February 11-12, 2009
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Wednesday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 76
Honolulu, Oahu – 80
Kaneohe, Oahu – 79
Kahului, Maui – 81
Hilo, Hawaii – 75
Kailua-kona – 81
Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level, and on the highest mountains…at 4 p.m. Wednesday afternoon:
Barking Sands, Kauai – 81F
Hilo, Big Island – 72
Haleakala Crater – 41 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 28 (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 Wednesday afternoon:
0.11 Wailua, Kauai
1.44 Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.05 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
1.05 Kaupo Gap, Maui
1.23 Kealakekua, Big Island
Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map continues showing a trough of low pressure to the north of the state, although with a 1038 millibar high pressure system sitting up to the northeast of the islands…we’ll see the return of trade winds during the day Thursday, becoming stronger 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. Finally, here’s a looping IR satellite image, making viewable the clouds around the islands 24 hours a day. 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
The Hawaiian Islands had thunderstorms Wednesday
Photo Credit: flickr.com
We will finally see the return of trade winds Thursday…which will become strong to very strong Friday into the weekend. Our winds were generally quite light, with no active wind related advisories Wednesday. As the trade winds return Thursday, and then become stronger Friday, they will require small craft wind advisories over all coastal and channel waters…with even perhaps a gale warning in those windiest areas into the weekend. The NWS forecast office has issued a high wind watch for the entire state Wednesday afternoon, which will come into effect later Friday, and last through most of the weekend. If the winds get really wild, that watch would of course transform into a high wind warning with time. The latest forecasts keep these gusty trade winds blowing through the middle of next week…at least.
The light wind regime that remained in place Wednesday, brought locally heavy showers during the afternoon hours…with several reports of thunderstorms and localized flooding. There were towering cumulus clouds around later in the day, which once again built into thunderstorms locally. These rainy clouds were due to the daytime heating of the islands, and the still colder than normal air aloft over the Aloha state…causing instability in our atmosphere. As the trade winds return Thursday, and then get considerably stronger Friday, windward biased showers will increase…spreading a few showers over to the leeward sides in places too.
It remains cold atop the Big Island’s mountains, as shown in this webcam shot of Mauna Kea…with an exceptionally low 21F degrees early Wednesday morning…which had risen to only 28 degrees early Wednesday evening. This webcam, when the clouds didn’t block the view during the afternoon hours, saw cloudy periods, along with some passing snow showers.
The current light wind episode will change once the gusty trade winds fill back into our Hawaiian Island weather picture Thursday. Once those winds become more blustery into Friday and the weekend, we’ll see our local ocean become filled with white caps. The expected increase in showers, in association with another upper air low pressure system, which will edge into our area, and the incoming moisture carried in our direction on the gusty trade winds…will make our windward sides wetter starting later Thursday onward. There’s a good chance that some of those showers, carried by the exceptionally strong trade winds…will drift over into some of the leeward sections.
A persistant trough of low pressure, which has stuck around to the north of the islands this week…continued to keep our trade winds at bay Wednesday. As this weather map shows, the trough is that short dashed red line just to the north of Kauai. Looking up to the upper right of the islands, to the northeast, we see a robust 1036 millibar high pressure system. This high is ready to spin-out stronger trade winds into our area soon. They will begin arriving Thursday, and boost up into the strong levels Friday into the weekend.
Wednesday was a very interesting day, in terms of the weather! At one point there was a tornado funnel cloud sighted on the island of Oahu. Otherwise, each of the islands, with the exception of Lanai, took their turn at being on the receiving end of locally heavy showers, with an occasional thunderstorm. There was a little bit of snow falling atop the summits on the Big Island as well. The only thing that was missing was strong and gusty winds! Speaking of which, they are right the corner here in the Hawaiian Islands. As a matter of fact, the headline weather news here in the islands will soon shift from the heavy afternoon rainfall, back to very strong trade winds. These winds will be strong enough as of Friday, that folks should start to think about securing any loose objects around their homes as we move into the weekend.
~~~ I’m getting ready to leave Kihei, Maui, for the drive back upcountry to Kula now, where it has been raining this afternoon. Kula sure hasn’t been the only place that got wet however, with many areas around the state having water falling from the sky during the past several hours. As we get past sunset, the islands will discontinue being heating pads, sending warm moisture to fuel the towering cumulus and cumulonimbus clouds…which dropped the locally heavy, and at times flooding precipitation during the afternoon.
~~~ I’ll be back early Thursday morning with more news about our interesting weather conditions, including the onset of the windy episode that looms on our horizon. I hope you have a great Wednesday night, and that you will be inclined to come back here Thursday, for your next new weather narrative, waiting here for you then! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting: Melbourne vet Ken Hinchcliff is realistic about the hierarchy of concern following Australia’s worst forest fires. "After ensuring the safety of themselves and their human loved ones, people affected by the bushfires will want to ensure their pets are cared for and receive the veterinary attention they need." Hinchcliff is offering free treatment to any animals that are brought to his clinic. But it’s not just cats and dogs and pet birds that, along with their owners, are affected by the loss of more than 1,000 homes. More than 1 million native animals may have perished in Saturday’s fires north of Melbourne. Those injured are being though about and some of them are being looked after. Gayle Chappell from the Hepburn Wildlife Shelter said death, both instant and lingering, is on a massive scale.
"It will be in the hundreds of thousands, possibly millions," she said. "You can’t reconstruct a forest." Aaron Smith’s sheep were lucky. They had their fleeces still on and the Healesville farmer reckons they fared better in the ember attacks than those that had been shorn. Smith and other farmers have started to receive gifts of animal feed from well-wishers around the nation. National Farmers Federation chief Ben Fargher said 30 truckloads of fodder had arrived. Help is coming from as far away as the continent’s north coast. "Some of it is hay and some of it is Lucerne hay," local farmer Simon Ramsay said. "We are trying to get reasonably good quality hay because the animals on the fire ground obviously require more than just energy – they require some protein." Ramsay has also had calls from farmers across the nation, who are willing to come and help drive tractors and tend sheep and cattle.
Interesting2: It’s not uncommon for students to consume energy drinks to increase their concentration as they study throughout the night. "Energy drinks are the coffee of a new generation," says Stéphanie Côté, nutritionist with Extenso, a Université de Montréal health and nutrition think-tank. "These drinks are made up of sugar and caffeine and can have a negative impact on health." According to a 2008 report by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, 1.5 billion cans of Red Bull were sold in the United States in 2004. Consumption in Canada is said to be comparable and it is a growing trend for 18-to 24-year-olds. This market segment is broadening as younger children are beginning to consume these drinks before doing physical activity. But these drinks aren’t recommended to either athletes or children under the age of 12. "Energy drinks don’t hydrate the body efficiently," says Côté.
"Because they have too much sugar. And caffeine doesn’t necessarily improve physical performance. In high quantities it can increase the risks of fatigue and dehydration." Several studies have demonstrated that strong doses of caffeine can increase hypertension, cause heart palpitations, provoke irritability and anxiety as well as cause headaches and insomnia. Health Canada does not recommend consuming more than two cans per day. But many young people do not respect this warning. Furthermore, close to 50 percent of 18 to 24-year-olds claim to consume energy drinks mixed with alcohol. Vodka Red Bulls are in vogue despite warnings against the mix. "Usually when someone consumes too much alcohol, their head spins and they feel tired. Energy drinks cancel out these warning signs," explains Côté. "The person feels good and therefore keeps drinking without realizing they are drunk."
Interesting3: Take a guess — how long are the dashed lines that are painted down the middle of a road? If you’re like most people, you answered, “Two feet.” The real answer is 10 feet. That’s the federal guideline for every street, highway, and rural road in the United States, where dashed lines separate traffic lanes or indicate where passing is allowed. A new study has found that people grossly underestimate the length of these lines — a finding which implies that we’re all misjudging distances as we drive, and are driving too fast as a result. Dennis Shaffer, assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State University’s Mansfield campus, led the study, which appeared in the journal Perception & Psychophysics. Shaffer and his colleagues tested more than 400 college students in three experiments. When asked to guess the length of the lines from memory, most answered two feet.
Even when the students were standing some distance away from actual 10-foot lines or riding by them in a car, they judged the size to be the same: two feet.
“We were surprised, first, that people’s estimates were so far off, and second, that there was so little variability,” Shaffer said. The finding holds implications for traffic safety. Each dashed line measures 10 feet, and the empty spaces in-between measure 30 feet. So every time a car passes a new dashed line, the car has traveled 40 feet. But in this study, people consistently judged the lines and the empty spaces to be the same size, claiming that both were two feet. “This means that to most people, 40 feet looks like a lot less than 40 feet when they’re on the road,” Shaffer said. “People cover more ground than they think in a given period of time, so they are probably underestimating their speed.”
Interesting4: University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science Professor Dr. Peter Glynn, and 2008 Pew Fellow for Marine Conservation and Assistant Professor Dr. Andrew Baker, assess more than 25 years of data on reef ecosystems recovery from climate change-related episodes of coral bleaching. Coral bleaching – in which corals expel their symbiotic algal partners and turn pale or white – is one of the most visible impacts of climate change on marine ecosystems. Typically caused by higher-than-normal ocean temperatures, it can lead to widespread death of corals and is a major contributor to the rapid decline of coral reef ecosystems worldwide. The new paper, co-authored by Dr. Bernhard Riegl, associate director of the National Coral Reef Institute, represents the first comprehensive review of long-term global patterns in reef recovery following bleaching events. Bringing together the results of dozens of bleaching studies, the article reports that bleaching episodes set the stage for diverse secondary impacts on reef health, including coral disease, the breakdown of reef framework, and the loss of critical habitat for reef fishes and other important marine animals.
"Bleaching has resulted in catastrophic loss of coral cover in some locations, and has changed the coral community structure in many others," said Glynn.
"These dramatic fluctuations have critical impacts on the maintenance of biodiversity in the marine tropics, which is essential to the survival of many tropical and sub-tropical economies." However, the paper also shows that, while bleaching episodes have resulted in dramatic loss of coral cover in certain locations, reefs vary dramatically in their ability to bounce back from these disturbances. It also evaluates factors explaining why some species of coral recover better than others, as well as why some reef regions are recovering while others are not. The study finds that reefs in the Indian Ocean are recovering relatively well from a single devastating bleaching event in 1998. In contrast, western Atlantic (Caribbean) reefs have generally failed to recover from multiple smaller bleaching events and a diverse set of chronic additional stressors such as diseases, overfishing and nutrient pollution. No clear trends were found in the eastern Pacific, the central-southern-western Pacific or the Arabian Gulf, where some reefs are recovering and others are not.
Interesting5: Alcohol consumption is known to cause liver damage. Yet the specifics of alcohol-induced liver injury can differ depending on the pattern of drinking. New rodent findings show that chronic drinking causes more injury – as measured by gene-expression changes – to the liver than acute or binge drinking. "Different patterns of drinking can] produce a different set or pattern of gene expression by the liver because of adaptation by the liver which occurs when the same level of blood alcohol is repeated over and over again," explained Samuel W. French, Distinguished Professor of pathology at the UCLA School of Medicine, and chief of anatomic pathology at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. Basically, the liver "learns" or "remembers" its response to alcohol. "Unfortunately, these adaptive changes in gene expression are injurious to the liver and are furthermore persistent in the liver even when alcohol drinking has stopped," French added. "This is why people who develop liver disease after chronic alcohol abuse continue to be sick from liver damage for many months after they have stopped drinking. In fact, they actually get worse when they stop drinking because their liver is programmed epigenetically to work under the influence of alcohol. Think of it as deleterious conditioning and a learning process for the liver."
Interesting6: The jaguar Panthera onca has become an animal in danger of extinction over recent decades, due to the fragmentation and deterioration of its habitat, as well as hunting and illegal animal smuggling. As a result of this vulnerability, no individuals have been seen in the centre of Mexico since the start of the 20th Century. However, Mexican and Spanish scientists have now managed to photograph a male jaguar in this region. The lack of published records about the jaguar Panthera onca in the State of Mexico and concerns about whether this animal may have become extinct in the forests of the 674.10 km2 Sierra Nanchititla Natural Reserve led to researchers from the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico (UAEM) and the University of Alicante (UA) successfully seeking out and monitoring this feline. The Mexican-Spanish research project, which has been published recently in The Southwestern Naturalist, includes the first documented recording of Panthera Onca in the centre of Mexico, in the Río Balsas river basin. "The photographs provide information about new recording sites, and allow us to deduce that the area where the animal was observed may be a corridor connecting jaguar populations," Octavio Monroy-Vilchis, lead author and a researcher at the UAEM, tells SINC.
The researchers carried out 86 interviews with inhabitants of villages near the study area between October 2002 and December 2004, as well as collecting feline dropping samples and installing automatic photographic detection systems. "Even though not one of the interviews mentioned sightings of jaguars, we obtained three photographs of a male, and ten of the 132 excrement samples found have been attributed to the jaguar", says Monroy-Vilchis. According to members of the local Wildlife Conservation Society, the general area of the Río Balsas river basin is a priority area for verifying the presence of jaguars, since this "could act as a corridor for them to move around". The experts say there are 15 areas in which it is unknown whether these animals still exist, whether their populations are stable, and if their habitat is adequate. These areas are important for scientific studies, because they could include crucial zones for the felines’ long-term survival.
Interesting7: Hundreds of German motorists slept in their cars Tuesday night as snow chaos blocked a motorway in the south of the country. Heavy snowfall near the Bavarian town of Wuerzburg caused lorries to skid sideways on the A3 motorway, blocking the westbound carriageway to traffic travelling toward Frankfurt, police reported. Cars ground to a halt, forming a thirty-kilometre traffic jam. Drivers had no choice but to spend the night in their vehicles, supplied by the Red Cross with biscuits and warm tea. Traffic started flowing again Wednesday morning. No injuries were reported.
Interesting8: As wild fires continue to rage across the Australian state of Victoria, further north parts of Queensland have been hit by widespread floods. A series of low pressure systems tracking over northeast Australia over the past week have led to days of heavy rainfall. More than 60% of Queensland has been declared as a disaster area, with numerous flood warnings still in effect. The town of Normanton in northern Queensland has been one of the worst affected areas, remaining submerged under water for nearly a week. So far this is the worst flooding to hit the town in 30 years. There was a brief respite from the rain on Friday, but as the flood waters started to recede, another band of rain is moving in.
Overflowing rivers and heavy rainstorms are normal during northern Australia’s November-to-April tropical cyclone season but the Bureau of Meteorology has predicted above-normal monsoonal activity this season. Forecasters expect another area of low pressure to bring further heavy rain and showers over the coming days. Further south, fires continue to rage across parts of Victoria, despite temperatures dropping over the past few days. More than 180 people are now known to have been killed by the fires, which have been fuelled by the heat and strong winds. Next week should see the return to temperatures in the 86F, with a switch to northerly winds helping to fuel the blazes.
Interesting9: The lopsided nature of the solar system’s biggest volcano, Olympus Mons, strengthens the case that life is hiding in the Martian surface, according to a new study. Rising three times higher than Mount Everest, Olympus Mons was active at least 40 million years ago, and perhaps more recently. Researchers believe magma may still be close enough to the surface to support heat-loving bacteria like those found near hydrothermal vents on Earth. But bacteria also need water. Dr Patrick McGovern of the Universities Space Research Association and Assistant Professor Julia Morgan of Rice University at Houston, believe they may have found a source, locked in thick layers of clay-rich sediments beneath the mountain.
Spreading out over an area larger than the state of Victoria, Olympus Mons’ massive lava flows are bunched up in the southeast, and stretched out in the northwest. In a detailed computer simulation of the volcano, the researchers found the volcano would only assume its oblong shape if the erupted lava piled on top of layers of weak, water-laden sediments. Scientists aren’t certain how old Olympus Mons is, but it’s likely that its first eruptions were billions of years ago. If so, it could’ve formed in a time when Mars was much warmer and wetter, and trapped a large reservoir beneath it. Whether or not that reservoir is still warm – and whether it contains life – remains a uncertainty. No heat signatures have yet been detected from satellites orbiting the planet, because their instruments can’t penetrate into the subsurface.
"If we were to go there and shove a probe a metre below the surface, you’d get a very different picture of heat flow," says Dr Brian Hynek of the University of Colorado at Boulder, suggesting the mountain is probably still warm. The blackest depths of a volcano might not seem like the best place to go alien-hunting. But life on Earth has been found subsisting several kilometers down in the crust, and a kilometer beneath the ocean floor. So finding life a kilometer or so below Olympus Mons’ lava flows is well within the realm of possibility, says Hynek. The flows may even act as a kind of insulating blanket, keeping water and heat in, and Mars’ cold, corrosive surface conditions out. "It’s the natural place I’d go first on an astro-biological expedition to Mars, given that it’s the place where volcanism is strongest and youngest on the planet," says McGovern. "And you want to be looking wherever it’s hot."
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