Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs

Aloha Paragraphs



Beach scene on the island of Oahu
Photo Credit: Flickr.com

What a way to start off the first day of July! That is…with a cold front moving down through the island chain! Yes, there is no other way to think about this, than having it be a highly unusual occurrence. Cold fronts here in the islands usually occur from November through the winter months, into spring. Some years we see an early front approaching Hawaii in late October, and on the other end of the spectrum, maybe a few late season cold fronts bringing showers during the month of April, maybe early May at the very latest. But July 1st, geez, that’s what I would consider exceedingly rare! This years entire spring season was filled with unusual weather events, most of which were focused around the stop and go pattern of the trade winds.

Meanwhile, the parent low pressure system, which spawned this way out of season cold front, also spun-out a north swell. This has brought much larger surf along our north facing beaches, than what we hardly ever see in July. This surf isn’t nearly as large as what we would expect during the winter months, but the generated dynamics are exactly the same as they would be during winter…and don’t forget that its summer now! There were head high waves breaking on the north shore of Oahu this morning, and we might see some overhead set waves breaking before this rare north swell subsides over the next day or two. Could there be anything else happening that would be eye catching, oh yeah, then there’s what was hurricane Boris to our east…which recently was downgraded to a strong tropical storm at 11am HST!

What can we pin all this unusual weather on? Could it be global warming, global climate change, or what?  During the day I had a phone conversation with Mr. Ray Tanabe, one of the senior members at the NWS Honolulu office this morning. We were talking about what was making for all the unusual things lately here in the central Pacific. He mentioned that he had talked to one of the senior Meteorology professors at the UH about this very question, and the truth is that no one really knows for sure what is causing all this. There don’t even seem to be any wild theories that are being batted around in the Met community. One thing can be said, and that is that we haven’t seen a year quite like 2008 as far back as anyone can remember. It will be interesting to see how the rest of the year manifests, especially as we get deeper into our hurricane season.

At any rate…back to the present. Once the frontal boundary dissipates, and we have high pressure strengthening to our north, which won’t be long, our weather will snap back to some semblance of normal. How long we can maintain normal weather conditions is debatable…although climatology would have us believe through much of the rest of the summer. The trade winds “should” take over as the main weather driver, going forward, but we’ll have to wait and see. The models show a pretty classic trade wind weather pattern taking over starting Wednesday, through the rest of the week…right on into next week. The remnant moisture from what will be former tropical storm Boris, will likely move by to the south of Hawaii early next week…although last week the models showed it coming more northward towards Hawaii. That will leave us with just the usual passing showers activity along the windward sides through the rest of the week.



As far as tropical cyclone activity in the eastern Pacific goes, tropical depression Cristina has dissipated, while tropical storm Boris became a hurricane briefly, before weakening back into a tropica storm…and finally, a new tropical system just started near Mexico late Tuesday afternoon. Here’s a storm tracking map, showing the two systems in relation to the Aloha state. There remains no threat to the Hawaiian Islands. This is all fairly normal during this time of year, when the waters in the eastern Pacific are warming quickly under the summer sun. Here’s a satellite image showing these two counterclockwise spinning storms in the eastern Pacific.



~~~  Tuesday was one of those very interesting days, in many ways.  Here on Maui, the cold front parked itself most of the day. The frontal boundary early Tuesday evening had its back edge still over Oahu, with its leading edge having moved over most of the Big Island. There were still scattered showers falling within this cloud band. This looping radar image shows showers still draped over the central islands, at least at the time of this writing. I expect that there will be a gradually clearing of the cold front during the night, into Wednesday. I’m about ready to leave Kihei for the drive home to Kula. I’m hoping that I’ll run into a wall of fog as I get upcountry…one of my favorite weather types! I’ll be back very early Wednesday morning with your next new weather narrative. I hope you have a great Tuesday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting:

The dwindling march of the penguins is signaling that the world’s oceans are in trouble, scientists now say.  Penguins may be the tuxedo-clad version of a canary in the coal mine, with generally ailing populations from a combination of global warming, ocean oil pollution, depleted fisheries, and tourism and development, according to a new scientific review paper. A University of Washington biologist detailed specific problems around the world with remote penguin populations, linking their decline to the overall health of southern oceans. "Now we’re seeing effects (of human caused warming and pollution) in the most faraway places in the world," said conservation biologist P. Dee Boersma, author of the paper published in the July edition of the journal Bioscience. "Many penguins we thought would be safe because they are not that close to people. And that’s not true." Scientists figure there are between 16 to 19 species of penguins. About a dozen are in some form of trouble, Boersma wrote.

A few, such as the king penguin found in islands north of Antarctica, are improving in numbers, she said. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature lists three penguin species as endangered, seven as vulnerable, which means they are "facing a high risk of extinction in the wild," and two more as "near threatened." About 15 years ago only five to seven penguin species were considered vulnerable, experts said. And the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which has already listed one penguin species on its endangered list, is studying whether it needs to add 10 more.  The largest Patagonian penguin colony in the world is at Punta Tumbo, Argentina, but the number of breeding pairs there dropped in half from about 400,000 in the late 1960s to about 200,000 in October 2006, Boersma reported. Over a century, African penguins have decreased from 1.5 million breeding pairs to 63,000. The decline overall isn’t caused by one factor, but several.

Interesting2: Wal-Mart Stores Inc is sourcing more produce sold in its U.S. supercenters and Neighborhood Market stores from local farmers as it tries to offset the soaring transportation costs that are driving up food prices. The world’s largest retailer said on Tuesday it had increased the number of local U.S. farmers that it works with by 50 percent in the past two years, and it would like to continue expanding that figure at a double-digit rate. While Wal-Mart declined to provide an exact figure, it said it now works with "hundreds" of individual farmers, and this year it expects to source about $400 million in locally grown fruits and vegetables from farmers across the United States. "When we’re buying local, there are less trucks on the road, less miles that that produce is traveling and therefore less fuel," said Pam Kohn, Wal-Mart’s general merchandise manager for grocery.  

Wal-Mart defines "local" as buying from farmers in a state and selling the produce at stores in the same state. Over the summer months, it said locally sourced fruits and vegetables make up a fifth of the produce available in Wal-Mart stores.  Grocery is a big business for the company, accounting for 41 percent of sales in its U.S. Wal-Mart stores for its fiscal year ended Jan. 31. As food prices rise, shoppers have been flocking to its stores in search of cheaper groceries.  But soaring fuel costs mean the cost of transporting food to its 2,555 supercenters — a full grocery store combined with a discount store — and 138 Neighborhood Market grocery stores is more expensive, making it tougher to keep prices low.