Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / July 16-17, 2008

Aloha Paragraphs



New banana stalk forming
Photo Credit: Flickr.com

There will be a general strengthening of the trade winds through the next several days. A trough of low pressure, which has kept our local winds from attaining their full strength so far this week…is losing its influence now. Thursday onward, and especially by the weekend, our trade winds will be noticeably stronger. We may end up having small craft advisory flags being hoisted in those windiest spots by Friday or Saturday. These trade winds will continue on into next week.

We’ll be moving back into a fairly normal trade wind weather pattern now. That being said, we still have a layer of colder than normal air aloft over the islands, which may continue to enhance some of our shower cells locally. The majority of showers will be carried in our direction by the trade winds, landing along the windward coasts and slopes. Computer models still are hinting that those windward biased showers may be quite generous later Friday into the weekend. Meanwhile, we may continue to see a couple of showers over the leeward slopes during the afternoon hours as well.

~~~ Its early Wednesday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin updating this last section of today’s narrative. As has been the case off and on all this week, afternoon clouds increased in many leeward areas, which lead to showers…some locally heavy. Here on Maui, there was a thick blanket of clouds hugging the leeward slopes of the Haleakala Crater. These clouds kept the area from Kula to Keokea and Ulupalakua quite wet most of the afternoon. Here in Kihei, the clouds spread down from the mountain towards the coast, cutting off our famous Hawaiian sunshine early in the afternoon. Meanwhile, the trade winds have returned, and will become fresher over the next few days. Early Wednesday evening the strongest gust that I saw at 5pm, was 23 mph at Maalaea Bay. We’ll see showers increasing somewhat overnight along the windward coasts, and perhaps again on Thursday, during the afternoon hours in the upcountry areas. By the way, we’ll see the July full moon occurring later in the day Thursday, we have that to look forward to. Speaking of looking forward, I’m already doing that in relation to coming back online with your next new weather narrative, very early Thursday morning! I hope you have a great Wednesday night wherever you happen to be spending it, Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting: A recycling bin awaiting curbside pickup doesn’t seem like an obvious location for a crime, but it often is in Northern California cities and in other locations throughout the country, reports the Associated Press. The combination of a slow economy and higher prices for aluminum, cardboard and newsprint is contributing to the rise in curbside theft.  In many instances, the robbers have organized into fleets of trucks, sweeping neighborhoods for valuable recyclables. Many state and local authorities are seeking more stringent regulations to discourage theft because lost revenue can endanger recycling programs. Some cities already have laws against recycling bin poaching. Getting caught in San Francisco could mean a fine of up to 500 dollars and six months in jail. In New York City, thieves are subject to arrest, vehicle impoundment and fines of up to 5,000 dollars. Authorities continue to pursue a solution to the growing problem.

Interesting2: The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico could reach a new record size this year, and grow to cover an area equal to the State of New Jersey, researchers said Tuesday. One prime culprit: The record Midwest flooding that caused the Mississippi to swell. The discharge of pollutants and nutrients from the Mississippi River causes algae to bloom in the Gulf of Mexico. When the algae dies, the decaying absorbs so much oxygen from the water that large areas become inhospitable to fish. The resulting lifeless area is called a eutrophic or hypoxic zone, or more colloquially, a dead zone. The condition is cyclic, and reaches its maximum in late summer. The biggest dead zone on record was in 2002, when 8,481 square miles of water became lifeless. Last year, researchers also predicted a record was possible, but the dead zone reached 7,903 square miles. This year, the total could exceed 8,800 square miles, or 5% greater than the last record.

Interesting3: Only 48 per cent of Laotians are connected to the electrical grid. Access to electricity is limited due to lack of infrastructure and high costs so most rural communities rely on environmentally unfriendly energy sources, such as firewood and kerosene. Solar-powered systems are a logical alternative but start-up costs are high. To get around this, local company Sunlabob Rural Energy is renting solar-based systems to villagers.  Solar-powered lanterns are available to rent at a competitive price and users can recharge the lamps for a small fee at a central facility in the village. Alternatively, a whole village can rent the equipment for generating solar electricity from the company and sub-lease power to individual houses. And larger villages can use a combination of solar, hydro and generator power to create a grid with enough energy to power health clinics, rice mills and water pumps. The program is proving highly successful because the community itself is in charge, ensuring sustainability. Around 1,800 village systems and 500 solar lanterns have been rented to families in 73 villages in Laos. Sunlabob is now seeking to extend the project into Cambodia and Indonesia and other regions.

Interesting4: A lot more Martian rocks were altered by water than scientists originally thought, suggesting that early Mars was a very wet place. New observations made by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), currently circling the planet, have revealed evidence that vast regions of the southern highlands of Mars were altered by water in a variety of environments billions of years ago. Water is a key condition for life as we know it. Though there is no firm evidence that Mars has ever harbored life, knowing that the planet was once wet suggests that it was at least habitable in the past. The key to the finding is the discovery that rocks called phyllosilicates are widespread on at least the planet’s southern hemisphere. The water present on Mars from about 4.6 billion to 3.8 billion years ago transformed some rocks into these phyllosilicates, which include clays rich in iron, magnesium or aluminum, mica, and kaolinite (an ingredient in Kaopectate). "In a phyllosilicate, the atoms are stacked up into layers, and all of the phyllosilicates have some sort of water or hydroxyl [oxygen and hydrogen group] incorporated into the crystal structure," said study team member Scott Murchie of JohnsHopkinsUniversity.

Interesting5: Telescope mirrors made from lunar dust could help realize dreams of stargazing from the far side of the moon. Creating gigantic lunar telescopes would normally carry an astronomical price tag, but NASA researchers used a mix of epoxy, simulated lunar dust and carbon nanotubes to demonstrate how to use materials already found on the moon. "You can go to the moon with a few buckets, and build something far larger than anything a rocket can carry," said Peter Chen, a physicist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Astronomers have argued about which is better in the future: building additional orbiting space telescopes such as Hubble or setting them up on the moon. Both types of telescopes would be beyond the interference of Earth’s atmosphere, although the moon has the added advantages of being a stable platform with a far side shielded from Earth’s cluttered radio background. On the other hand, getting to the moon represents more of a challenge than simply launching a space telescope. However, the debate so far has been "limited by launching from the ground," Chen told SPACE.com, because Earth’s gravity places both size and cost limits on what rockets can carry into space or to the moon.

Interesting6: Sloshing back and forth in constant rhythm, the ocean’s tides are a predictable source of renewable energy. Hoping to tap into this, the world’s largest tidal turbine is set to start generating electricity this month. The installation of the SeaGen marine current generator was completed this past May in Strangford Lough, a large inlet on the coast of Northern Ireland. The system, designed and built by Marine Current Turbines Ltd., has two rotors that each span 16 meters (52 feet) in diameter.  "The technology is very analogous to wind, except we are doing everything underwater," said Peter Fraenkel, the company’s technical director. The maximum power output of the SeaGen will be 1.2 megawatts — four times more than any other turbine. Operating for roughly 20 hours per day, it is expected to supply 1,000 homes.  The $20 million SeaGen is a single tower, moored to the seafloor a quarter mile (400 meters) from shore. It is designed to catch both the incoming (flow) and outgoing (ebb) tides by rotating its two rotors 180 degrees.  No power is generated during tide changes, as the turbine only works when the water is moving 2 knots (2.3 mph) or more.