Hawaiian Island weather details & Aloha paragraphs

Aloha Paragraphs



A nice way to end the day
Photo Credit: Flickr.com

After a period of lighter than normal winds here in Hawaii, we’ve seen returning trade winds Wednesday. The latest weather map shows a 1027 millibar high pressure system located to the northwest of Hawaii. The leading edge of these returning winds, will arrive from the northwest Wednesday evening. Trade winds coming in from this direction often have a slightly cooler feel to them, than when they blow in from the east…although with a minimal influence during the summer season. These winds will continue through the rest of this week, right on into next week.

The atmosphere has become dry and stable behind the recent out of season cold front. This satellite image shows that the leftover clouds, from the frontal boundary, have mostly evaporated, leaving the state mostly sunny late Wednesday afternoon. Computer forecast models suggest that we’ll see just a few off and on showers falling on those windward sides. As we move into the upcoming weekend, we may see some increase in showers again along the windward sides. The leeward areas will remain generally dry, as would be expected this time of year. 



The eastern Pacific remains active with tropical storm Boris, and tropical storm Douglas churning the waters. Here’s a storm tracking map, showing the two systems in relation to the Aloha state. There remains no threat to the Hawaiian Islands. Tropical storm Boris has weakened from a hurricane recently, as it moved over cooler water, while losing more steam…and becoming a tropical depression over the next several days. Here’s a satellite image showing these two counterclockwise spinning storms in the eastern Pacific.



~~~  I’m starting to run out of adjectives to describe the abnormal weather that we’ve seen happening here in the Hawaiian Islands! Yesterday’s very unusual cold front, brought lots of clouds, and many showers to our islands. This was a boon though, as we so needed the rainfall! We saw less than the normal amount of showers during our spring season, which has us going into our typically dry summer months on the verge of a drought…perhaps beyond verge! At any rate, it was wonderful to see such a rare frontal cloud band dip so far south into the tropics.

~~~ The computer forecast models remain on our side, so to speak, as they’re suggesting that we may find more showers arriving this weekend. These showers would be taking aim on the windward sides. The source of these showers would be the close proximity of low pressure systems aloft, along with plenty of available moisture near the surface…to feed the showers. At this point we will take whatever showers we can get, and if see these wet trade winds manifest as pointed out by the models, we will be lucky!

~~~ It’s early Wednesday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin writing this last paragaph of this morning’s narrative. Skies were still quite cloudy early this morning, what with the remnant moisture from yesterday totally unusual cold front. During the day however, those clouds have pretty much completely cleared away, leaving a sunny day in their place. I expect dry and sunny weather to remain in place through Friday. As we move into the weekend, we may see some increase in windward showers, let’s fine tune that prospect over the next couple of days. We have the upcoming 4th of July holiday on Friday, so we want to definitely have good weather for everyone who will be outdoors having fun! I’ll be back very early Thursday morning with your next new weather narrative, I hope you have a great Wednesday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

By the way, as many of you know, I have a ping pong table on my deck up in Kula, just outside my weather tower. If you were wondering what our game playing looks like, here’s a good example how a typical game would look…yeah right Glenn!

Interesting:

The Hong Kong Observatory has declared June 2008 its wettest month ever on record, with records dating back to 1884. Up to midday on Monday June 30th, the total rainfall recorded at the Hong Kong Observatory was 1,346.1mm (53 inches) breaking the previous record set in May 1889. The previous rainfall record was 1,241.1mm (49 inches).  The heavy rain is being attributed to active southwesterlies over the south China coastal areas during the first half of the month. On June 7th in particular, a heavy storm gave as much as 145.5mm (5.73 inches) of rain in one hour.

This set a new record at the Hong Kong Observatory for the highest rainfall ever recorded in an hourly period. The rain triggered floods and landslides prompting the highest level of weather alert. Rainfall during the second half of June is being attributed to Typhoon Fengshen. Fengshen which first lashed the Philippines hit southern China a week ago as a weakened tropical storm. The storm was slow moving and lashed the region with heavy rainfall for several days. Guangzhou and Macau (also in the Pearl River Delta) both set new monthly rainfall records. Although a few showers are forecast for Hong Ko today, high pressure is expected to bring fine weather over the next few days.

Interesting2: China‘s latest Olympics nightmare is a vast algae bloom that covers one-third of the sea where the world’s best sailors are supposed to be competing in just over a month. Athletes call it the blob, the carpet, the fairway. "We almost think of it as land," said Carrie Howe, a member of the U.S. team and her three-person squad’s unofficial algae remover. During practice, she dips her hand into the goo three or four times an hour to remove it from the rudder. When it collects shaggily on the boat’s tow rope, she and her teammates refer to it as "the dog." They’ve named it Hickory. Chinese officials are trying to make the stuff go away.

Hundreds of soldiers cleaned it up by hand in a seaside park Wednesday. About 10,000 ordinary citizens were doing the same along the shore, while more than 1,200 fishing and other boats hauled it in by net, the workers smiling and flashing the two-fingered victory sign to journalists. "We all need to pitch in," said Gao Shaofan, a massage parlor employee who was stuffing the algae into plastic sacks with her co-workers. "This is the worst it’s ever been that we know." Chinese officials promised at a news conference Wednesday that the Olympics competition area, all 19 square miles of it, will be clear of the algae before races begin Aug. 9th. 

Interesting3: Iowans will eventually see more severe flooding every few years because of new flood risks, including rain patterns altered by climate change, the National Wildlife Federation said Tuesday. "Big storms we expected to see every 20 years should be expected every four to six years by end of century," said Amanda Staudt, a climate scientist for the federation who led a news teleconference Tuesday on the issue.  The group said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is giving Iowans a false sense of security about the potential for future flooding, even as they have struggled with this year’s record damage. The corps’ latest flood-frequency projections, completed in 2004, did not anticipate more intense rainfall predicted because of climate change and underestimated how high water would rise during floods, the group said. 

A spokesman for the Army Corps said that the group’s assertions were not based on solid research and that the flood projections the corps uses are sound.  During Tuesday’s teleconference, Southern Illinois University geologist Nicholas Pinter said that Iowa‘s Flood of ’93 should have been called a 90-year flood, not a 500-year flood.  He also said the corps’ study underestimated the flood stage at St. Louis by 4.5 feet because it didn’t take into account the heavier future rains predicted by climatologists.  "These aren’t random events," Pinter said, noting there have been four major floods in the last 35 years. "We are getting a systematic series of floods" that are more frequent and severe than predicted by the corps’ models, he said.

Interesting4: During the European heat wave of 2003 that killed tens of thousands, the temperature in parts of France hit 104 degrees. Nearly 15,000 people died in that country alone. During the Chicago heat wave of 1995, the mercury spiked at 106 and about 600 people died.  In a few decades, people will look back at those heat waves "and we will laugh," said Andreas Sterl, author of a new study. "We will find (those temperatures) lovely and cool."  Sterl’s computer model shows that by the end of the century, high temperatures for once-in-a-generation heat waves will rise twice as fast as everyday average temperatures. Chicago, for example, would reach 115 degrees in such an event by 2100. Paris heat waves could near 109 with Lyon coming closer to 114.

Sterl, who is with the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, projects temperatures for rare heat waves around the world in a study soon to be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.  His numbers are blistering because of the drying-out effect of a warming world. Most global warming research focuses on average daily temperatures instead of these extremes, which cause greater damage.  His study projects a peak of 117 for Los Angeles and 110 for Atlanta by 2100; that’s 5 degrees higher than the current records for those cities. Kansas City faces the prospect of a 116-degree heat wave, with its current all-time high at 109, according to the NationalClimacticDataCenter.