Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs

Offshore winds…spindrift spray 
Photo Credit: MSW

Our local winds will be getting lighter this weekend, coming in from the east or southeast directions.  Depending upon exactly which of these two directions occur, will determine if we get more or less volcanic haze arriving. I’m not totally sure at this point which it will be. If they turn to the southeast, we will see quite a bit of haze, but on the other hand, if they decide to come in from the east…we will see less. The main thing is that they will generally be on the light side. We’ll have to wait until the middle of the new week ahead for a more solid trade wind episode.  

Clear mornings will give way to partly cloudy afternoons, with generally dry conditions existing everywhere.  This convective weather pattern, or modified trade wind pattern, yet to be determined, will see very few showers either way. If the trade winds hang in by a thread, we will see a few light sprinkles along the windward sides. If on the other hand, we see southeast winds, we’re likely to see afternoon cloudy periods around the mountains…with those few sprinkles focused in the upcountry regions. Again, there will be no gully washers within hundreds of miles of our fair islands!

It’s Friday evening as I begin updating this last paragraph of today’s narrative.  As has been the case all this week, ever since the showers that last weekend’s cold front brought, we have continue to be dry. It has been an exceptionally dry week as a matter of fact, with most areas not finding even one drop of water falling from of the sky. We’re probably moving right back into, after a two day break, when the trade winds blew…a convective weather pattern. I know that that might sound like a complex meteorological situation, although it’s not really. It just means that mornings will start off clear and cool, with the warm daytime sunshine causing afternoon clouds to collect over and around the mountains. As noted above though, these clouds will have a difficult time spilling any showers, at least more than a few sprinkles here and there in the upcountry areas. Those convective cumulus clouds will collapse after dark, allowing stars to shine during the night. The one problem with these types of weather situations is that haze collects, some of it having a volcanic origin…from the Big Island. It will take until around next Wednesday for the haze to clear, at which point the trade winds will return…ventilating it away then. ~~~ I’m about ready to leave Kihei, for the drive over to Kahului. I’ll stop off at Borders Books, look at a few books or magazines, and then zip over to the theater. This evening I’ve decided to see the new film called The Other Boleyn Girl (2008). The Other Boleyn Girl is an engrossing and sensual tale of intrigue, romance, and betrayal set against the backdrop of a defining moment in history. Two sisters, Anne (Natalie Portman) and Mary (Scarlett Johansson) Boleyn, are driven by their ambitious father and uncle to advance the family’s power and status by courting the affections of the King of England (Eric Bana). One reviewer says this about it: "An entertainingly sudsy trip through early 16th century English history." Sound enticing? Well, just in case this has aroused your interest, here’s the trailer. It looks a bit melodramatic to say the least, although I’ll try it out, and let you know what I think Saturday morning, when I’m next back to a computer. ~~~ I hope you have a great Friday night whatever you happen to be doing! Aloha for now…Glenn.

By the way…here’s a picture of the volcanic vent on the Big Island, the source of the volcanic haze that gets carried up over the rest of the state on southeast winds. Thanks to James Kirkpatrick for the photo.
 
Interesting: The Georgia Institute of Technology wants to make a hydrogen-fueled vehicle that separates and stores carbon dioxide until it can be sequestered. The Georgia Institute of Technology has thrown one more idea into the mix: a zero-emission, hydrogen-powered car that would separate carbon dioxide from liquid fuel and gather it for sequestration underground or in the ocean. Further down the line, the scientists envision transforming that captured CO2 into more fuel, creating a sort of cycle. "Presently, we have an unsustainable carbon-based economy with several severe limitations, including a limited supply of fossil fuels, high cost and carbon-dioxide pollution," said Andrei Fedorov, associate professor in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech and a lead researcher on the project, in a statement.  "We wanted to create a practical and sustainable energy strategy for automobiles that could solve each of those limitations, eventually using renewable energy sources and in an environmentally conscious way." Georgia Tech’s hydrogen-powered car would hold the carbon dioxide until it could be deposited at a fueling station. The CO2 then would be transferred to some sort of sequestering station.

Interesting2: Liquid water has not been found on the Martian surface within the last decade after all, according to new research.  The finding casts doubt on the 2006 report that the bright spots in some Martian gullies indicate that liquid water flowed down those gullies sometime since 1999. "It rules out pure liquid water," said lead author Jon D. Pelletier of The University of Arizona in Tucson.  Pelletier and his colleagues used topographic data derived from images of Mars from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Since 2006, HiRISE has been providing the most detailed images of Mars ever taken from orbit.  The researchers applied the basic physics of how fluid flows under Martian conditions to determine how a flow of pure liquid water would look on the HiRISE images versus how an avalanche of dry granular debris such as sand and gravel would look.  "The dry granular case was the winner," said Pelletier, a UA associate professor of geosciences. "I was surprised. I started off thinking we were going to prove it’s liquid water."

Interesting3: As they prepare to host the Olympics — an event whose very purpose is to push the limits of human beings — the Chinese are trying to do what man never has: Control the weather.  With five months to go before the Summer Games come to Beijing, Chinese scientists say they are confident they can keep rain away from the opening ceremony, or summon a storm on cue to clear the city’s choking pollution.  It’s a bold — and, according to international scientists, dubious — bit of stage managing, even for a nation that has already shown an outsize ambition to use the Olympics to showcase its development from rural poverty to economic powerhouse.  China is spending $40 billion to remake the infrastructure of the ancient capital, and it already spends an estimated $100 million a year and employs 50,000 for rainmaking. At installations like one called Fragrant Hills, outside Beijing, peasants don military fatigues and helmets and squat behind anti-aircraft guns and rocket launchers, blasting the sky with silver iodide, hoping to shock rain from the clouds. If rain threatens the opening or closing ceremony, Beijing officials say they will set up several banks of rocket launchers outside the city to seed threatening clouds and cause them to release their rain before it reaches the capital.