July 8-9 2008


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

Lihue, Kauai – 82
Honolulu, Oahu – 87
Kaneohe, Oahu – 84
Kahului, Maui – 85
Hilo, Hawaii – 85
Kailua-kona – 86

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

Kapalua – 88F  
Barking Sands, Kauai – 79

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

1.27  Hanapepe, Kauai
0.71 Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.00 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
1.12 Ulupalakua, Maui
0.05 Hilo airport, Big Island

Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a 1028 millibar high pressure system located far to the northeast of the islands. This high pressure cell, along with its associated ridge, will keep our trade winds blowing through Thursday. Look for light to almost moderately strong trades in most areas. Here’s a link to the NOAA weather school.

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


http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1068/533009440_a7eb9e54ab.jpg?v=0
The rugged Puna coast on the Big Island
Photo Credit: Flickr.com







The trade winds will continue to grace our islands, although will remain slightly lighter than normal for this time of year. The latest weather map shows far away high pressure systems located to the northeast and northwest of Hawaii Tuesday evening. The trade winds will remain on the light side of the wind spectrum through the rest of this week. The computer models are suggesting that by next week, our trade winds will increase in strength, into the moderate to fresh range. The trade winds on average blow about 95% of the time during the month of July.

There will be periods of showers arriving on the trade winds, although nothing overly generous is in the forecast for the time being. As usual, the windward sides will pick up most of these showers, while the leeward beaches remain generally dry, although a few showers could fall locally there too…perhaps even some heavy downpours. There’s a chance that the remnant moisture from former eastern Pacific tropical cyclone Boris, may bring an increase in clouds and windward showers to the Big Island and possibly Maui. This isn’t a sure thing, as this area of tropical moisture may miss us…moving by to the south. 



~~~  As the two paragraphs above point out, nothing particularly unusual about our weather here in Hawaii at the moment. The trade winds will remain active, just strong enough to temper our summertime heat, but light enough to remain below the small craft wind advisory threshold. The trade winds will gain strength next week, which is normal for this time of year. It would be very unusual for the trade winds to falter too much during July. It generally takes having a retired tropical weather system moving right over the islands, or just to our north…to knock our trade winds down completely during the height of summer.

~~~ Rainfall has been light enough so far this year, that many areas are below, or well below normal. As I’ve mentioned before, our spring rainfall turned out to be less productive than we like to see…which pushes us into a dry summer. If we don’t see some added precipitation coming from some source, which is not on our radar screens at this time, I’ll be writing more and more about that dry weather feature called drought. We actually have drought conditions that exist already, with localized severe drought conditions on Molokai and the Big Island. We remain ever hopeful that some upper level trough of low pressure will move overhead, helping to wring-out extra showers in the not too distant future.

~~~ It’s early Tuesday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin writing this last paragraph of today’s narrative. Tuesday was yet another wonderful summer day here in Hawaii. Clear blue skies prevailed in many areas, with warm to very warm sunshine beaming down. Each of the islands, along the leeward slopes for the most part, developed thick cloud cover, where some localized pretty heavy rains fell. Here on Maui, the rains began upcountry in Ulupalakua, and during the afternoon hours worked their way down towards the coasts into Wailea and even parts of south Kihei I understand. Looking out the window here though, at around 5pm, the clouds are sparse looking towards the north shore, where not a hint of rain is in sight. I’m about ready to leave Kihei for the drive up to Kula, where I’ll find cooler temperatures, and the perfect place awaits me, my deck…to view the sunset. I hope you had a great Tuesday wherever you happened to have spent it! I’ll be back very early Wednesday morning with your next new weather narrative from paradise. Aloha for now…Glenn. 





Interesting:



Global warming will sow destruction across Russia and ex-Soviet states, a report said on Tuesday after the world’s richest countries issued targets on harmful emissions that environmentalists criticized as too soft. The 52-page report — written by green group WWF and British charity Oxfam — described a grim picture of social, ecological and economic collapse in the world’s biggest country and its former empire unless the world took urgent action. "This diagram shows infrastructure collapse. When the temperature raises the infrastructure breaks," WWF climate change expert in Russia Alexei Kokorin said holding up a diagram of the ex-Soviet Union swathed in bands of red, orange and yellow at a presentation of the report in Moscow. Earlier on Tuesday leaders of G8 nations — Japan, the United States, Britain, Russia, Canada, Germany, France and Italy — agreed to halve emissions blamed for climate change by 2050, but environmentalists slammed the targets as too soft.

The WWF/Oxfam report on climate change in Russia and the former Soviet Union had been timed to press home this point. Photos on the report’s cover showed a dog sleigh team panting against an iceless wasteland, a shrinking glacier, cracking mud in a dry river bed and a polar bear stuck on a isolated piece of ice. Russia — which spans from eastern Europe to Asia’s Far East and is 60 percent covered by permafrost — is particularly at risk from temperature rises, the report said. "We must understand that damage caused by climate change is here and now rather than a problem in the distant future, in distant lands," WWF’s director in Russia, Igor Chestin, said in a statement alongside the report.

Interesting2: The United States Senate passed (June 27, 2008), by unanimous consent, legislation that will allow the U.S. to join an international treaty that could dramatically cut ocean ship pollution that causes tens of thousands of global deaths annually. “The Marine Pollution Prevention Act of 2008” (H.R. 802), was passed overwhelmingly by the U.S. House of Representatives last year. “This action could be a sea change that ultimately helps steer us to cleaner, healthier air for the millions of Americans harmed by toxic air pollution from U.S. and foreign-flagged ships,” said Janea Scott, a senior attorney for Environmental Defense Fund based in Los Angeles. “This action will help our country secure protective international standards for large ocean-going ships. We urge our government to immediately complete the critical process of ratifying the MARPOL treaty.”

Annex VI of the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, commonly known as “MARPOL,” is an international treaty that governs air pollution from large ocean-going ships. Large ocean-going ships are a major source of soot, sulfur dioxide and smog-forming pollution that are associated with premature deaths, hospital visits, and asthma attacks that exact a heavy toll on human health for millions of Americans. About ninety percent of the ships that dock at U.S. ports are foreign-flagged international vessels. Shipping-related soot emissions contribute to approximately 60,000 global deaths annually, with impacts concentrated in coastal regions on major trade routes.