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

76 – 68  Lihue, Kauai
80 – 69  Honolulu, Oahu
77 – 70  Molokai
79 – 71  Kahului AP, Maui
82 – 68  Kona Int’l AP
77 – 70  Hilo AP, Hawaii

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

0.05  Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.02  Luluku, Oahu
 0.06  Molokai
0.00  Lanai
0.00  Kahoolawe
0.42  West Wailuaiki, Maui
0.52  Kawainui Stream, Big Island

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

35  Port Allen, Kauai
35  Kuaokala, Oahu
35  Molokai
 35  Lanai
37  Kahoolawe
33  Maalaea Bay, Maui
40  Waikolola, Big Island

Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live webcam on the summit of our tallest mountain Mauna Kea (nearly 13,800 feet high) on the Big Island of Hawaii. This webcam is available during the daylight hours here in the islands, and at night whenever there’s a big moon shining down. Also, at night you will be able to see the stars — and the sunrise and sunset too — depending upon weather conditions.


Aloha Paragraphs

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The recent weakening cold front is well south of the Big Island

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Cool and windy weather in the fronts wake

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Partly to mostly cloudy windward…mostly clear leeward

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Showers locally along windward sides – Looping radar image


Small Craft Advisory…all coasts and channels


~~~ Hawaii Weather Narrative ~~~



Locally windy trade wind weather can be expected over the next several days…as areas of high pressure remain pass by to the north of the state. One area of high pressure will be passing by from west to east tonight and Tuesday. A cold front will pass by well north of the area, which may result in a brief easing in winds speeds on Tuesday as well. However, another high pressure cell will quickly build in north-northwest of the area Wednesday…with a slight increase in winds expected.

The atmosphere over our area is rather dry and stable. However, moisture in the trades is providing clouds and passing light showers over windward areas. This pattern is expected to continue for the next several days, with shower activity highly dependent on incoming moisture availability. Cold temperatures aloft combined with increased moisture, may allow for a slight chance of thunderstorms, as well as freezing rain over the Big Island summits Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons. Winds will begin to drop off later in the week into the weekend…as the pressure gradient over the area relaxes.

As we head into early next week, global models indicate a trough of low pressure developing…to the north and northwest of the islands. This may cause a less stable airmass to be in place, with a potential increase in shower activity possible. There are differences in the various models, ranging between a light to moderate trade wind environment, with moisture riding in on the trades…to an even lighter wind field over the area, with some moisture being drawn up from the deeper tropics over the area. Thus, confidence in the specific weather details is rather low in this long range forecast period.

Here’s a wind profile of the Pacific Ocean – Closer view of the islands / Here’s the vog forecast animation / Here’s the latest weather map

Marine environment details: Strong high pressure passing north of Kauai, will keep strong to gale force trade winds in place tonight. With the surface high passing due north of the state tonight, we can expect little change in winds, so that the gale warning for the Alenuihaha and Pailolo Channels and Maalaea Bay is being extended. A Small Craft Advisory (SCA) remains in place for the remaining waters tonight, and with the gale warning likely expiring by morning, expect an SCA to be in place for all waters Tuesday. Another area of high pressure will build north of the islands later Tuesday and Wednesday, likely keeping SCA conditions in place over most waters through Wednesday or Thursday. A steady decline in winds is expected heading into the weekend.

Large combined seas comprised of a mix of north-northwest swell and wind waves, are producing high surf across north facing shores and hazardous seas contributing to the SCA. Combined seas at the NOAA buoys to the northwest of the islands are down, while larger seas are mainly passing just east of the islands. These declining seas are still high enough to warrant the extension of the High Surf Advisory (HSA) for north facing shores. Based on the NOAA buoy data, expect surf to be below the advisory level before daybreak…with a steady decline expected through the day Tuesday.

A pair of  swells from distant sources will produce somewhat elevated surf along north and west facing shores later this week, while rough trade wind seas maintain surf near to just below advisory levels along east facing shores through Thursday. The first northwest swell is expected to arrive on Wednesday and peak in the double overhead range Wednesday night and Thursday. The second northwest swell will likely be larger and may lead to advisory level surf Friday night and Saturday.

 

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Relatively cool and windy weather continues



World-wide tropical cyclone activity


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>>> Atlantic Ocean: The 2017 hurricane season begins June 1st

Here’s a satellite image of the Atlantic Ocean

>>> Caribbean: The 2017 hurricane season begins June 1st

>>> Gulf of Mexico: The 2017 hurricane season begins June 1st

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 2017 hurricane season begins May 15th

Here’s the NOAA 2016 Hurricane Season Summary for the Eastern Pacific Basin

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 2017 hurricane season begins June 1st

Here’s the NOAA 2016 Hurricane Season Summary for the Central Pacific Basin

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

>>> Northwest Pacific Ocean: No active tropical cyclones

>>> South Pacific Ocean:

Tropical Cyclone 07P is now active over French Polynesia, here’s the JTWC graphical track map, a satellite image of the system…and what the computer models are showing


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

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


Interesting: What Was the First Life on Earth? – The earliest evidence for life on Earth arises among the oldest rocks still preserved on the planet. Earth is about 4.5 billion years old, but the oldest rocks still in existence date back to just 4 billion years ago. Not long after that rock record begins, tantalizing evidence of life emerges: A set of filament-like fossils from Australia, reported in the journal Astrobiology in 2013, may be the remains of a microbial mat that might have been extracting energy from sunlight some 3.5 billion years ago. Another contender for world’s oldest life is a set of rocks in Greenland that may hold the fossils of 3.7-billion-year-old colonies of cyanobacteria, which form layered structures called stromatolites.

Some scientists have claimed to see evidence of life in 3.8-billion-year-old rocks from Akilia Island, Greenland. The researchers first reported in 1996 in the journal Nature that isotopes (forms of an element with different numbers of neutrons) in those rocks might indicate ancient metabolic activity by some mystery microbe. Those findings have been hotly debated ever since — as, in fact, have all claims of early life.

Still, the fact that suggestive evidence of life arises right as the rock record begins raises a question, said University of California, Los Angeles, geochemist Elizabeth Bell in a SETI Talk in February 2016: Is the timing a coincidence, or were there earlier forms of life whose remnants disappeared with the planet’s most ancient rocks?

The period that occurred before the rock record begins is known as the Hadean. It was an extreme time, when asteroids and meteorites pummeled the planet. Bell and her colleagues said they might have evidence that life arose during this very unpleasant time. In 2015, the research team reported discovering graphite, a form of carbon, in 4.1-billion-year-old crystals of zircon. The ratio of isotopes in the graphite suggested a biological origin, Bell and her colleagues wrote in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“There is some skepticism, which is warranted,” Bell told Live Science. Meteorites or chemical processes might have caused the odd carbon ratios, she said, so the isotopes alone aren’t proof of life. Since the publication of the 2015 paper, Bell said, the researchers have found several more of the rare-carbon inclusions, which the scientists hope to analyze soon.

From what is known of this period, there would have been liquid water on the planet, Bell told Live Science in an interview. There might have been granite, continental-like crust, though that’s controversial, she said. Any life that could have existed would have been a prokaryote (a single-celled organism without membrane-bound nuclei or cell organelles), Bell added. If there was continental crust on Earth at the time, she said, prokaryotes might have had mineral sources of nutrients like phosphorus.

A different approach to the hunt for Earth’s early life suggests that oceanic hydrothermal vents may have hosted the first living things. In a paper published in July 2016 in the journal Nature Microbiology, researchers analyzed prokaryotes to find the proteins and genes common to all of these organisms, presumably the final remnants of the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) — the first shared relative from which all life today descends.

The research team found 355 proteins shared by all archaeal and bacterial lineages. Based on those proteins, the researchers reconstructed a view of LUCA’s genome, hinting that it lived in an anaerobic (oxygen-free), hydrothermal environment. If that’s the case, Earth’s first life (or at least the first life that left descendants) would have resembled the microbes that cluster around deep-sea vents today, the researchers said.