Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs

About 10,000 times too large for me to ride!
Photo Credit: Surfersvillage

A weak cold front near Kauai didn’t reach us, although has helped to keep our local winds light and generally from the east to southeast…although gusty down near the Big Island. This air direction will keep lots of haze in place, with the thickest part of the swath over the Kona coast of the Big Island…on up to the islands of Maui County, although has reached Oahu too. Our winds remained light to moderately strong, with a tendency towards trade winds Thursday, then lighter from the east to southeast through the rest of the week, right on through the first part of next week. The models now show light-moderate trade winds returning around the middle of next week. 

We have a high pressure ridge aloft over the islands, keeping our overlying atmosphere dry and stable…stopping raindrops in their tracks for the most part. Despite the dry atmospherics, there will however be afternoon convective cumulus clouds over and around the mountains. Light daytime sea breezes will aid in the production of these afternoon clouds, which will stretch down towards the coast in many areas. Meanwhile, high clouds are streaming Hawaii Thursday evening, which helped to dim and filter our famous Hawaiian sunshine quite a bit during the day Thursday. 

It’s Thursday evening as I begin updating this last paragraph of today’s narrative.  Dry weather will be the name of the game now through the weekend, and on into the first part of next week. As this satellite image shows, a dissipating cold front is just to the north and NW of Kauai. This picture also shows the high cirrus clouds that are stretching southward over Hawaii from the north. I don’t really see any significant precipitation coming our way through probably the next week, at least. The best chances for a few drops would occur over and around the mountains during the afternoons here and there, but that won’t amount to much. It has been extremely dry during the last 24 hours, with most rain gauges remaining totally empty. As a matter of fact, the largest rainfall amount anywhere in the state, was an almost not measurable .01". ~~~ The one thing that concerns me the most about our current weather pattern, is the stagnant air mass that will remain overhead for the next five days or so. This extended period of light winds is going to allow copious amounts of haze, some with volcanic origins, to collect over the islands. Otherwise, it won’t be too bad, with warm days giving way to cooler than normal nights. ~~~ I’ve received many comments, all of them positive, about the interesting facts that I’ve added to this page. I’m very happy that they’re being so well received. It’s my intention that a visit to this website will give you all you need to know about our Hawaiian weather circumstances. In addition, I have always enjoyed sharing nice pictures, and other tidbits along the way. Your readership is important to me, and has been for the last 13 years, since I started this website…or is it a blog, I hear it called both things? ~~~ Thursday turned out to be very similar to Wednesday, as Wednesday was to Tuesday! Dry, hazy, and partly to mostly cloudy. The trade winds actually got a toe hold back in our Hawaiian Island weather picture, although they weren’t strong enough to ventilate away the hazy conditions unfortunately. The trade winds will be giving way back to light and variable conditions again Friday, cementing into place the hazy conditions into the weekend and likely beyond. ~~~ I’ll be back very early Friday morning with your next new weather narrative, I hope you have a great Thursday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting:  Urban sprawl and dwindling snow have forced organizers of the world’s most famous sled-dog race to bypass Wasilla, a fast-growing Alaskan city that calls itself "Home of the Iditarod."  The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race has formally moved the start of the race’s timed competition to Willow, a hamlet 40 miles north of Wasilla. The ceremonial start will be in Anchorage on Saturday, with the restart in Willow on Sunday. The decision to skip Wasilla makes permanent what had become a nearly perennial last-minute course change for the 1,100-mile (1,770-km) race to Nome. The last time the race started in Wasilla was 2002 when snow cover was deemed adequate. Wasilla remains the home of the Iditarod headquarters, a building that houses the race organizers’ offices. This week, it was packed with tourists, including a busload of Japanese visitors buying souvenirs. Outside the headquarters and away from tree-sheltered areas, snow is sparse. Along Wasilla’s main drag and other developed areas, there are only a few scant snow patches atop the brown earth and dried grass.

Interesting2: Fox News The fiercest reptile ever to terrorize the oceans has been identified from a fossil on a frozen Arctic island.  The huge pliosaur, dubbed "The Monster" by its discoverers, dated from 150 million years ago and boasted 60 dagger-like teeth the size of cucumbers, which it used to rip chunks out of prey.  The 50-foot animal was one of the biggest marine predators to have ever swum and would have been able to take on "anything that moved" in the water.   It was built for speed and power, and with its armory of fangs would have been rivaled in ferocity only by an extinct shark, the megalodon, which lived about 16 million years ago.  Fossilized remains of the pliosaur, which had 10-foot-long jaws, were located on the island of Spitsbergen in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, inside the Arctic Circle.

Interesting3: Clouds are alive with tiny bacteria that grab up water vapor in the atmosphere to make cloud droplets, especially at warmer temperatures, a new study shows.  The water droplets and ice crystals that make up clouds don’t usually form spontaneously in the atmosphere — they need a solid or liquid surface to collect on. Tiny particles of dust, soot and airplane exhaust — and even bacteria — are known to provide these surfaces, becoming what atmospheric scientists call cloud condensation nuclei (CCN).  "Nucleation events and this ice formation is widely recognized as a process that is important to the initiation of precipitation, whether it be snowfall or rain," said lead author of the new study, Brent C. Christner of Louisiana State University.  Bacteria and other particles of biological origin are actually pretty good at collecting water vapor to form cloud droplets.  "Biological particles such as bacteria are the most active ice nuclei in nature," Christner told LiveScience. "In other words, they have the ability to catalyze ice formation at temperatures warmer than a particle of abiotic origin."