Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / September 22-23, 2008

September 22-23 2008

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

Lihue, Kauai – 84
Honolulu, Oahu – 85
Kaneohe, Oahu – 82
Kahului, Maui – 89
Hilo, Hawaii – 84
Kailua-kona – 85

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level, and on the highest mountains…at 4 p.m. Monday afternoon:

Kahului, Maui – 85F  
Barking Sands, Kauai – 79

Haleakala Crater- 48 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 41 (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:

0.41 Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.66 Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.24 Molokai
0.25 Lanai
0.02 Kahoolawe
0.53 Kaupo Gap, Maui
0.49 Waiakea Uka, Big Island

Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a high pressure system located far to the northeast of Hawaii, with a second high to the west-northwest…connected by a long ridge. This pressure configuration will keep trade winds blowing in the light to moderately strong category Tuesday and Wednesday…locally stronger and gusty.

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

  Classic Hawaiian sunset
Photo Credit: flickr.com

 

The long lasting trade winds will remain active over the Hawaiian Islands. The trade winds will blow in the light to moderately strong range, although somewhat stronger in those typically windier areas around the state. The long range computer forecast models show no end in sight for these trade winds…which will last through the rest of this week.

An upper level trough of low pressure is over Hawaii, which can be thought of as colder air aloft. This will help to destabilize our atmosphere to some degree, making our local clouds more shower prone. As clouds, carried by the trade winds, come under the influence of the trough, we’ll see some enhancement of the showers along the windward sides. This upper trough sticks around through much of this week, which keeps the chance of enhanced showers around…especially on the Kauai end of the island chain.

It may be a little too early to point this out, but the computer models are showing an area of moisture coming northward over the Hawaiian Islands next Monday. The models show a deep trough of low pressure digging southward towards the tropics. This trough has a surface reflection, in the form of a fairly vigorous early season cold front. The frontal boundary doesn’t make it all the way to Hawaii, but about that same time…a surge of tropical moisture moves northward towards our islands. If things go the way the GFS computer model suggests now, we could start off next week with increased showers. Again, the models could back off on this long range forecast, but I’ll keep an eye on this developing situation as we move forward into the week.

It’s early Monday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin writing this last paragraph of today’s tropical weather narrative from Hawaii.  The threat of heavy showers earlier Monday, really didn’t manifest as expected. The showery clouds rode in on the trade winds alright, but took a path north of the state…just missing us. Oh well, that’s the way it goes sometimes, we could have used the moisture though. At any rate, the upper trough of low pressure remains in place, which will keep the atmosphere at least a bit unstable this week. This in turn will enhance whatever showers that happen to fall, although looking at satellite imagery…there’s not a lot of clouds coming in our direction, at least nothing organized.  Here’s a satellite image, showing the nature of the scattered clouds upstream, in relation to the trade wind flow. ~~~ Today was the first partial autumn day, as we gradually leave our summer season behind us. This certainly doesn’t mean we won’t be seeing lots more in the way of summery weather as we move forward! 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:

It may be the biggest conservation victory for the US in decades. It ensures that massive amounts of greenhouse gases won’t be released to add to global warming. It ensures an abundance of birds for generations of Americans to enjoy. And you may not have heard anything about it. That’s because it just happened in Ontario, Canada. Over the summer, Ontario‘s premier, Dalton McGuinty, announced that at least 55 million acres — half of the province’s boreal forest — will be off limits to development. And he has promised no new mining or logging projects until local land-use plans have support from native communities. The scale of the decision is staggering, and it commits Ontario to setting aside lands more than twice the size of Pennsylvania as parks or wildlife refuges. Equally impressive was Premier McGuinty’s strong reliance on the recommendation by scientists, led by Nobel Prize-winning authors of the International Panel on Climate Change, to make that decision.

Scientists identify the Canadian boreal forest, larger than the remaining Brazilian Amazon, as one of the world’s largest and most intact forest ecosystems. It stores 186 billion tons of carbon – equivalent to 27 years of the world’s carbon dioxide fossil fuel emissions – and provides habitat for billions of breeding birds, plus many other wildlife species. There are herds of caribou, healthy populations of bears and wolves, and some of the world’s last wild undammed rivers and pristine lakes. Many of the birds either Millions of dark-eyed juncos, white-throated sparrows and Swainson’s thrushes are among the songbirds that raise their young in this now-protected region and that will soon be arriving in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Hunters have reason to be happy, too, since those forests also sustain huge numbers of waterfowl like American black ducks, common goldeneyes and buffleheads that grace US waters in the winte

























Interesting2:

Climate has been implicated by a new study as a major driver of wildfires in the last 2,000 years. But human activities, such as land clearance and fire suppression during the industrial era (since 1750) have created large swings in burning, first increasing fires until the late 1800s, and then dramatically reducing burning in the 20th century. The study by a nine-member team from seven institutions — led by Jennifer R. Marlon, a doctoral student in geography at the University of Oregon — appeared online Sunday ahead of regular publication in the journal Nature Geoscience. The team analyzed 406 sedimentary charcoal records from lake beds on six continents.

A 100-year decline in wildfires worldwide — from 1870 to 1970 — was recorded despite increasing temperatures and population growth, researchers found. "Based on the charcoal record," Marlon said, "we believe the reduction in the amount of biomass burned during those 100 years can be attributed to a global expansion of agriculture and intensive grazing of livestock that reduced fuels plus general landscape fragmentation and fire-management efforts."  Observations of increased burning associated with global warming and fuel build-up during the past 30 years, however, are not yet included in the sediment record.

Interesting3:

The worst dust storm in 40 years was Monday dusting the snow with an orange powder in the alpine region of Australia‘s south-east corner and bringing what locals call mud rain. Winds of up to 100 kilometres per hour are lifting soil from the arid interior of New South Wales and dumping it nearer the coast. When combined with rain, it can fall with the consistency of watery mud. The ochre dust has swept across Mount Kosciusko, flat Australia‘s highest mountain, giving what resident Darren Nielsen told national broadcaster ABC was an "extremely bizarre" aspect. "Seeing the sky and just the whole village in darkness and the mountain orange is a really eerie sort of feeling," he said.

Interesting4:

To help figure out what’s happening inside the fastest-moving Greenland glacier, a U.S. rocket scientist sent 90 rubber ducks into the ice, hoping someone finds them if they emerge in Baffin Bay. The common yellow plastic bath toys are one part of a sophisticated experiment to determine why glaciers speed up in the summer in their march to the sea, said Alberto Behar of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. The Jakobshavn Glacier is very likely the source of the iceberg that sank the Titanic in 1912 and researchers focus on it because it discharges nearly 7 percent of all the ice coming off Greenland. As the planet warms, its melting ice sheet could make oceans rise this century. "It’s a beautiful place to visit. You can watch these icebergs continuously march across and fall into the ocean," Behar said. What you can’t see is how melting water moves through the ice.

"Right now it’s not understood what causes the glaciers themselves to surge in the summer," Behar said. One theory is that the summer sun melts ice on the top glacial surface, creating pools that flow into tubular holes in the glacier called moulins. The moulins can carry some water all the way to the underside of the glacier, where it acts as a lubricant to speed the movement of ice toward the coast. But because it cannot be seen, no one really knows what occurs. That’s where the rubber ducks come in, along with a probe about the size of a football loaded with a GPS transmitter and instruments that can tell much about the glacier’s innards. In August, Behar flew by helicopter to a place on the glacier where rivers of melted ice flow into moulins. Researchers lowered the probe into one moulin by rope and released it into the water flowing beneath the ice.