Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs

Black and white…Oheo Gulch, east Maui

Closer view…in color
Photo Credit: flickr.com

The brisk trade winds will be around for the long haul here in the Hawaiian Islands. Wind speeds have increased into the moderately strong category Thursday evening, gradually increasing further in strength later Friday into the weekend. Wind speeds will become strong enough by Saturday, that we’ll likely see small craft wind advisory flags being hoisted in the windiest places around Maui and the Big Island. The computer forecast models show no end to these late spring trade winds at this point.

There will be a few showers around, although nothing heavy or widespread is indicated for the time being. The leeward sides will find dry weather, with the Kona slopes being the one standout, where the usual afternoon cloudiness may drop some generally light showers. As the trade winds increase a notch this weekend, we will likely see some increase in showers right after the weekend, as a retired cold front gets carried onto the windward sides by Monday into Tuesday.

~~~ Despite the fact that we’re seeing a few showers falling locally, it’s dry here in the islands. Dry enough in fact, that water usage is being restricted in some locales…although at this point, it’s still voluntary. If we continue to remain as dry as we are presently, mandatory water restrictions are a definite possibility during our normally dry summer months. Our next best chance for picking up some moisture would be right after this weekend, when an old cold front arrives at about the same time an upper level trough of low pressure gets here. Otherwise, we may have to wait until some tropical system moves close to the islands this summer.

~~~ Speaking of tropical systems, we find the first tropical cyclone of the 2008 hurricane season now having flared-up in the eastern Pacific. Tropical storm Alma is spinning just off the coast of Nicaragua. Here’s a National Hurricane Center storm track map, showing it getting ready to move overland, where it will lose steam quickly. Here in the central Pacific our 2008 hurricane season doesn’t begin until June 1st, two weeks after the eastern Pacific’s start date. We are expecting slightly less than the normal number of storms here in the central Pacific this year…which is a good thing.

~~~ Thursday was yet another nice day, they just keep coming our way, which of course is a good thing! The winds were up today, while rainfall was down. This pattern will continue through the rest of this week, with increasingly strong trade winds, which will be carrying very little in the way of showers. The overlying atmosphere is very dry and stable, which will keep island skies quite sunny during the days, along with seasonably warm to very warm days…especially along the sun drenched leeward coasts. Looking out the window here in Kihei, before I leave for the drive upcountry to Kula, it is sunny, sunny, and more sunny out there! I’ll be back again very early Friday morning, when I’ll be talking about just how dry it is, and what that means for us as we head into summer. I hope you have a great Thursday night wherever you happen to be spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting: All but one of the top 10 U.S. metropolitan areas that release the most greenhouse gases on a per capita basis lie east of the Mississippi River, a study released on Thursday showed. "A north-south divide is also apparent," as seven of the highest emitters of greenhouse gases are located in the south, including two from each of three states, Tennessee, Ohio and Kentucky, according to the report by the Regional Plan Association, a New York-based think tank. Honolulu was the greenest U.S. metro area, with a carbon footprint of only 1.356 metric tons per resident in 2005. he analysis only counted greenhouse gases from buildings and transportation, excluding utilities, for example. The second greenest on the list of the top 100 metropolitan areas was Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, followed by Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton, Oregon–Washington. Coming in fourth was New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, New York-New Jersey–Pennsylvania. Fifth-ranked was Boise City-Nampa, Idaho. The worst polluter was the metropolitan area of Lexington-Fayette, Kentucky, which ranked last at 100. Indianapolis, Indiana, was 99th, Cincinnati-Middletown, Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana was 98th, and Toledo, Ohio was 97th. Louisville, Kentucky-Indiana came in 96th, with Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro, Tennessee ranking 95th. The West was the only part of the nation that cut its carbon footprint from 2000 to 2005, according to the report.

Interesting2: A new way to make greener asphalt for U.S. highways and byways isn’t new at all. They’ve been doing it for decades in Africa and India. Asphalt is the sticky byproduct left after fuel and lubricating oil are extracted from crude petroleum. It’s too thick to be laid on roads as is, so in the United States it’s heated to as much as 300 degrees Fahrenheit to make it easy to pump and apply. A new national research program called the Asphalt Research Consortium (ARC) aims to make asphalt cheaper and more environmentally friendly to produce. That means it might, for example, last longer, or use recycled material, or be manufactured using less energy. There’s good reason for the effort: America has more than 4 million miles of roads. The only place you can be 22 miles away from a road in the contiguous states is a spot in the southeast corner of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. In other countries, so-called cold-mix asphalts save up to seven times the energy of the hot-mix counterparts, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison civil engineering professor Hussain Bahia.