Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs

Lanikai, Oahu…could this be my
favorite beach in all of the Islands?

The colors of windward Oahu…oh my!
Photo Credit: flickr.com

The trade winds will continue to be the primary weather feature here in the  Hawaiian Islands. A moderately strong 1031 millibar high pressure system, located to the northeast of Hawaii Wednesday evening…is the source of our moderately strong trade winds. The computer forecast models suggest that this late spring trade wind flow will prevail through the rest of this week, right on into next week. There will be some minor variations in wind speeds, although 10-25 mph will catch the outer limits in most areas, with those localized 30+ mph gusts here and there.

We will see some increase in windward showers over the next several days. The computer forecast models continue to bring an upper level trough over the state from the east over the next couple of days. This upper trough, with its associated cold pool of air, will destabilize our atmosphere enough…that we would find heavier rainfall arriving along our windward coasts and slopes Thursday into the weekend. There may be a few heavier showers along the leeward slopes on Maui and the Big Island too.

~~~  Despite the fact that this is the driest month of the year, and it would be somewhat unusual, we’re still looking for an increase in showers. The computer models have been very consistent in their forecast of increasing showers associated with an upper low pressure migrating in over the islands. These showers won’t envelop the entire island chain, but be generally restricted to the windward sides. The upcountry areas in Kona, and perhaps the Kula through Ulupalakua slopes on Maui…may see some afternoon showers as well.

~~~ I just finished work in Kihei, Maui, and will leave soon for the 40 minute drive upcountry to Kula. Glancing out the window, I see some high cirrus clouds streaming overhead from the east this evening. These icy clouds should provide a colorful sunset! During the day, the two most noticeable things that caught my eye, where the locally strong and gusty winds, and the thicker clouds that were around too. Those gusty trade winds reached over 40 mph at Kahoolawe, offshore from the south coast here on Maui. The cumulus clouds today had a different nature than we’ve seen recently, and were more hefty than the fairly wimpy, and rather shallow clouds of late. These more well developed clouds are the first signal of the approaching upper level trough of low pressure. This looping satellite image shows, to the east of the Big Island, the advancing cold air, with its high clouds, moving over the islands. I’ll be back very early Thursday morning with more news about this developing wet trade wind episode, which again, will deposit the bulk of the incoming showers along the windward coasts and slopes. I hope you have a great Wednesday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting: A team of astronomers has cooked up an out-of-this-world recipe for lunar concrete that could be used to build homes on the moon. The innovative recipe of carbon, glue and moon dust, which produces what looks like a hockey puck, could also be helpful in building other structures on the moon, including giant telescopes and solar power arrays. Lunar living aside, many astrophysicists think that large telescopes on the moon have their advantages: The moon lacks the clouds and blurring atmosphere that can distort images taken from ground-based observatories. In addition, the moon offers a permanent and stable platform — the lunar surface.

One limiting factor for making the concrete could be the amount of material a rocket can reasonably haul up to the moon. But if the bulk of the material was already on the moon, that would lighten the Earth-to-moon payload. And that is the case, Chen says. "We could make huge telescopes on the moon relatively easily, and avoid the large expense of transporting a large mirror from Earth," said Peter Chen of NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

"Since most of the materials are already there in the form of dust, you don’t have to bring very much stuff with you, and that saves a ton of money." Chen also notes that like concrete on Earth, the lunar type could have many uses. "We could build structures on the moon, perhaps habitats for astronauts on the moon, maybe igloos," Chen said during a press briefing here today at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS).

Interesting2: A little strategically placed makeup quickly turns the wimpiest of male barn swallows into chick magnets, amping up their testosterone and even trimming their weight, new research shows. It’s a "clothes make the man" lesson that — with some caveats — also applies to human males, researchers say. Using a $5.99 marker, scientists darkened the rust-colored breast feathers of male New Jersey barn swallows, turning lighter birds to the level of those naturally darkest. They had already found, in a test three years ago, that the marked-up males were more attractive to females and mated more often. This time they found out that the more attractive appearance, at least in the bird world, triggered changes to the animals’ body chemistry, increasing testosterone. "Other females might be looking at them as being a little more sexy, and the birds might be feeling better about themselves in response to that," said study co-author Kevin McGraw, an evolutionary biology professor at ArizonaStateUniversity. McGraw said the findings are surprising, in part because the hormonal changes occurred after only one week. The study was published in Tuesday’s edition of the journal Current Biology.

Interesting3: New research led by Dr Melanie Massaro and Dr Jim Briskie at the University of Canterbury, which found that the New Zealand bellbird is capable of changing its nesting behaviour to protect itself from predators, could be good news for island birds around the world at risk of extinction. The introduction of predatory mammals such as rats, cats and stoats to oceanic islands has led to the extinction of many endemic island birds, and exotic predators continue to threaten the survival of 25 percent of all endangered bird species worldwide. Dr Massaro says the impact of exotic predators on the native birds of oceanic islands is particularly profound as they evolved over millions of years largely in the absence of these predators and appear naive towards newly introduced mammals. But their study on the bellbird, an endemic New Zealand bird, has identified the ability of a previously naive island bird to change its nesting behaviour in response to the introduction of a large suite of exotic mammalian predators by humans.