Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs

Aloha Paragraphs



A Molokai sunset
Photo Credit: Flickr.com

The trade winds will be our primary weather influence through the 4th of July holiday. The latest weather map shows a 1025 millibar high pressure system located to the north-northwest of Hawaii Thursday evening. These trade winds will blow generally in the light to moderately strong range, although with those typically windier areas…finding stronger gusts. These winds will continue through the weekend, right on into the new week ahead.

These trade winds will blow just a few showers onto our windward sides at times.  During the next week or so, those windward sides will find off and on showers, probably more off than than on…with modest increases at times. The leeward sides in contrast, will generally remain dry, with lots of sunshine beaming down during the days. All of this is fairly normal for this time of year.



The eastern Pacific remains active with now weakened tropical depressions Boris and Douglas. Here’s a storm tracking map, showing the two systems in relation to Hawaii. There remains no threat to the Hawaiian Islands from any of this tropical cyclone activity. Here’s a satellite image showing those two storms in the eastern Pacific. Meanwhile, the Atlantic Ocean finally has its second tropical storm of the season, as Bertha churns the waters there.



~~~ Our weather here in the Hawaiian Islands will remain just fine during the 4th of July holiday weekend. The trade winds will continue to bring their cooling relief from the early summer heat…along with ventilating whatever smoke from fireworks that tries to accumulate Friday night. The leeward sides of the islands in particular, will be fabulous, with great sun tanning potentials along those sandy beaches. There will be small south swell waves breaking too, making for a fun time in the surf. Daytime high temperatures will be rising well into the 80F’s, with those hottest areas reaching perhaps 90F degrees.

~~~ The windward sides, will be pretty good too, although, as usual, there will be more wind blowing there. This is very common of course, thus the name…windward. The trade winds will be picking up some strength now, which will have the palm trees swaying back and forth, and also adding white caps to the ocean surface during the days. At the same time, that wind will help to carry clouds overhead, brought in from the ocean to our east. These clouds will spill a few showers at times, but nothing remarkable is expected. 

~~~ It’s early Thursday evening here in Kihei, Maui. This last work day of the week turned out to be a very nice day. I see no problems going into this long three day holiday weekend. The one problem that could crop up, would be troubles with fires started by the fireworks…especially along the bone dry leeward sides. Folks, particularly with sparklers, should be very careful not to light any brush on fire, and of course, not to burn themselves or others! I’m about to head out to Kahului, to take in a few film, this time called Hancock (2008), starring Will Smith and Jason Bateman, along with beautiful Charlize Theron among others. This film is not getting top scores by the critics, with one review saying: "Though it begins with promise, Hancock suffers from a flimsy narrative and poor execution." I don’t have high hopes for this film, like I did with last weeks Wanted…but I’ll give it a try anyway. I’ll be back early Friday morning with my own reviews. Here’s a trailer, if you’re interested in seeing a sneak preview of this new adventure film. At any rate, I hope you have a great Thursday night wherever you’re hanging your hat! Aloha for now…Glenn.

By the way, as many of you know, I have a ping pong table on my deck here in Kula, just outside my weather tower. If you were wondering what our level of play is, here’s a good example how a typical game would look…yeah right Glenn! This next example would be like one of our shorter rallies

Special: Fly with your mouse

Interesting:

The rocket’s red glare on future July Fourth celebrations may be more eco-friendly as researchers revise the chemistry behind the pyrotechnic displays. Roman candles and roadside flares typically use potassium perchlorate to speed up the fuel-burning process that drives them. As they burn, they should consume most of the perchlorate, but sometimes the reaction snuffs out before all the fuel is consumed, leaving behind some of the chemical. Excess perchlorate is also sometimes added to pyrotechnics.

These leftovers can be a problem because they inhibit the working of the thyroid gland, which produces a key hormone in the human body, according to an article in the June 30 issue of Chemical & Engineering News.

A 2007 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency study mentioned in the article measured perchlorate levels in a small lake in Oklahoma where an annual Fourth of July fireworks show is held. Within 14 hours of the display, perchlorate levels in the water were 1,000 times higher than they were naturally.

One way chemists are trying to revamp these explosive displays is by using compounds with a high nitrogen content to supply the energy that drives the burning reaction. Getting all that energy from breaking nitrogen bonds means that less perchlorate is needed to make those burning shapes in the sky.

Less perchlorate also means less smoke, which in turn means that fewer coloring agents, which are usually heavy metals like strontium, barium and copper, are needed to dazzle patriotic revelers.

Interesting2:

Six months after the first freighter put to sea drawn by a giant kite, a German company said Thursday that the invention could "realistically" reduce a ship’s fuel use by 15 per cent. Enthusiastic proponents say that the computerized SkySails system could usher in a new age of wind power in commercial shipping, although the main power still comes from the ship’s engine. Because of high oil prices, even small savings are valuable to ship-owners. A 90-metre coastal freighter, the Michael A, was retro-fitted with one of the kites at the end of last year and a purpose-built kite vessel, the Beluga SkySails, set off in March on a two-month maiden voyage to Venezuela, the United States and Norway. The Hamburg-based SkySails company said its forecast of at least a 15-per-cent reduction in annual fuel costs applied for European coastal waters including many regions with moderate winds.

The 160-square-metre kite has a pull of eight tons in a stiff breeze, almost as much as a single engine on an Airbus A318 plane and reducing fuel use at such moments by half, Skysails said. Flying higher, the kite had more pull than a sail on a mast. The tests on the Michael A showed the owner could choose between fuel-saving or greater speed, with the sail forecast to raise average speed during the year from 10 to 11.6 knots. Testing is to continue till next year before the system is commercialized. "The emphasis in the second pilot phase will be on extending the flight periods of the kite and optimizing its performance," said Stephan Wrage, 35, inventor of the system and founder of the firm. He hopes to make it pull evenly when the ship pitches in a swell. He said 60,000 of the 100,000 freighters in the world could be retro-fitted with such a kite, though his system was not suitable for very large container vessels.

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 National Climactic Data Center.