Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / November 23-24, 2008

November 23-24 2008

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

Lihue, Kauai – 80
Honolulu, Oahu – 82
Kaneohe, Oahu – 80
Kahului, Maui – 85
Hilo, Hawaii – 78
Kailua-kona – 82

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

Kailua-kona – 82F
 Hilo, Hawaii– 71F

Haleakala Crater    – 48  (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 32  (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 Sunday afternoon:

0.64 Lihue, Kauai
0.42 Maunawili, Oahu
0.09 Molokai
0.10 Lanai
0.01 Kahoolawe
0.14 Oheo Gulch, Maui
0.18 Piihonua, Big Island

Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a surface high far northeast of the islands will move south through tonight, becoming stationary far northeast of the Big Island Tuesday. Our local trade winds will be strong and gusty through Wednesday. A cold front will approach from the northwest on Thursday, with winds veering to the south and southwest. The front will approach Kauai late Friday.

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

      

 
  Gradually clearing skies into Monday
Photo Credit: Flikr.com

The trade winds have filled back into our Hawaiian Island weather picture now…which are blustery. The recent southeasterly winds brought lots of moisture up from the deeper tropics, along with higher humidity levels…and localized volcanic haze. These southeast winds have given way to fresh trade winds today. The latest model runs show that they will stick around into the first half of the new week ahead. The long range computer models suggest that lighter southeast winds will return as we move into the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, ahead of a cold front scheduled to arrive on Kauai by Friday. Our winds will turn cooler from the north and northeast following the frontal passage.

A surface trough of low pressure, which brought wet weather to the islands Saturday, continues moving westward away from our islands.  As the trade winds fill back in now, there will be a drier reality returning, although with a few windward biased showers as we move into the new week. The leeward beaches will finally break back into their normal sunnier skies again soon. The trade winds, with their generally fair weather conditions, will prevail through mid-week, with a change in store later in the week.

A small craft wind advisory remains in effect over most areas on the Big Island and Maui. As the aforementioned trough moves away westward, and the trade winds gain strength, our local weather is trending back into the favorably inclined side of our weather spectrum. The windward sides are apt to see a few showers, as is almost always the case with the trade winds blowing.The leeward sides will be flooded with warm November sunshine as we move into the new week ahead.

It’s early Sunday evening here in Kula, Maui, as I begin writing this last paragraph. As the wet weather pattern gives way to the strong and gusty trade winds…our skies are clearing quickly. Speaking of the trade winds, which will dominate our local conditions through the next several days…they will be strong and gusty in places. At the 5pm hour, they were gusting well into the 20’s and 30 mph range…with the windy Maalaea Bay, here on Maui, topping out at a rather impressive 38 mph. At the same time, I see much more blue skies out there than I have for the last several days! Yes, the clouds are parting, which is nice thing after having our famous Hawaiian sunshine being on vacation…lately. ~~~ As noted in the paragraphs above, and as a summary, trade wind weather, with just a few windward showers will make life good here in the islands through Wednesday. Thanksgiving day will be fine too, although we’ll start to see some changes then, in terms of our wind direction. A cold front, which will be approaching Friday, will turn our winds to the potentially voggy southeast Thursday into Friday. This late autumn cold front will bring showers into the state towards the weekend, followed by cooler north to northeast breezes. I’ll have more about this over the next several days, but back to the present, things are looking up! ~~~ I’ll be back very early Monday morning with your next new weather narrative, I hope you have a great Sunday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn. 








 
Interesting:

Little more than a week after enduring what was said to be Queensland’s worst storms in over 25 years, the state has been pummeled once again. A series of violent storms first tore across Australia’s east coast last weekend. The storms especially affected Brisbane and the popular tourist areas of the Sunshine and Gold coasts. Just when residents might have thought things were returning to some normality, most of the same areas were hit again Thursday by a second spate of storms. The first storm hit early in the day dumping almost 200mm (8 inches) of rain across Queensland’s capital Brisbane and surrounding areas. Much of this fell in a matter of hours triggering flash floods. Troops were deployed once again to help thousands of residents. Although the weather improved across Queensland on Thursday the Australian Bureau of Meteorology issued an advisory concerning severe weather and potential flooding for eastern Victoria this weekend. An intense area of low pressure is expected to develop over the eastern Bass Strait on Saturday bringing widespread heavy rain and some very strong winds across parts of Victoria.





























































































Interesting2:

Over a third of China’s land is being scoured by serious erosion that is putting its crops and water supply a risk, a three-year nationwide survey has found. Soil is being washed and blown away not only in remote rural areas, but near mines, factories and even in cities, the official Xinhua agency cited the country’s bio-environment security research team saying. Each year some 4.5 billion tons of soil are lost, threatening the country’s ability to feed itself. If the loss continues at this rate, harvests in China‘s northeastern breadbasket could fall 40 percent in 50 years, adding to erosion costs estimated at 200 billion yuan ($29 billion) in this decade alone.

"China has a more dire situation than India, Japan, the United States, Australia and many other countries suffering from soil erosion," Xinhua quoted the research team saying. Beijing has long been worried about the desertification of its northern grasslands, and scaled back logging after rain rushing down denuded mountainsides caused massive flooding along the Yangtze in the late 1990s. But around 1.6 million square km of land are still being degraded by water erosion, with almost every river basin affected. Another 2.0 million square km are under attack from wind, the report said. The survey was the largest on soil conservation since the Communist Party took control of China in 1949.

Interesting3: Two plucky spiders on the International Space Station have bounced back from a tangled false start to weave amazing new webs in zero gravity, astronauts said Friday. The orb-weaving spiders were transported to the station aboard NASA’s shuttle Endeavour earlier this week, but initially wove an aimless concoction in their lab enclosure during their first days in weightlessness. But now they’ve taken another stab at weightless web construction. "We noticed the spiders’ made a symmetrical web," the space station’s current skipper Michael Fincke radioed to Mission Control today. "It looks beautiful." Fincke said he was amazed at how fast the two eight-legged creatures appear to have adapted to living in space.

The spiders are part of an experiment aimed at sparking interest in science among students on Earth. The arachnids are the same kind of spider as "Charlotte" in the children’s book "Charlotte’s Web" by E.B. White. Students on Earth will compare the webs of the space station’s spiders with those of similar arachnids on Earth for the next few months. They’ll also follow the lifecycle of painted lady butterfly larvae, which also are part of the experiment. The University of Colorado at Boulder is overseeing the experiment and provided an ample supply of fruit flies to feed the spiders, and nectar for the butterflies that will eventually emerge.