Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / August 25-26, 2006

August 25-26 2008

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

Lihue, Kauai – 87
Honolulu, Oahu – 89
Kaneohe, Oahu – 79
Kahului, Maui – 88
Hilo, Hawaii – 85
Kailua-kona – 85

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level, and on the taller mountains…at 6 p.m. Monday evening:

Barking Sands, Kauai – 85F  
Hilo, Hawaii – 78

Haleakala Crater- 52 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 37 (near 14,000 feet on the Big Island)

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

1.10 Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.38 Manoa Valley, Oahu
0.02 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.09 Kahoolawe
1.08 Puu Kukui, Maui
0.36 Kamuela Upper, Big Island

Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing high pressure systems located to the northeast of Hawaii…with an associated ridge extending southwest to the north of our islands. This pressure configuration will keep our trade winds blowing generally at the moderately strong level, locally stronger in those windiest areas.

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

Hawaiian Hula dancers
   Photo Credit: flickr.com

Moderately strong trade winds will blow well into the future here in the islands. This weather map, shows high pressure systems stretched out to the northwest and northeast of here Monday night. This pressure configuration will keep moderately strong winds in our area, locally stronger and gusty. The trades are somewhat stronger now, enough in fact, that the NWS forecast office in Honolulu is keeping the small craft wind advisory active over for the windiest spots around Maui County, down through the Big Island. At the same time, the winds are blowing rather strongly over the summits of those two islands…where a wind advisory is in place.

Periods of showers will be carried into the windward coasts and slopes at times…although nothing out of the ordinary. The leeward sides will remain mostly sunny during the days, with generally dry conditions prevailing. There’s always that chance of a couple of afternoon showers along the Kona coast of the Big Island as well. The overall weather pattern will remain really nice for the time being, with no organized areas of showers taking aim on the islands into the foreseeable future. 

It’s early Monday evening here in Kula, Maui, as I update this last paragraph of today’s narrative.  Monday was a gorgeous day here in the Hawaiian Islands! Clouds were at a minimum, while our famous sunshine was the dominate weather element, that is besides the locally gusty trade winds. All the dry weather here on the leeward side of Maui, from Wailea up through north Kihei, has our local vegetation very dry now. Dry enough in fact, that we had a serious brush fire near Maui Meadows, up above south Kihei and Wailea this past weekend. Today we had a second brush fire break out in north Kihei, near the Tesoro gas station along the Piilani Highway. The fire got very near several houses, and the highway itself was shut down for a time. This had the Maui Police Department re-directing traffic down along the coast road, which snarled the traffic for the commuters coming home from work! I was very fortunate, in that one lane opened up just as I was leaving Kihei for the upcountry area. We all need to be very careful about not starting fires in this dry weather that we’re finding along those leeward sides of all the islands! I’ll be back very early Tuesday morning with your next new weather narrative, I hope you have a great Monday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting: At least three tornadoes touched down near Denver in Colorado on Sunday afternoon as severe thunderstorms swept across the state. The National Weather Service issued tornado warnings across southern Colorado after storms spawned funnel clouds just south of Denver. There were no reports of injuries or loss of life, as the tornadoes miraculously avoided built-up areas around the towns of Castle Rock and Parker. However, trees and power lines were torn up and left strewed along the tornadoes’ paths. Spectacular lightning displays were observed around Douglas and Elbert counties along with torrential rain that gave rise to temporary flash flooding.

Much of Parker was pounded with hailstones as the storms moved away east leaving it resembling a winter scene for many. Sunday’s isolated cluster of severe thunderstorms developed in result of an upper level disturbance. The storms broke out during the afternoon when ground heating from the sun was at its highest. The storms raged through the afternoon until they dissipated on Sunday evening. Much of Colorado can expect some drier and more settled weather for the rest of today with only a few scattered showers likely.

Interesting2:

With the boom in consumption of organic foods creating a pressing need for natural insecticides and herbicides that can be used on crops certified as "organic," biopesticide pioneer Pam G. Marrone, Ph.D., is reporting development of a new "green" pesticide obtained from an extract of the giant knotweed in a report scheduled for presentation here today at the 236th national meeting of the American Chemical Society. That 12-foot-high Goliath, named for the jointed swollen nodes on its stem, invaded the U.S. from Japan years ago and grows along the East Coast and other areas. "The product is safe to humans, animals, and the environment," says Marrone, founder and CEO of Marrone Organic Innovations Inc., in Davis, Calif.

The new biopesticide has active compounds that alert plant defenses to combat a range of diseases, including powdery mildew, gray mold and bacterial blight that affect fruits, vegetables, and ornamentals. The product will be available this October for conventional growers, according to Marja Koivunen, Ph.D., director of research and development for Marrone Organic Innovations. A new formulation has also been developed for organic farmers and will be available in 2009. In one of the presentations by Marrone Organic Innovations (MOI), the progress toward discovery of an "organic Roundup" — the Holy Grail of biopesticide research — an environmentally friendly and natural version of the world’s most widely used herbicide was discussed.

Interesting3:

Logging of a Ghanaian forest submerged 40 years ago by a hydroelectric dam could point to an underwater timber bonanza worth billions of dollars in tropical countries, a senior Ghanaian official said on Monday. Exploiting submerged rot-resistant hardwoods such as ebony, wawa or odum trees in LakeVolta, the largest man-made lake in Africa, can also slow deforestation on land and curb emissions of greenhouse gases linked to burning of forests. "Logging will start in October," Robert Bamfo, head of Climate Change at the government’s Forestry Commission, told Reuters on the sidelines of a U.N. August 21-27 climate conference in Accra. "This will reduce the pressure on our forests."  "The project aims to harvest 14 million cubic meters (494.4 million cu ft) of timber worth about $4 billion," he said.

Logging will be led by a privately owned Canadian company, CSR Developments, which says it aims to invest $100 million in Ghana. Cutting equipment can be mounted on barges, guided by sonars to grab trees below water. "There are very similar circumstances in numerous countries around the world including Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Brazil, Surinam, Malaysia and others," Bamfo said of forgotten forests swamped by hydroelectric dams. "The potential is there — they are awaiting to see the outcome of the Ghana project," he said. He told the conference there were estimates that there were "5 million hectares (12.36 million acres) of salvageable submerged timber in the hydroelectric reservoirs in the tropics with the potential to supplement global demand for timber."

Interesting4:

American natural gas production is rising at a clip not seen in half a century, pushing down prices of the fuel and reversing conventional wisdom that domestic gas fields were in irreversible decline. The new drilling boom uses advanced technology to release gas trapped in huge shale beds found throughout North America — gas long believed to be out of reach. Natural gas is the cleanest fossil fuel, releasing less of the emissions that cause global warming than coal or oil. Rising production of natural gas has significant long-range implications for American consumers and businesses. A sustained increase in gas supplies over the next decade could slow the rise of utility bills, obviate the need to import gas and make energy-intensive industries more competitive.
















 

Interesting 5: Just up the fish-rich rivers that surround this tiny bush town on Bristol Bay is a discovery of copper and gold so vast and valuable that no one seems able to measure it all. Then again, no one really knows the value of the rivers, either. They are the priceless headwaters of one of the world’s last great runs of Pacific salmon. “Perhaps it was God who put these two great resources right next to each other,” said John T. Shively, the chief executive of a foreign consortium that wants to mine the copper and gold deposit. “Just to see what people would do with them.”  What people are doing is fighting as Alaskans hardly have before. While experts say the mine could yield more than $300 billion in metals and hundreds of jobs for struggling rural Alaska, unearthing the metals could mean releasing chemicals that are toxic to the salmon that are central to a fishing industry worth at least $300 million each year.|

And while the metals are a finite discovery, the fish have replenished themselves for millenniums. “If they have one spill up there, what’s going to happen?” said Steve Shade, 50, an Alaska Native who has fished on Bristol Bay all his life, for dinner and for a living. “This is our livelihood. They’re going to ruin it for everybody.” Rarely are Alaskans at odds over which of their natural resources they want to exploit. Oil? Timber? Minerals? Fish? While outsiders and some state residents may urge restraint, most people here typically just select all. Eskimos, Aleuts and Athabascan Indians and other Alaska Native people who want the jobs the new mine could bring versus those who fear it threatens thousands of years of culture.

Interesting6:

Some of the gullies that cut the sides of Martian craters were likely formed by melt water from glaciers that existed a few million years ago, when Mars was wetter than it is now, a new study suggests. The gully features are similar to ones seen in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica, say the authors of the study, which is detailed in the Aug. 25 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. So this polar region of Earth can act as an analog for Mars’ past. The gullies, young features geologically speaking, were discovered in 2000 by NASA’s orbiting Mars Global Surveyor, which is now out of commission. The discovery came as a surprise because scientists had thought that Mars was too dry in the past few million years to host liquid water at its surface, as it is today.

Though water ice was confirmed this summer by NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander just a few inches below the surface of Mars’ arctic regions, the planet’s below-freezing temperatures and low atmospheric pressure ensure that any ice exposed to the air turns into vapor. When the gullies were discovered, some scientists proposed that the features were formed either by dry avalanches or by groundwater pushing up from below the surface and running down the sides of craters. But in a study of gullies within a 6.5 mile- (10.5 kilometer-) diameter crater located in the much larger Newton Crater, James Head of Brown University and his colleagues found that accumulated ice and snow were more likely the source of the water that sculpted the gullies.

Interesting7:

A study of Google Earth satellite images has revealed that herds of cattle tend to face in the north-south direction of Earth’s magnetic lines. Staring at cows may not equal the thrill of spotting celebrities in public or rubbernecking at car accidents, but the researchers found nonetheless that our bovine friends display this strange sixth sense for direction. Their field observations of red and roe deer also showed those animals facing toward magnetic north or south. "Google Earth is perfect for this kind of research, because the animals are undisturbed by the observer," said Sabine Begall, a zoologist at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany and coauthor on the study detailed in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Wind and time of day did not offer better explanations for why 8,510 cattle in 308 locations around the world would mostly face north-south. Shadows suggested that many of the images were taken on cloudless, sunny days, so Begall’s group also factored in direct ground observations of cattle herds.  A strong wind or sunlight on a cold day have typically proved more the "exceptions to the rule" that might cause large animals to face away from magnetic north-south.  The data on 2,974 deer came from direct ground observations and photos in the CzechRepublic. Researchers also examined fresh beds left by resting deer in the snow, where the animals had sought shelter deep in the forest away from the wind.