Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures (F) were recorded across the state of Hawaii Wednesday…along with the low temperatures Wednesday:
87 – 77 Lihue, Kauai
87 – 73 Honolulu, Oahu
86 – 74 Molokai AP
91 – 69 Kahului AP, Maui – record high Wednesday 94…back in 2004
89 – 74 Kona AP
84 – 70 Hilo AP, Hawaii
Here are the latest 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands…Wednesday evening:
0.98 Mount Waialeale, Kauai
1.59 Moanalua RG 1, Oahu
0.49 Molokai
0.03 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.14 West Wailuaiki, Maui
1.10 Papaikou Well, Big Island
The following numbers represent the strongest wind gusts (mph)…Wednesday evening:
25 Port Allen, Kauai
40 Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
29 Molokai
28 Lanai
37 Kahoolawe
29 Kahului AP, Maui
30 Pali 2, 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
A tropical disturbance is located southeast of the islands
Thunderstorms south…and that disturbance southeast of the state
Scattered low clouds, along with clear skies…high Cirrus clouds south
Showers…mostly windward and mountains – Looping radar image
Small Craft Advisory…windiest coasts and channels around Maui County and the Big Island
~~~ Hawaii Weather Narrative ~~~
Moderately strong trade winds into next week. Here’s the latest weather map, showing a moderately strong, near 1033 millibar high pressure system far to our northeast, the source of our local trades. There will be minor day-to-day variations in speed and direction of these trade winds…although no major spikes one way or the other.
A trade wind weather pattern prevails over the Hawaiian Islands. A weak upper level low pressure system is forecast to move near the islands early Friday. This would result in the atmosphere becoming less stable, which would prompt showers to become a bit more active. Clouds and showers will continue to favor windward and mountain areas, although the somewhat lighter trades may allow for some shower development over leeward areas during the afternoons this weekend as well. Meanwhile, the models are showing an area of low pressure lifting northward from the deeper tropics, towards the islands during the weekend, then passing by just to the south of the state early next week. If this verifies, as some of the models suggest, we may see an increase in showers along with sultry conditions…especially over Maui and the Big Island for several days.
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
Marine environment details: Moderate trade winds associated with high pressure north of the region will continue through the week. The highest winds and seas are forecast across the typically windier locations between Molokai and the Big Island through Friday. The small craft advisory for these locations remains in place.
A recent spike in southern hemisphere activity has led to two overlapping south swells that are generating near advisory-level surf along the southern shores. This trend will likely persist through Thursday before easing into the weekend.
The model output depicts a gale low pressure system developing near the International Date Line, just south of the Aleutian islands over the weekend. If this solution verifies, a small to moderate northwest swell will become a possibility next Tuesday through Thursday.
Pleasant weather…with refreshing trade winds
World-wide tropical cyclone activity..
>>> Atlantic Ocean: No active tropical cyclones
1.) A large but disorganized area of disturbed weather located about 500 miles southwest of the Cabo Verde Islands is associated with a tropical wave. Development of this system, if any, will likely be slow to occur during the next couple of days. However, conditions could become a little more favorable for gradual development, and a tropical depression could form early next week while this system moves westward and then west-northwestward into the central Atlantic.
* Formation chance through 48 hours…low…10 percent
* Formation chance through 5 days…medium…60 percent
2.) A concentrated area of showers and thunderstorms associated with a broad area of low pressure has developed about 350 miles east of the Leeward Islands. This activity is expected to move toward the west-northwest, and additional development, if any, will be slow to occur during the next several days.
* Formation chance through 48 hours…low…10 percent
* Formation chance through 5 days…low…20 percent
Here’s a satellite image of the Atlantic Ocean
>>> Caribbean: No active tropical cyclones
>>> 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: No active tropical cyclones
1.) A broad area of low pressure associated with a tropical wave is located about 700 miles south of Manzanillo, Mexico. This system is currently producing a large area of disorganized showers and thunderstorms. However, environmental conditions are expected to be conducive for gradual development, and a tropical depression is likely to form by early next week while the low moves west- northwestward at 10 to 15 mph.
* Formation chance through 48 hours…low…10 percent
* Formation chance through 5 days…medium…70 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
1.) A weak surface low is located about 850 miles southeast of Hilo, Hawaii. Showers and thunderstorms continue to develop near the low, but show little signs of organization. Environmental conditions support some gradual organization over the next couple of days as it moves toward the west at less than 10 mph.
* Formation chance through 48 hours…low…near 10 percent
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: ‘Little Doubt’ Typhoons Have Become More Intense, Study Finds – In the Northwest Pacific, already a hotspot for tropical cyclones, the storms that strike East and Southeast Asia have been intensifying more than those that stay out at sea over the last four decades, a new study finds.
The proportion of land falling storms that reach Category 4 or 5 strength — the storms that wreak the most damage, as recent examples like 2013’s devastating Super Typhoon Haiyan show — has doubled and even tripled in some areas of the basin, researchers found. The increases seem to be the result of faster intensification linked to warmer ocean waters in coastal areas.
The findings, detailed Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience, are in line with the broader increase in the most intense tropical cyclones expected with rising global temperatures, though these trends have not yet specifically been linked to human-caused climate change.
The Northwest Pacific normally sees the most tropical cyclone activity of any ocean basin because of the deep well of ocean heat available to fuel typhoons, as such storms are called there.
The new work is an outgrowth of a previous study by the same researchers that found that typhoon intensity had increased basin-wide since the late 1970s and suggested that another 14 percent increase in intensity could be expected by the end of the century, as the ocean takes up most of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases.
Wei Mei, a tropical cyclone and climate researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said that he and his colleagues were curious if typhoons in some parts of the basin were intensifying more than others. To investigate this, they grouped the typhoons into clusters based on where they formed and the paths they followed.
They found that the clusters that had the most land falling hurricanes showed much clearer increases in intensity than those where most storms stayed out at sea. The cluster with the biggest trend had a 15 percent increase in intensity and, as part of that trend, saw the number of Category 4 and 5 storms increase from about one per year in the late 1970s to more than four per year recently.
The researchers wanted to figure out whether the higher intensities were due to the typhoons intensifying over a longer period of time or because they were doing so faster. They found that for the clusters with the biggest increases, typhoons were intensifying more than 60 percent faster since the late 1970s, but saw no major change in the rate for the others.
“The results leave little doubt that there are more high intensity events affecting Southeast Asia and China, and these are also intensifying more rapidly,” MIT’s Kerry Emanuel, who has been studying the links between hurricanes and climate change for more than a decade, said in an email. Emanuel provided some material to the researchers, but was not otherwise involved with the study.
Digging further into the possible causes for the trends they saw, the researchers linked the faster intensification rates of landfalling typhoons to higher ocean temperatures in coastal areas. Those warmer waters were ratcheting up the potential intensity of storms, or the theoretical maximum intensity they could achieve given the particular ocean temperatures and atmospheric environment. (Other factors, such as dry air or wind shear, often keep storms from reaching that potential maximum.)
Effectively, the higher potential intensity allowed for deeper convection — the engine at the heart of tropical systems — and therefore more rapid intensification. (The results also jibe with other work that has shown a poleward shift in where potential intensities reach their peak, effectively suggesting that the tropics are becoming less favorable to such storms and higher latitudes more favorable.)
Climate Change Link Uncertain
But what is causing the warmer oceans along the coast is not yet clear. The higher water temperatures could be due to climate patterns that vary naturally, climate change-driven warming, or some combination of the two.
“With such a short record it is impossible to distinguish between natural decadal variability and [any] anthropogenic signal,” Suzana Camargo, a hurricane-climate researcher at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said in an email. “It will be important to do more studies to try to sort out this issue.”
Mei said that he and his colleagues hope to do an attribution study using climate models to see if they can pinpoint any role of warming in the trends they have observed.
Climate models do suggest, however, that warming will continue in these ocean regions, the study researchers note, which would suggest that even more land falling typhoons would fall into the highest categories and would undergo more rapid intensification. This is of great concern because of the enormous damage these storms can do, as well as the difficulties forecasters still have in predicting when storms will quickly intensify.
“Even with perfect forecasts, intense storms tend to have the biggest impacts,” Camargo said. “If you compound [that] with forecast problems, then it’s even a bigger issue.”
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