Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs

The Hawaiian Islands are experiencing a tropical cool snap, which will give way to warmer air temperatures this weekend. The winds are coming into the state from a more northerly direction than normal now, which is the cause of our chilly weather. Air temperatures will be several degrees cooler than usual both during the days and at night for the time being.

As this weather map shows, we have a moderately strong 1034 millibar high pressure system to the NNW, which is spinning in a clockwise fashion. At the same time, we have a 1013 millibar low pressure system to the NNE, which in contrast, is rotating counterclockwise. This pressure configuration is bringing cooler air into our area. The northerly aspect to the winds will continue for several more days, so that our local weather will remain a little on the cool side into Saturday. As we move into the weekend, our winds to clock around to the more customary easterly direction. 

Meanwhile, the tail-end of a cold front, called a shearline, brought clouds and showers to the windward sides of the islands Thursday. This cloud band didn’t bring heavy rain, although there were showers falling…mostly along the windward sides. This looping satellite image shows this band of clouds well moving over the Big Island late in the day…along with some high clouds edging our way from the west. There’s another line of clouds approaching, which may bring another batch of showers to the islands later Thursday night into Friday morning.

It’s Thursday evening as I begin updating this last paragraph of today’s narrative. As described above, our weather will be on the cool side of the temperature spectrum for the time being. The winds are locally gusty from the NNE-NE direction, and will remain that way Friday. ~~~ The latest cloud band, which brought showers to the primarily the windward sides last night into Thursday, had progressed down to the Big Island late in the day. This left rapidly clearing skies, with mostly sunny weather in most areas. The winds were rather gusty, even very strong and gusty in some isolated areas, like the southern part of the Big Island around Puna. These winds may calm down quite a bit during the night, which would allow temperatures to fall into the chilly realms. ~~~ Dew point temperatures were lower than usual, reading in the 50F’s Thursday evening…which will support the nighttime temperatures dipping into the 60F’s at sea level, perhaps even into the upper 50F’s in a few spots. It might be wise to grab an extra blanket before retiring tonight. ~~~ I’ll be back very early Friday morning with your next new weather narrative. I hope have a great Thursday night until then!  Aloha for now…Glenn. 

Interesting: Mexico City on Thursday banned cigarette smoking in all public places, from bars to office buildings, to reduce the amount of carcinogens inhaled by residents of the smog-filled capital. The city, home to some 18 million people in the metropolitan area, is the latest large city around the world to pass a smoking ban to improve public health and protect nonsmokers from secondary smoke. But not all Mexicans are happy about the prospect of smoke-free cantinas where tequila and cigarettes are traditionally enjoyed hand-in-hand. "Right now I’m fine, but later tonight — after a couple of drinks — I’m going to really want one," said 26-year-old Rodrigo Nunez, a smoker and government office worker playing a game of pool in a bar in the fashionable Condesa neighborhood on his lunch break. The law to ban smoking in all enclosed areas, from sidewalk cafes to public transportation to elevators and schools, was passed by the city assembly in November. Smokers who violate the ban can be fined between $50 and $300, with higher penalties for bar and restaurant owners who allow smoking.

Interesting2: An extensive fault that tracks the Pacific coast of North America from Canada to Northern California could trigger major quakes along California’s San Andreas Fault, a new study suggests. "The faults seem to be communicating with each other," said study leader Chris Goldfinger of Oregon State University. The evidence came from core samples of marine sediments taken along the northern California seabed. There, seismologists found 15 turbidites, sediment deposits that are created when an earthquake triggers an underwater landslide. The turbidites correspond to earthquakes along the San Andreas Fault, including the great 1906 earthquake that destroyed large parts of San Francisco. The study, detailed in the April issue of the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, revealed that 13 out of 15 of the San Andreas earthquakes in the past 3,000 years occurred at almost the same time (in geological terms) as quakes along the southern portion of the Cascadia fault. The Cascadia temblors preceded the ruptures along the San Andreas by an average of about 25 to 45 years (to seismologists who study events across millions and billions of years, that’s a close match.