Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / July 29-30, 2008

Aloha Paragraphs



Diamond Head Crater…Honolulu just to the left
Photo Credit: flickr.com

We’ve just moved through quite a flurry of rain showers, which in places got rather generous along the windward sides the last several days. Maui and the BigIsland hit the jackpot, at least locally, picking up enough precipitation to push the drought conditions back nicely. Those windward biased showers last night on the BigIsland, got heavy enough in places, that the NWS forecast office in Honolulu had to issue a flood advisory, which was cancelled earlier Tuesday morning. The largest rainfall total occurred at one of the rainiest places here in the islands, and no it wasn’t at MountWaialaele on Kauai for a change…but rather atop the West Maui Mountains, at the Puu Kukui rain gauge, where 4.54” of the wet stuff rained down! Honokaa and Glenwood, both on the BigIsland, ended up with 3.17” and 3.24”…which isn’t too shabby either.

At least some of those incoming showers were part of the leftover moisture from retired hurricane Fausto, when it was active in the eastern Pacific. Several moisture pockets are just upwind of Maui and the Big Island, which should arrive on the windward side of Oahu later in the evening. Looking even further east, in what we can consider upstream (in reference to the trade winds), there are more showers in that direction. The brighter white clouds to our south and west, are the tops of towering cumulus, and thunderstorms. The ones to our south and southeast are part of the inter-tropical convergence zone (ITCZ)…a broad zone of low pressure running parallel to the equator. The white clouds, with cold cloud tops, are thunderstorms associated with a trough of low pressure over near the International Dateline.

As this satellite image shows, the leading edge of former hurricane Genevieve, once active in the eastern Pacific, has appeared in the right hand side of the picture. You’ll see this by running an imaginary line just about straight to the right of the Big Island. If it can retain its organization, and not get too pulled apart by the trade winds, we would see it arriving with more showers at some point this weekend.

It’s early Tuesday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I start writing this last section of today’s narrative.  It was a a nice day there in the islands, as the rather abundant showers of the last few days, especially along the windward sides of the islands…diminished shortly after sunrise. The winds remain up however, with blustery conditions in many areas. Looking at the strongest gust late in the afternoon, we found that be 43 mph at that windy bay in Maalaea. The next strongest gusts were 37 mph at both Kahului, Maui, and on the island of Lanai. We should find rather typical weather conditions through the next four days or so, although the trade winds will be somewhat stronger than normal locally. As we move into Sunday, we still have that chance of increased showers, only time will tell if we actually receive them or not. I’ll be back very early Wednesday morning with your next new weather narrative from paradise, I hope you have a great Tuesday night until then! Aloha for now, Glenn.

Interesting: Environmental officials say their efforts are starting to clear the haze above Beijing, while strong wind and some rain have also raised hopes of blue skies when the Olympic Games start in just over a week. The city has put in place a series of drastic pollution controls since July 20 that included pulling half the city’s 3.3 million vehicles off the roads, halting most construction and closing some factories in the capital and surrounding provinces. But Beijing has been dogged in the last week by a persistent haze that cloaked the city, threatening assurances by Chinese authorities that skies will be clear when the games start on Aug. 8. Tuesday’s relatively clearer skies highlighted how much weather conditions play a part in the overall equation for curbing pollution. Winds and rain were a "major factor" in causing pollutants to dissipate, said spokeswoman Zhai Xiaohui with the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau.

The government has worked on cloud seeding to control rain, but has acknowledged the wind remains an unpredictable factor. A cold front pushing through northeastern China brought light rains and temporary relief from sweltering temperatures. A top environmental official said Tuesday that the air in July had greatly improved when compared to the same month last year. After the adoption of these measures, we have seen visible improvements," Du Shaozhong, deputy director of Beijing‘s Environmental Protection Bureau, told a news conference. There have been 25 days of clean air in July, two more than the same period last year, he said. Du did not say what constituted clean air, but said since July 1, major pollutants have been reduced by 15 to 20 percent.

Interesting2: U.S. beaches were in poor health last year, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, which said Tuesday that pollution in 2007 led to the second-highest number of beach closings and advisory days in 18 years. Human and animal fecal matter were to blame for much of the pollution, the council said in its annual report, leaving many beachgoers vulnerable to illnesses including gastroenteritis, dysentery and hepatitis. The council also blamed outdated water quality standards and called for more rigorous monitoring of beaches. Last year there were 22,571 beach closings and advisory days, the group said, citing data from the Environmental Protection Agency. The number was second only to 2006, when there were 25,643 such days. From 2006 to 2007, the number of beach closings and advisory days due to sewage spills and overflows more than tripled to 4,097, the council said.  

The largest known pollution source continues to be storm water contamination, which caused more than 10,000 closing and advisory days in 2007, the council said. Storm water dumps street pollution onto beaches and coastal waters without treatment whenever it rains.  Unknown sources of pollution caused more than 8,000 closing and advisory days, the NRDC said. “Some families can’t enjoy their local beaches because they are polluted and kids are getting sick — largely because of human and animal waste in the water,” Nancy Stoner, director of the council’s clean water project, said in a statement released with the report. "Nationally, 7 percent of beach water samples violated health standards, showing no improvement from 2006," the NRDC said. "In the Great Lakes, 15 percent of beach water samples violated those standards — the highest level of contamination of any coastal region in the continental U.S."

Interesting3: Ice is in retreat worldwide as glaciers melt, Arctic ice floes vanish, and Antarctic ice shelves break apart. Will all of it eventually disappear as the globe warms? Not necessarily, say André Bornemann of the University of Leipzig in Germany and several colleagues. From sediment cores drilled out of the Atlantic seafloor, they retrieved fossils of tiny, shell-encased marine organisms called foraminifers that lived 91 million years ago during the Cretaceous Thermal Maximum, when tropical seas were about 12 Fahrenheit degrees warmer than they are today. The fossils’ shells contained a high proportion of oxygen-18, an isotope that increases in the ocean relative to oxygen-16 when water evaporates from the sea and gets trapped on land as ice. The isotope data suggest that even during the hot spell, an ice sheet half the size of the current Antarctic ice cap existed — but where? It couldn’t have been near the North Pole, which the fossil record shows was then home to heat-loving crocodiles. Instead, Bornemann thinks the ice cap covered high mountain ranges near the South Pole. The warm weather prevailing elsewhere would have injected plenty of moisture into the air to fall as snow on high altitudes way down south. But make no mistake. Compared with today, a lot of ice was missing back then, and sea levels were much higher — a history that seems to be on the verge of repeating itself. The research was detailed earlier this year in the journal Science.

Interesting4: Two small, manned submarines reached the bottom of Lake Baikal, the world’s deepest freshwater lake, on Tuesday, Russian news reports said. The "Mir-1" and "Mir-2" submersibles descended 1.05 miles (1,680 meters) to the bottom of the vast Siberian lake, reports said. Scientists on board will take samples of water and soil from Lake Baikal, which is home to more than 1,700 species of plants and animals, reports said. They also will plant a small pyramid bearing the Russian flag in the lake bed, reports said. Russian news agencies earlier cited organizers as saying the expeditions set a world record for the deepest descent in a freshwater lake. State Duma deputy and expedition leader Artur Chilingarov later said no such record was broken Tuesday, the Interfax news agency said. Mission chief Anatoly Sagalevich said the mission will make a total of 60 dives. Organizers then will compile a list of recommendations at how best to preserve Lake Baikal, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Last August, the "Mir-1" and "Mir-2" descended below the North Pole, with Russians on board planting their country’s flag in a titanium capsule on the Arctic Ocean floor to symbolically claim the seabed.