularly scheduled Tropical Weather Outlook of the 2015 Atlantic hurricane season…has occurred. Routine issuance of the Tropical Weather Outlook will resume on June 1, 2016. During the off-season, Special Tropical Weather Outlooks will be issued if conditions warrant.

>>> Gulf of Mexico: The last regularly scheduled Tropical Weather Outlook of the 2015 Atlantic hurricane season…has occurred. Routine issuance of the Tropical Weather Outlook will resume on June 1, 2016. During the off-season, Special Tropical Weather Outlooks will be issued if conditions warrant.

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

Here’s the link to the
National Hurricane Center (NHC)

>>> Eastern Pacific: The last regularly scheduled Tropical Weather Outlook of the 2015 North Pacific hurricane season…has occurred. Routine issuance of the Tropical Weather Outlook will resume on May 15, 2016. During the off-season, Special Tropical Weather Outlooks will be issued if conditions warrant. Here’s the 2015 hurricane season summary

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, 2016. During the off-season, special tropical weather outlooks will be issued if conditions warrant. Here’s the 2015 hurricane season summary

Here’s a link to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center (CPHC)

>>> Northwest Pacific Ocean: No active tropical cyclones

>>>
South Pacific Ocean:
No active tropical cyclones


>>>
North and South Indian Oceans / Arabian Sea:
No active tropical cyclones

Here’s a link to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC)


Interesting:
Love that fresh soil smell after a nice rain?
– Most of us think of that sweet smell after a storm as the after-effect of rain that has rinsed the air of pollutants and dust. But it turns out that rain also triggers the release of a mist of particles from wet soils into the air, a finding with consequences of its own for how scientists model our planet’s climate and future.

The evidence comes in the form of tiny glassy spheres, less than one-hundredth the width of a human hair, discovered at the Great Plains of Oklahoma after a rainstorm…and put under scrutiny by scientists at several U.S. Department of Energy facilities. The study appears May 2 in Nature Geoscience.

According to the authors, scientists have largely assumed that organic particles from the soil enter the air through erosion by wind or through agricultural work. The effects of rain splash haven’t been part of the discussion.

But the team’s field observations indicate that up to 60 percent of particles that are airborne after a rainstorm in certain areas, such as grasslands and tilled fields, come from the soil. These organic particles are carbon-based and come from decaying vegetation and organisms. The tiny bits of organic matter can hold tremendous sway over our climate, playing a role in the fate of sunlight as it hits Earth.

Captured…freed from the soil by raindrops

It’s not simply that raindrops hit the ground and dislodge some dirt which flies into the air. Rather, as the rain falls, organic matter in the soil dissolves in puddles that form. As more rain falls, the splashing creates air bubbles which mix with the dissolved matter of the soil. The bubbles float upward and quickly burst, releasing into the air a mist of the soil organic compounds.

In the air, the droplets in the mist dry and their contents become solid glassy organic particles. These tiny spheres — made mostly of carbon, oxygen and nitrogen — are about half a micron wide and disperse through the air, sometimes depositing on the ground almost immediately but usually staying aloft for days or weeks, oftentimes traveling thousands of miles.

Such was the case March 27, 2014, in Lamont, Okla., a day after a strong rainstorm swept through the region. As part of an exploratory study, researchers with the Gilles team gathered samples of airborne particles at DOE’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Climate Research Facility. Under the microscope, scientists quickly determined there was something special about the air sample: It was full of tiny, spherical, glassy particles.

They were so out of place that when Gilles first examined the particles under the microscope, she scribbled in her lab notebook, “Something is wrong with these samples.”

Her group and the Laskin group at EMSL then deployed a set of advanced chemical imaging tools to analyze the particles, including a synchrotron-based X-ray absorption microscope, a scanning electron microscope, a helium ion microscope and a transmission electron microscope. More than a year of intensive chemical analysis showed that the particles were definitely composed of organic matter from the soil.

The same was true of particles the team gathered after two other rainstorms in Lamont as well as those emitted from a garden in Richland, Wash., after it was watered by sprinkler.

“The idea of rain producing aerosols, much less solid ones, just hasn’t been on anyone’s radar,” said Gilles. “Rain cleans the atmosphere; it hadn’t occurred to me to think of rain as a mechanism to produce solid particles from soil.”

Light absorbers…light deflectors

The particles, sometimes called “brown carbon,” have the potential to absorb sunlight, perhaps heating the planet. And the particles can serve as nuclei controlling processes related to cloud formation, creating more clouds or making existing clouds brighter — actions which would cause sunlight to be reflected.

Finding a new source of the airborne particles, known as aerosols, is important for scientists seeking to understand the planet’s climate.

“This is a new mechanism for bringing carbon from the soil into the air. These particles have a unique set of physical and chemical properties and they may have a substantial effect on the Earth’s climate,” said Laskin, who led the study.