Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / August 8-9, 2008

The trade winds will carry periodic showers onto the windward sides, while most leeward areas will remain dry and quite sunny during the days. There don’t appear to be any organized rain makers taking aim on our Hawaiian Islands for the time being. The rainfall associated with compact tropical depression Kika, is too far south to bring moisture up into our latitudes. This leaves us in what we could consider a fairly normal trade wind weather pattern, with just the usual generally light passing showers, favoring the night and early morning hours. There’s a chance that later next week may find better odds for an increase in showers, as tropical moisture arrives.

The Central Pacific Hurricane Center (CPHC) continues tracking recently down graded tropical depression Kika, our first cyclone of the 2008 hurricane season…located to the south of the island Friday evening. Here’s a looping satellite picture of this tropical cyclone. Here’s a storm tracking map to show this tropical system in relation to the Hawaiian Islands – please note that we have a hurricane in the eastern Pacific, named Hernan. Despite all this tropical activity, none of this will have any influence on our local weather here in the Hawaiian Islands. Kika is too far away to have any discernable influence on our local weather. The hurricane models have Kika increasing in strength now, which will likely push it back into the tropical storm category…while is continues its more or less westward movement.

It’s early Friday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin writing this last section of today’s narrative. Friday was yet another fairly windy day, like all the days this week have been. The strongest gust that I saw occurred on Kahoolawe during the afternoon hours, reaching an impressive 42 mph. At 530pm Maalaea Bay here on Maui, was still reading 38 mph, which is certainly enough to keep the waters of that windy bay roughed-up with choppy water full of white caps. Meanwhile, Kika is still churning by us to the south, and ready to increase in strength, back up into the tropical storm level. This storm continues to be not a problem here in the Hawaiian Islands. Here’s the latest satellite image of this small compact storm directly south of our islands Friday night. Looking at that satellite picture, we see just scattered clouds being carried in our direction on the trade winds, although as you can see, nothing organized in nature. I would typically go see a new film after work, but the truth is that I don’t see anything that really pulls me in, so I’m just going to go home and have a relaxed evening reading or whatever. I hope you have a great Friday night, and will join me here again early Saturday morning, when I’ll have your next new weather narrative from paradise available then. Aloha for now…Glenn.

Crystal Blue Persuasion…Tommy James and the Shondells – as a Friday evening treat from the past.

Unbelievably large waves…in Tahiti!!

Interesting:

Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) plans to set up as many as 200 recharging stations for electric cars around the Japanese capital next year, the Nikkei business daily reported on Friday.  But a TEPCO spokesman denied the report and said: "While it is not wrong that TEPCO has completed demonstration tests for devices that charge batteries, we do not at this time have plans to take the initiative in setting up charging locations within the city."  EPCO, Japan’s largest utility, has developed a device that powers an electric car to run 40 km (25 miles) after a five-minute charge and 60 km (37 miles) after a 10-minute charge, the spokesman said.

Car makers such as Nissan Motor and Mitsubishi Motors are preparing to roll out electric vehicles in coming years, amid soaring gasoline fuel prices and concerns about global warming. Car dealers selling Mitsubishi Motors and Subaru cars made by Fuji Heavy Industries have agreed to have TEPCO’s recharging stations at their shops, while supermarket retailer Aeon plans to host them at some outlets, the paper said. It said TEPCO would also include carparks, convenience stores, banks and post offices in the charging network it plans to set up in the financial year to March 2010, with the aim of expanding the number of stations to around 1,000 in three years or so. 

Interesting2:

When you buy food with a "USDA organic" label, do you know what you’re getting? Now is a good time to ask such a question, as the USDA just announced Monday it was putting 15 out of 30 federally accredited organic certifiers they audited on probation, allowing them 12 months to make corrections or lose their accreditation. At the heart of the audit for several certifiers were imported foods and ingredients from other countries, including China. Chinese imports have had a bad year in the news, making headlines for contaminated pet food, toxic toys, and recently, certified organic ginger contaminated with levels of a pesticide called aldicarb that can cause nausea, headaches and blurred vision even at low levels. The ginger, sold under the 365 label at Whole Foods Market, contained a level of aldicarb not even permissible for conventional ginger, let alone organics.

Whole Foods immediately pulled the product from its shelves. Ronnie Cummins, the national director of the Organic Consumers Association, emphasizes that most organic farmers "play by the rules." They believe in organic principles and thereby comply with organic standards. Unfortunately, Congress’ pitifully inadequate funding for enforcement, including for organic imports from countries like China, "guarantees it’ll be easy for unscrupulous players to cheat, and that’s obviously what’s going on here."  Farms that produce USDA-certified organic food are not personally inspected by anyone from the USDA National Organic Program (NOP). As a small and underfunded agency within the USDA (it has fewer than a dozen employees), NOP relies on what it calls Accredited Certifying Agencies — ACAs — to do the legwork. The ACAs take responsibility for ensuring that any farm or processor bearing the organic label meets the strict requirements for certification.

Interesting3:

The GangesRiver  in India, is proof that even the holiest of nature's creations can fall victim to the destructive powers of pollution. Thousands of Hindu followers have their bodies committed to the Ganges each year in belief that the river's waters will carry their souls to eternal salvation. With nearly 89 million liters of raw sewage flowing into the Ganges each day, the health of the waterway is now worse than ever before. Existing facilities can often treat only 13 percent of this pollution. Those who drink from the river risk contracting waterborne diseases such as typhoid, polio, and jaundice. In hopes of improving the river's fate, a coalition of Hindu spiritual leaders, environmental scientists, and water advocates is threatening the Indian government with large-scale protests if sanitation controls are not soon improved. They are calling for the government to increase pollution penalties and declare the GangesRiver a national heritage site, which they say would ensure better environmental controls.

"The river is choking with filth. Effluents from all the cities and industries drain into the river unchecked, and it affects the lives of nearly 500 million people," said Baba Ramdev, a popular yoga teacher, the Indo-Asian News Service reported. "If the government refuses to concede our demands, then we will launch a mass movement from September 18."  The increased frustration over sanitation is not unique to India. Worldwide, a growing number of activists are demanding that their governments move beyond rhetoric on water policy this year, the United Nations-designated International Year of Sanitation. The U.N. General Assembly created the International Year of Sanitation to raise awareness for the U.N. Millennium Development Goal that by 2015 the number of people who live without access to decent sanitation will be cut in half. But progress has so far fallen below expectations.

Interesting4:

Federal health experts declared a small victory against a fatal and untreatable virus on Friday, saying canine rabies has disappeared from the United States. While dogs may still become infected from raccoons, skunks or bats, they will not catch dog-specific rabies from another dog, the Atlanta-based U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. "We don't want to misconstrue that rabies has been eliminated -- dog rabies virus has been," CDC rabies expert Dr. Charles Rupprecht told Reuters in a telephone interview. Rabies evolves to match the animals it infects, and the strain most specific to dogs has not been seen anywhere in the United States since 2004, Rupprecht said. While the incubation period for rabies is as long as six years in humans, it is only six months in a dog.

"Even though we still live in a sea of rabies and even though we have rabies viruses circulating among raccoons and foxes and bats, the dog rabies virus, which is the most responsible for dog-to-dog transmission and which is still the greatest burden to humans ... it is that virus that has been eliminated." Rabies kills 55,000 people a year globally, according to the World Health Organization. It is easily prevented with a vaccine, but many people do not realize they have been infected and once symptoms begin to show, it is almost impossible to treat.