June 12-13 2008


Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Thursday: 

Lihue, Kauai – 80
Honolulu, Oahu – 82
Kaneohe, Oahu – 81
Kahului, Maui – 89
Hilo, Hawaii – 84
Kailua-kona – 82

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level at 4 p.m. Thursday afternoon:

Kahului, Maui – 84F  
Lihue, Kauai – 76

Precipitation Totals – The following numbers represent the largest precipitation totals (inches) during the last 24 hours on each of the major islands, as of Thursday afternoon:

3.70  Hanalei River, Kauai
5.75 Ahuimanu Loop, Oahu
0.73 Molokai
0.83 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.47 Puu Kukui, Maui
0.45 Kamuela Upper, Big Island

Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a 1036 millibar high pressure system far to the northeast of the islands. This high pressure cell, along with its associated ridge, will keep light trade winds blowing across our area Friday and Saturday.  

Satellite and Radar Images: To view the cloud conditions we have here in Hawaii, please use the following satellite links, starting off with the Infrared Satellite Image of the islands to see all the clouds around the state during the day and night. This next image is one that gives close images of the islands only during the daytime hours, and is referred to as a Close-up visible image. This next image shows a larger view of the Pacific…giving perspective to the wider ranging cloud patterns in the Pacific Ocean. To help you keep track of where any showers may be around the islands, here’s the latest animated radar image. 

Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live webcam on the summit of near 14,000 foot Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The tallest peak on the island of Maui is the Haleakala Crater, which is near 10,000 feet in elevation. These two webcams are available during the daylight hours here in the islands…and when there’s a big moon rising just after sunset for an hour or two! Plus, during the nights and early mornings you will be able to see stars, and the sunrise too…depending upon weather conditions.

Aloha Paragraphs

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  Lush tropical vegetation…near Hana, Maui 
Photo Credit: flickr.com

A lighter version of the trade winds will prevail over the Hawaiian Islands now. A strong, but far away 1035 millibar high pressure system, would ordinarily keep our local trade winds rather strong and gusty. Our most recent forecasts continue to show light trade winds however, as an upper level trough of low pressure moves close…which will cause this lighter wind flow to prevail today into the weekend.

Showers will fall both along the windward sides, and over and around the mountains during the afternoons. We could call this a modified convective weather pattern, as the emphasis for precipitation will be along the windward sides…and the upcountry areas later in the days. There’s a good chance that some of these showers will be locally generous, with even a random thunderstorm. This weather pattern will continue through the upcoming weekend.

~~~ We find a rather complex weather situation here in the islands now. If we looked at this surface weather map, we see a fairly routine trade wind producing high pressure system far to the northeast of the state. This would, under normal circumstances, be spinning-out moderate to fresh trade winds across our tropical latitudes. Although, if we look at actual wind speeds in our area, they are lighter than would e expected…and have even veered to the southeast in places.

~~~ We need to look higher in the atmosphere for the complicating factor, which turns out to be a trough of low pressure aloft. This trough, or what we can think of as a lobe of cold air, has helped to weaken our surface winds. This trough has also made our local clouds more shower prone as well. As of Thursday afternoon, the impressive 5.75" rainfall total during the last 24 hours, was a rain gauge on Oahu, called Ahuimanu Loop.

~~~ This somewhat unusual weather pattern will prevail, with its lighter than normal winds, and occasionally more generous than normal rainfall…through the rest of this week. It will take the departure of the upper level trough to bring us back into a typical late spring trade wind weather pattern. At that point the trade winds will pick up in strength, and the bias for showers will move back over the windward coasts and slopes. This will likely take place by Monday or Tuesday next week.

~~~ It’s early Thursday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin writing this last paragraph of today’s weather narrative.  As this satellite image shows, we still have that same spot of towering cumulus clouds just to the south of Maui County…where it was Thursday morning. These rain bearing clouds could bring showers, some heavy over the leeward sides of Maui at any time. The island of Oahu too has had some generous showers, where a flood advisory has been in effect much of the afternoon.  The main source of showers during the last 24 hours, which will likely be the case through the next 48 hours, will be the cloud plumes moving between one island to the next…up the chain. Clouds and possible showers will move from the Big Island up over Molokai or Oahu, and from there up over Kauai. Otherwise, this kind of weather pattern will bring nice weather to most of the beach areas, with lots of sunshine beaming down during the day Friday. I’ll be back very early Friday morning with your next new weather narrative. I hope you have a great Thursday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting: The number of sharks in the Mediterranean has fallen by 97 percent in the last 200 years, putting the sea’s ecological balance at risk, a report released on Wednesday said.  The report, by the Washington-based Lenfest Ocean Program, used records such as fishermen’s logs, shark landings, museum specimens and visual sightings to estimate the number and size of the Mediterranean sharks over the last two centuries. There was only enough data on five of the 20 big shark species present in the Mediterranean to be useful to the study — the hammerhead, thresher, blue and two species of mackerel shark, which averaged a decline of 97 percent. "It will have a major impact on the ecosystem because large predatory sharks are at the top of the food chain," said Francesco Ferretti, the report’s lead author. Losing the top of the food chain can mean smaller fish thrive and consume more of their prey, upsetting the ecological balance. "If we lose these sharks we are going to lose this important portion of the ecosystem functioning," said Ferretti. A report last month by the International Union for Conservation of Nature found 11 kinds of shark faced extinction due to overfishing, partly caused by booming demand for shark fin soup in Asia. Fishers from all over the world catch and trade sharks for their lucrative fins, often discarding their carcasses, the report said, noting Indonesia and Spain are among the top culprits. 

Interesting2: Africa is suffering deforestation at twice the world rate and the continent’s few glaciers are shrinking fast, according to a U.N. atlas on Tuesday. Satellite pictures, often taken three decades apart, showed expanding cities, pollution, deforestation and climate change were damaging the African environment despite glimmers of improvement in some areas. "Africa is losing more than 4 million hectares (9.9 million acres) of forest every year — twice the world’s average deforestation rate," according to a statement by the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) about the 400-page atlas, prepared for a meeting of African environment ministers in Johannesburg. Four million hectares is roughly the size of Switzerland or slightly bigger than the U.S. state of Maryland. Photographs showed recent scars in forests in countries including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Nigeria and Rwanda. It said forest loss was a major concern in 35 countries in Africa. And it showed that environmental change extended beyond the well-known shrinking of the snows on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa’s highest peak at 5,895 meters (19,340 ft), or the drying up of Lake Chad. On the Ugandan border with Democratic Republic of Congo, for instance, glaciers on the RwenzoriMountains where the highest peak is 5,109 meters shrank by half between 1987 and 2003, it said.

Interesting3: Scientists tracking a dramatic shrinkage in Arctic sea ice over the past few years have come to a worrisome conclusion: If the trend continues, it could speed up the melting of Arctic permafrost as well. The environmental consequences of such a development are uncertain, but they could spell trouble for plants, animals, and humans in those regions that depend on solid ground underfoot. As global temperatures climb, the extent of sea ice that persists in the Arctic until the end of summer has hit record lows. Between August and October 2007, for example, the area covered by sea ice shrank more than 30% below its average for that part of the year. At the same time, air temperatures in western Canada and Alaska jumped more than 2°C over the 1978-2006 average for late summer and early autumn. Researchers from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), both in Boulder, Colorado, realized that they had seen a similar relationship between Arctic ice melt and land warming in their climate computer model. So atmospheric scientist David Lawrence of NCAR and co-author Andrew Slater of NSIDC plugged the data they had collected–from satellites and ground- and sea-based monitoring stations in the Arctic–into the simulation to see what a continuing pattern would produce.

Interesting4: The sun’s surface has been fairly blank for the last couple of years, and that has some worried that it may be entering another Maunder minimum, the sun’s 50-year abstinence from sunspots, which some scientists have linked to the Little Ice Age of the 17th century. Could a new sunspot drought plunge us into another decades-long cold spell? It’s not very likely, says David Hathaway a solar physicist at NASA’s MarshallSpaceFlightCenter in Huntsville, Ala. The question came up after an international solar conference held last week at MontanaStateUniversity, where scientists discussed the dearth of solar activity in the last couple years. "It continues to be dead," said Saku Tsuneta with the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and program manager for the Hinode solar mission. "That’s a small concern, a very small concern," because the period of inactivity seems to be going on longer than normal. Some scientists think such inactive periods, such as the Maunder minimum, are responsible for cold spells in the past, such as the Little Ice Age. The sun’s energy drives all climate and weather on Earth. And Hathaway does agree there are good indications that fluctuations in solar output related to sunspot cycles influence the Earth’s climate. And the Maunder minimum isn’t the only evidence — scientists have linked two smaller sunspot minimums (periods of time with very few sunspots) in the early 19th century to cold spells, as well as periods before the Maunder minimum deduced from tree ring records, he said.