Air Temperatures – The following maxiumum temperatures (F) were recorded across the state of Hawaii Tuesday…along with the low temperatures Tuesday:
81 – 74 Lihue, Kauai
89 – 78 Honolulu, Oahu
86 – 75 Molokai AP
89 – 71 Kahului AP, Maui
86 – 73 Hilo AP, Hawaii
Here are the latest 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands…as of Tuesday evening:
0.64 Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.20 Punaluu Stream, Oahu
0.01 Makapulapai, Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
1.72 Puu Kukui, Maui
1.50 Kawainui Stream, Big Island
The following numbers represent the strongest wind gusts (mph)…as of Tuesday evening:
22 Port Allen, Kauai
28 Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
27 Molokai
28 Lanai
31 Kahoolawe
29 Maalaea Bay, Maui
23 Upolu AP, Big Island
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
Tropical Storms Celia & Darby are spinning well to the east of Hawaii
Tropical Storm Celia…continues to wind down
Tropical Storm Celia…with a counterclockwise rotating cloud signature
What the models are showing for Celia
Tropical Storm Darby…will become a hurricane today
Tropical Storm Darby…a relatively compact storm
What the models show for Tropical Storm Darby
We see thunderstorms far southwest of the state
Clear to partly cloudy in most areas
A few showers locally…mostly offshore – Looping radar image
~~~ Hawaii Weather Narrative ~~~
The trade winds will be light to moderately strong as we move through this new week…increasing some by the weekend. Here’s the latest weather map, showing a weakening 1029 millibar high pressure system in the area far north of Hawaii…moving east. At the same time, we see troughs of low pressure to the east and south of the state. Our trade winds are expected to maintain their light to moderately strong strength for the time being.
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
Passing clouds and a few showers will affect mainly windward and mountain areas…although not many through Thursday. We may find leftover moisture from now retired tropical cyclone Blas…getting carried towards us later Thursday into Friday. We have an even longer wait to see what, if any, weather that Hurricane Celia may bring our way early next week…stay tuned.
Tropical Cyclones in the northeastern Pacific: Tropical Storm Celia days are becoming numbered. Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Darby remains active, and will become a category 1 hurricane today. Finally, there’s a tropical disturbance that may generate into a tropical cyclone, which has a 10% chance of developing over the next 2-days…increasing to a high 80% within 5-days. If and when this disturbance becomes more organized and strengthens, it would become Tropical Depression 06E…and could become Hurricane Estelle with time. [More information about these matters down the page.]
Marine environment details: Winds and seas will remain below the Small Craft Advisory threshold through much of the week.
A new slight south swell is expected to arrive by the weekend, with surf along south facing shores expected to remain below advisory level. A new easterly swell from Hurricane Celia may affect the islands by the later part of the week toward the weekend as well.
Here on Maui – Early Tuesday morning is dawning mostly clear to partly cloudy. The windward clouds are dropping a few showers this morning as well. The air temperature was 52.7F degrees at 538am here at my place in upcountry Kula. Meanwhile, at about the same time, the Kahului airport was reporting cloudy skies, with a temperature of 76 degrees, while Hana was 77…and the summit of the Haleakala Crater was reporting 46 degrees.
– Early afternoon, not much going on, a general mix of clear and cloudy skies, not many, if any showers that I can see from here in Kula.
– Early evening, after another quiet day, moving into a quiet night…and likely another quiet summer day on Wednesday.
World-wide tropical cyclone activity –
>>> Atlantic Ocean: No active tropical cyclones
Tropical cyclone formation is not expected during the next 5 days
Here’s a satellite image of the Atlantic Ocean
>>> Caribbean Sea: No active tropical cyclones
Tropical cyclone formation is not expected during the next 5 days
>>> Gulf of Mexico: No active tropical cyclones
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:
Tropical Storm Celia remains active over the waters of the eastern Pacific…located about 1485 miles west of the southern tip of Baja California. Here’s the NHC graphical track map, along a satellite image of this hurricane…and what the computer models are showing.
Tropical Storm Darby continues offshore from Mexico…located about 555 miles south-southwest of the southern tip of Baja California. TS Darby will become a category 1 hurricane soon. Here’s the NHC graphical track map, along with a satellite image of this area…and the computer models are showing.
1.) Disorganized shower and thunderstorm activity to the south and southwest of the Gulf of Tehuantepec is associated with a tropical wave. An area of low pressure is expected to form in a couple of days, and environmental conditions appear conducive for the low to become a tropical depression over the weekend while it moves westward to west-northwestward at 10 to 15 mph.
* Formation chance through 48 hours…low…10 percent
* Formation chance through 5 days…high…80 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: No active tropical cyclones
No tropical cyclones expected through the next 2-days
Here’s a link to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center (CPHC)
>>> 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: Where Did Earth’s Water Come From? – Look at Earth compared to other rocky planets in the neighborhood, and the first thing that would likely jump out is that there’s A LOT of water. So how did 70 percent of our planet’s surface become covered in this essential life ingredient?
That question is the subject of lively scientific debate, it turns out.
There are two prevailing theories: One is that the Earth held onto some water when it formed, as there would have been ice in the nebula of gas and dust (called the proto-solar nebula) that eventually formed the sun and the planets about 4.5 billion years ago. Some of that water has remained with the Earth, and might be recycled through the planet’s mantle layer, according to one theory.
The second theory holds that the Earth, Venus, Mars and Mercury would have been close enough to that proto-solar nebula that most of their water would have been vaporized by heat; these planets would have formed with little water in their rocks. In Earth’s case, even more water would have been vaporized when the collision that formed the moon happened. In this scenario, instead of being home-grown, the oceans would have been delivered by ice-rich asteroids, called carbonaceous chondrites.
Follow the water
Scientists can track the origin of Earth’s water by looking at the ratio of two isotopes of hydrogen, or versions of hydrogen with a different number of neutrons, that occur in nature. One is ordinary hydrogen, which has just a proton in the nucleus, and the other is deuterium, also known as “heavy” hydrogen, which has a proton and a neutron.
The ratio of deuterium to hydrogen in Earth’s oceans seems to closely match that of asteroids, which are often rich in water and other elements such as carbon and nitrogen, rather than comets. (Whereas asteroids are small rocky bodies that orbit the sun, comets are icy bodies sometimes called dirty snowballs that release gas and dust and are thought to be leftovers from the solar system’s formation.)
Scientists have also discovered opals in meteorites that originated among asteroids (they are likely pieces knocked off of asteroids). Since opals need water to form, this finding was another indication of water coming from space rocks. These two pieces of evidence would favor an asteroid origin. In addition, deuterium tends to gather farther out in the solar system than hydrogen does, so water formed in the outer regions of the system would tend to be deuterium-rich.
And on top of that, the rocky inner planets hold relatively little water (relative to their masses) compared with the icy moons of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and even the gas giants themselves. That would support the idea that in the inner system, the water evaporated, while in the outer system, it didn’t. If water evaporated on Earth it would have to be replaced from somewhere else, and water-rich asteroids are abundant in the outer reaches of the system.
More supporting evidence comes from NASA’s DAWN spacecraft, launched in 2007, which found evidence of water on Ceres and Vesta, the two largest objects in the main asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter.
Earth’s water is complicated
A slam dunk for asteroids? Not so fast. For this scenario to work, the isotope ratio had to have stayed the same in the oceans over the last few billion years.
But what if it didn’t?
Lydia Hallis, a planetary scientist with the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom, thinks that the hydrogen present on the early Earth had much less deuterium in it than it does now. The ratio changed because in the early history of the Earth the radiation from the sun heated up both hydrogen and deuterium. Hydrogen, being lighter, was more likely to fly off into outer space, leaving more deuterium behind.
Also, in the last several years, newer models seem to show that the Earth retained a lot of water as it formed, and that the oceans might have been present for much longer than anyone thought.
Hallis and her colleagues looked at hydrogen isotope ratios in ancient Canadian rocks, some of the oldest rocks on Earth. The isotope ratios looked a lot less like asteroids and a lot more like the water one would expect from the early solar nebula in the region — the rocks had more ordinary hydrogen and less deuterium. But the current ocean ratio looks like asteroids. That would seem to indicate something changed in the last few billion years. The research was published in Science in 2015.
If the Earth’s oceans were formed from water on our own planet, rather than asteroids, that would solve a couple of problems for planetary scientists. One is why Earth seems to have so much water in the first place. Another is why life, which as far as anyone knows requires water, seems to have appeared so quickly once the Earth had a solid surface.
Besides the work of Hallis, other scientists have studied ways water could be recycled from Earth’s interior. In 2014, Wendy Panero, an associate professor of earth sciences at Ohio State, and doctoral student Jeff Pigott proposed the theory that Earth was formed with entire oceans of water in its interior. Via plate tectonics, that water has been supplying the oceans. They studied garnet, and found it could work with another mineral, called ringwoodite, to deliver water to the Earth’s interior – water that would later come up as the mantle material circulated.
Complicating the picture, neither of these hypotheses is mutually exclusive. Asteroids could deliver water while some could come from the Earth’s interior. The question is how much each would deliver — and how to find that out.
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