Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs

The Iao Valley on Maui
Photo Credit: flickr.com

South to southeast breezes have replaced our normal trade winds for the time being. A late season cold front has pushed our trade wind producing ridge down over the state now…which is why our trade winds will be on vacation through the next day or two. This wind direction will carry volcanic haze up over the islands, along with muggy air into Friday. Wind speeds will be generally light, with returning trade winds forecast beginning later Friday into the weekend.

This cold front will stall before arriving here in the Hawaiian Islands. Our weather has taken a turn back into a light wind convective weather pattern now, with generally clear to partly cloudy mornings giving way to afternoon cloudy periods. These convective cumulus clouds over the interiors of the islands will drop a few showers, leaving the beaches dry and quite sunny for the most part during the days. The returning trades this weekend, will bring back a few showers to the windward sides then.

~~~  I’m in Kihei as I begin writing this last paragraph of today’s afternoon update. I still don’t see a lot of volcanic haze out there, with the West Maui Mountains, along with the Iao Valley, quite clearly visible. I would expect the haze to be carried over the state during the night, with restricted visibilities evident by Thursday morning. As noted above however, this stuff will depend greatly on the different wind directions that the winds are carrying this vog up from the Big Island…to each individual island. I’ll be back very early Thursday morning with your next new weather narrative…including the nature of our haze atmospherics then. I hope you have a great Wednesday night until then! Aloha, Glenn.

Interesting: In an effort to improve electronics recycling in the United States, the U.S. Postal Service is developing a free national collection program for small electronic items. The program, now in a pilot stage, provides courtesy envelopes with pre-paid postage for patrons to deposit their unwanted digital cameras, printer cartridges, MP3 players, cell phones, and PDAs. International recycling company Clover Technologies Group processes the devices in its U.S. and Mexican facilities and then refurbishes and resells them if possible. Now limited to select cities, including Chicago and Los Angeles, the program may expand nationwide in the fall, and it eventually may accept a wider range of devices. "It doesn’t cost us anything because [Clover] is paying for postage on the envelope," said Joanne Veto, a post office spokesperson. "For us, it’s a really smart thing to do." The program would be a de facto national electronic recycling program, the first for the United States. As the only industrialized nation not to ratify the 1989 Basel Convention, which requires its signatories to notify developing nations of incoming hazardous waste shipments, many environmentalists have criticized the country for its lack of action to reduce the international spread of electronic garbage, known as e-waste.

Interesting2: About 45 minutes north of downtown Los Angeles, a machine the size of a small truck flattens tons of food scraps, paper towels and other household trash into the side of a growing 300-foot pile. To Waste Management, which operates the landfill, this is more than just a mountain of garbage. Pipes tunneled deep into the mound extract gas from the rotting waste and send it to a plant that turns it into electricity. Apart from the huge-wheeled compactor driving over garbage on its surface, it looks like an ordinary hillside. And it doesn’t even smell. Yet it produces enough energy to power 2,500 homes in Southern California.  About 45 minutes north of downtown Los Angeles, a machine the size of a small truck flattens tons of food scraps, paper towels and other household trash into the side of a growing 300-foot pile. To Waste Management, which operates the landfill, this is more than just a mountain of garbage. Pipes tunneled deep into the mound extract gas from the rotting waste and send it to a plant that turns it into electricity. Apart from the huge-wheeled compactor driving over garbage on its surface, it looks like an ordinary hillside. And it doesn’t even smell. Yet it produces enough energy to power 2,500 homes in Southern California.

Interesting3: Honda Motor Co said on Wednesday it would launch a new, low-cost hybrid car in Japan, North America and Europe in early 2009 as it seeks to cut the lead of Toyota Motor Corp in the green car race.  Despite the pressure of record-high oil prices and concerns over climate change, fuel-efficient and low-emission hybrids still occupy a small niche in the global car market, partly due to their higher costs for both consumers and automakers.  Japan‘s top two automakers lead the industry in the fuel-saving technology which runs on both electricity and gasoline, but Toyota has dominated sales with its groundbreaking Prius model, which is only available as a hybrid.  Koichi Ogawa, chief portfolio manager at Daiwa SB Investments, said it was hard to know whether Honda could challenge Toyota‘s dominance.  "When you say ‘hybrid,’ the image that really comes to mind is Prius," he said. "Honda is very dependent on the U.S. market, which is shifting towards things like hybrids, and for survival having a hybrid (model) is essential."  By twinning a conventional engine and battery-powered electric motor, hybrids currently add $5,000 or more to comparable gasoline models, a premium Honda Chief Executive Takeo Fukui sees coming down to around $2,000 in the next generation of hybrids.  "It is important to move hybrid vehicles from the current image-oriented stage to the new stage toward full-scale penetration," Fukui told a news conference.  Executive Vice President Koichi Kondo said Honda hoped to price the hybrid-only car under 2 million yen ($19,290).

Interesting4: The “Big One,” as earthquake scientists imagine it in a detailed, first-of-its-kind script, unzips California’s mighty San Andreas Fault north of the Mexican border. In less than two minutes, Los Angeles and its sprawling suburbs are shaking like a bowl of jelly. The jolt from the 7.8-magnitude temblor lasts for three minutes — 15 times longer than the disastrous 1994 Northridge quake. Water and sewer pipes crack. Power fails. Part of major highways break. Some high-rise steel frame buildings and older concrete and brick structures collapse. Hospitals are swamped with 50,000 injured as all of Southern California reels from a blow on par with the Sept. 11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina: $200 billion in damage to the economy, and 1,800 dead. Only about 700 of those people are victims of building collapses. Many others are lost to the 1,600 fires burning across the region — too many for firefighters to tackle at once. A team of about 300 scientists, governments, first responders and industries worked for more than a year to create a realistic crisis scenario that can be used for preparedness, including a statewide drill planned later this year. Published by the U.S. Geological Survey and California Geological Survey, it is to be released Thursday in Washington, D.C. Researchers caution that it is not a prediction, but the possibility of a major California quake in the next few decades is very real. Last month, the USGS reported that the GoldenState has a 46 percent chance of a 7.5 or larger quake in the next 30 years, and that such a quake probably would hit Southern California. The Northridge quake, which killed 72 people and caused $25 billion in damage, was much smaller at magnitude 6.7.  “We cannot keep on planning for Northridge,” said USGS seismologist Lucy Jones. “The science tells that it’s not the worst we’re going to face.”