Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs

Volcanic haze
Photo Credit: flickr.com

A high pressure ridge is now located over the Big Island, with light to locally moderate south to southwest kona winds blowing from Maui to Kauai. An active Pacific cold front has pushed our ridge southward over the islands. Areas over the Big Island will have light and variable winds, while the Kona breezes will remain in the 5-20+ mph range through the remainder of the work week over the rest of the state.

These Kona winds will bring tropical showers to some parts of the state. Clouds will begin stacking-up over the leeward sides of islands…where the greatest likelihood of showers exists at this time. These clouds, aided by the daytime heating will thicken during the later mornings through afternoon hours. Showers will fall from these cumulus clouds locally, with a couple of them potentially rather heavy.

It’s Wednesday evening as I begin writing this last section of today’s narrative. A deep low pressure system, now spinning in a counterclockwise fashion in the Gulf of Alaska, with its associated late season cold front, have effectively stopped our trade winds from blowing here in Hawaii. More specifically, this low and front have teamed-up to force a ridge of high pressure down over the southern part of the island chain. The location of this ridge will help determine our local weather conditions through the rest of this work week.

The locally breezy south breezes will bring variable amounts of volcanic haze to the state. These kona breezes will give a rather muggy feel to our air at times too. Meanwhile, the aforementioned cold front, which is still to our northwest, will be moving closer now. The computer forecast models have had varying solutions as to exactly where it will finally stall in its journey into the tropics. The latest iteration shows it skidding to a stop somewhere around Kauai. The close proximity of that northernmost island will make it a candidate for showers as the frontal cloud band gets close. There’s a chance that some of the front’s moisture may sneak down as far as Oahu, with an outside chance of them reaching Maui as well.

Here’s a looping satellite image so you can keep an eye on this cold front’s progress towards the state of Hawaii.

A concern that crops up now too, is just how hazy it will become. The haze will contain, at least in some places, varying amounts of volcanic emission, of course called vog. The Big Island, being closest to the Puu OO and Halemaumau vents, will have the most serious problems. The SE through SW winds, will help to spread it into the populated area of Hilo town. This volcanic haze is working its way up the island chain Wednesday, where it had become thick across most of the state by late afternoon. It will take getting to the weekend, with the return of our fair weather trade winds, to see the haze lifting some, although it will take until early next week to see significant clearing.

~~~ Wednesday was an interesting day here in the islands. The most notable features included the increasing voggy conditions, in addition to the unusual Kona wind flow across the state. This air flow from the deeper tropics carried some showers into our leeward areas, a couple of which were briefly heavy. I spent the day in Kihei, as usual at my day job, where in the late morning hours there was a rather short lived downpour. Looking out the window early this evening, it has become very voggy, with thick haze masking all but the closest physical terrain features. We will have to get used to this murky reality, as they will be upon us through the next several days. Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting: If you’ve ever been on a road trip, you’ve probably seen this sight at a rest stop: one, or many big rig trucks, just…idling. Not going anywhere. What is this, like a computer on "sleep," ready to go? No. The answer may surprise you. At least in the US, truck drivers are required to rest 10 hours for every 11 driven. A reasonable thing, but this often necessitates them sleeping in their cabins. And that requires power for the heating or cooling, and other comforts of "home" on the road. Power that comes from a running truck.  But that has consequences. On the environment, on the driver, and on the vehicle. Multiply that by the number of truckers on the road at any given time, and the potential impact is enormous. And it doesn’t have to be that way. IdleAire has created a device that alleviates the need for idling, while retaining all that truckers are accustomed to having while at rest. And it doesn’t require retrofitting the vehicle, beyond a $10 window adapter, a price point apparently unique for the industry.

Interesting2: Recipe for energy saving unravelled in migratory birds, pointed wings together with carrying less weight per wing area and avoidance of high winds and atmospheric turbulence save a bird loads of energy during migration. This has been shown for the first time in free-flying wild birds by researchers at Princeton University, the University of Montana, and the German Max Planck Institute for Ornithology. They state in PLoS ONE’s May 14th edition that climate change might have a critical impact on small migrants’ energy budgets if it causes higher winds and atmospheric instability as predicted. The costs of migration are enormous: in small songbirds, flight increases energy expenditure by approximately 50 % during the migratory period.

Biologists Melissa Bowlin and Martin Wikelski examined the energetics of Swainson’s thrushes, which are often used to study migration. Some of these small songbirds of only 30 grams travel an amazing distance of about 4800 km from their winter site in Panama to breed in Canada, and back again. In total, a one-way trip takes 3.2 million wing beats and about 1300 kJ of extra energy.

As they can not take much fuel ”˜on board’ and can only afford short stops, the thrushes have to fly very efficiently. Birds with rounder wingtips and a higher ”˜wingloading’ — a high body mass compared to the wing area — were found to have a higher heart rate, and therefore a higher rate of energy expenditure. Also, heart rates increased with wind speed, but surprisingly it did not matter whether it was a tailwind or a headwind. Heart rates also went up with increasing atmospheric instability. Avoidance of high winds and turbulence may therefore reduce flight costs for small birds during their migration.

Interesting3: Overconfidence ensures failure in business. New research reveals big-headed business people are more likely to jump into new ventures with little regard for competition and market size. The results, detailed in the recent issue of the journal Experimental Psychology, shed light on why many ventures fail in the first few years. In 2006, nearly 650,000 new businesses with employees opened their doors in the United States, while nearly 565,000 firms closed, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration. More than 99 percent of the nearly 27 million businesses in the U.S. in 2006 were small firms with fewer than 500 employees. "Market entry decisions tend to be overoptimistic," said lead researcher Briony Pulford, a psychologist at the University of Leicester in England, "with the inevitable result that new business startups tend to exceed market capacity, and many new businesses fail within a few years."