Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs

Waimea Bay, north shore of Oahu

The spring time trade winds will continue, becoming a little lighter through the weekend. We’ll see light to moderately strong trade winds, gradually decreasing…keeping cool and refreshing air coming over the islands. A small craft wind advisory is now limited to the areas around the Big Island and Maui…and may be cancelled altogether at some point Saturday. The computer forecast models show that the trade winds will begin to increase again around the middle of the new week ahead.

The islands have a well established dry trade wind weather pattern going on, which shouldn’t change much this weekend. There will be a few light showers, mostly along the wind sides, but nothing much to speak of at the moment. It still seems likely that right after the weekend, a precipitation enhancing trough of low pressure will develop near the state. This trough will lift the inversion layer, allowing thickening clouds, and somewhat more generous showers for several days then.

It’s Friday evening as I begin writing this last section of today’s narrative. Friday was yet another one of those gloriously fine spring days, with hardly any showers falling anywhere…leaving tons of warm Hawaiian sunshine beaming down. There were the usual popcorn cumulus clouds around, much like those in the picture above. The trade winds were breezing along, swaying the coconut palms trees to and fro…tempering the afternoon heat nicely. I expect another beauty on Saturday. ~~~ I’ll be heading out to see one of the new films playing in Kahului, called Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)…starring Jason Segel, and Kristen Bell, among others. "After a devastating break-up with his girlfriend, a guy heads to Hawaii to recover…only to run into his ex, and her new boyfriend." This comedy is receiving very good ratings, and as much as I usually avoid comedies, I’m going to give this one a try. Here’s the trailer for this film, so you can check it out. I’ll let you know what I think when I come back online early Saturday morning with your next new weather narrative from paradise. Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting: The greater dwarf cloud rat was thought to live in the canopies of tall trees in the Philippines, but the last sighting of one was 112 years ago. Now it has been found again.  One of the rodents was found in Mt. Pulag National Park in the Philippines. The fist-sized mammal has dense, soft, reddish-brown fur, a black mask around large dark eyes, small rounded ears, a broad and blunt snout, and a long tail covered with dark hair.  "This beautiful little animal was seen by biologists only once previously — by a British researcher in 1896 who was given several specimens by local people, so he knew almost nothing about the ecology of the species," said Lawrence Heaney, curator of mammals at the Field Museum and leader of a team that rediscovered the rat. "Since then, the species has been a mystery, in part because there is virtually no forest left on Mt. Data, where it was first found."  The dwarf cloud rat (Carpomys melanurus) is a smaller relative of giant clouds rats, spectacular animals found only on Luzon Island in the Philippines, but widespread and comparatively well known.

Interesting2: Arctic sea ice, sometimes billed as Earth’s air conditioner for its moderating effects on world climate, will probably shrink to a record low level this year, scientists predicted on Wednesday.  In releasing the forecast, climate researcher Sheldon Drobot of the University of Colorado at Boulder called the changes in Arctic sea ice "one of the more compelling and obvious signs of climate change."  If that prediction holds true, it would be the third time in the past five years that Arctic sea ice retreated to record lows, the scientists said in a statement. That retreat is caused by warming temperatures and the spread of younger, thinner, less hardy ice in the region.  Based on satellite data and temperature records, the researchers forecast a 59 percent chance the annual minimum sea ice record would be broken again in 2008.  In the past decade, Arctic sea ice declined by roughly 10 percent, with a record drop in 2007 that left a total minimum ice cover of 1.59 million square miles. That represented a decline of 460,000 square miles from the previous record low in 2005 — an area the size of Texas and California combined. Scientists measure ice cover at its low ebb at the end of summer.  "The current Arctic ice cover is thinner and younger than at any previous time in our recorded history, and this sets the stage for rapid melt and a new record low," Drobot said.  Overall, 63 percent of the Arctic ice cover is younger than average, and only 2 percent is older than average, he said.