March 11-12, 2009
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Wednesday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 75
Honolulu, Oahu – 82
Kaneohe, Oahu – 76
Kahului, Maui – 78
Hilo, Hawaii – 76
Kailua-kona – 80
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 – 78F
Molokai airport – 72
Haleakala Crater – 45 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 34 (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:
0.34 Mount Waialaele, Kauai
0.61 Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.00 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.04 West Wailuaiki, Maui
1.35 Kealakekua, Big Island
Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a 1035 millibar high pressure system located far to the northwest of the islands. Meanwhile, we have a cold passing down through the state Thursday. Our winds will be north to NNE, becoming stronger and gusty into 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
Hawaiian sunset painting
Artist credit: A. Dzigurski
We’re moving into a period of cooler north winds, which will become locally windy at times through Friday. Our winds will be a bit cooler as they take on this more northerly aspect Thursday into Friday, and become locally strong and gusty in places. The NWS forecast office in Honolulu has issued a small craft wind advisory for all coastal and channel waters…between Kauai and Maui County, through 6pm Saturday evening. The winds this coming weekend are still a little up in the air as far as direction goes, although will likely be somewhat lighter, and may be coming from a more unusual NW or even westerly direction then.
Wednesday was a great day, with generally sunny conditions prevailing on most of the islands. As we have the current northerly breezes, we found a distinctly dry atmosphere. We will see a shower producing frontal cloud band passing down through the island chain Thursday…although heavy rainfall isn’t expected. The bulk of the showers will fall along the north facing coasts and slopes. As a low pressure system arrives to the north of our islands Friday into the weekend. As this low gets into place, we’ll see somewhat unsettled weather. Depending upon where this low ends up, will determine whether we see lots of rain, or just some showers…that’s still unclear at this point.
As noted in the paragraph above, a cloud band, with its associated showers, will slide down over the state, mostly along the north facing areas during the day Thursday. The winds will be north then, and with the clouds and generally light showers, it’s going to feel cooler. Our weather outlook remains more difficult going into the weekend, although with a low pressure system in our vicinity, our weather will be less than perfect Friday through Sunday. The models are suggest that we would see improving weather going into next week, which is the one place we can add a positive spin to this situation.
Thursday will find that showery cloud band being pushed down into the state, by an approaching high pressure system to our northwest. The upper air support for this shower producing band of clouds won’t be available, thus eliminating the prospect of flooding. Often, during these types of situations, we find small drop precipitation, with lots of drizzle and mist, although with some bonafide showers riding along with the frontal passage. Things get even more interesting Friday into the weekend. By the way, here’s a satellite image, showing what’s left of the high clouds to our southeast…and the approaching frontal cloud band to our north and northwest.
The computer forecast models are still trying to get a solid handle on what exactly this low pressure system will do, once it gets near us by Friday. The big question remains how far west this low will migrate. If it pushes into the area west of Kauai, its counterclockwise circulation could pull up lots of tropical moisture over us…with rain, or even heavy rains in the process. By the way, as this low gets in near us, we can begin to call it a Kona low pressure system. Kona low’s are well know, again depending upon where they end up, to be agents of wet weather. If the low remains to our north, we would see fewer showers. As I was stating in the paragraphs above, this will all become more clear, at least in terms of our understanding, over the next couple of days.
It’s early Wednesday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin writing this last part of this evening’s narrative. What a great day Wednesday was, which qualified easily, at least in most places…as mostly sunny. We haven’t had a day quite like this in quite some time. We will have to wait for another like it, after this coming weekend, at the earliest. Looking out the window here in Kihei, just before I take the drive back upcountry, to Kula, I see much, much more blue skies, than I do puffy white cumulus clouds. Now that I think about it, I’d better add this looping radar image, so we can start to track those incoming showers heading our way from the north. There will be a few showers arriving overnight, probably around Kauai and Oahu at first, before the showers start falling along the islands of Maui County during the afternoon Thursday, and then a little later in the day on the Big Island. ~~~ I’ll be back early Thursday morning with your next new weather narrative, I hope you have a great Wednesday night, and try and step outside, or look up if you are out driving around, as that near full moon of March, will still be beaming down lots of light! Aloha for now…Glenn.
One more thing, if you have left me a response in the reply box, down the page from here, and you can’t find it…or my answer, here’s what to do: go to the left hand margin of this page, and find where it says "Other Useful Links", and from there scroll down to where it says Archived Narratives. If you click there, you can go back to the previous day, where you’ll find what you wrote, and what I wrote back at the bottom of that page. By the way, from there you can go back and find any narrative that I’ve written, over the last almost three years!
Interesting: Most people consume far too much salt, and a University of Iowa researcher has discovered one potential reason we crave it: it might put us in a better mood. UI psychologist Kim Johnson and colleagues found in their research that when rats are deficient in sodium chloride, common table salt, they shy away from activities they normally enjoy, like drinking a sugary substance or pressing a bar that stimulates a pleasant sensation in their brains.
"Things that normally would be pleasurable for rats didn’t elicit the same degree of relish, which leads us to believe that a salt deficit and the craving associated with it can induce one of the key symptoms associated with depression," Johnson said.
The UI researchers can’t say it is full-blown depression because several criteria factor into such a diagnosis, but a loss of pleasure in normally pleasing activities is one of the most important features of psychological depression. And, the idea that salt is a natural mood-elevating substance could help explain why we’re so tempted to over-ingest it, even though it’s known to contribute to high blood pressure, heart disease and other health problems.
Past research has shown that the worldwide average for salt intake per individual is about 10 grams per day, which is greater than the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommended intake by about 4 grams, and may exceed what the body actually needs by more than 8 grams.
Interesting2: College women may be drinking to excess to impress their male counterparts on campuses across the country, but a new study suggests most college men are not looking for a woman to match them drink for drink. A survey of 3,616 college students at two American universities found an overwhelming majority of women overestimated the amount of alcohol a typical guy would like his female friends, dates or girlfriends to drink.
"Although traditionally, men drink more than women, research has shown that women have steadily been drinking more and more over the last several decades," said the study’s lead author, Joseph LaBrie, PhD, associate professor of psychology at Loyola Marymount University. "Our research suggests women believe men find excessive drinking sexually attractive and appealing, but it appears this is a giant misperception."
For this article, the researchers invited the participating students, ages 18 to 25, to complete an online survey during the 2007 fall semester. The students were at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles or the University of Washington. The women answered several questions to determine, on average, how many drinks they thought a typical college man would like his female friends to drink at a typical event, as well as the maximum number of drinks they thought the men would like their female friends to drink.
They then had to say, on average, how many drinks they thought a woman would have to consume for a guy to consider being friends with her, consider dating her or consider her sexually attractive. The men were asked their actual preferences. The researchers also asked the women to estimate how much they drank in any given week or month, and how much alcohol they thought the average woman at their university drank in any given week.
The results showed 71 percent of women overestimated the men’s actual preference of drinks at any given event. The women overestimated by an average of one-and-a-half drinks. When the researchers looked at the different subgroups, 26 percent of women said that men would most likely want to be friends with a woman who drinks five or more drinks and 16 percent said that men would be most sexually attracted to a woman who drank that much alcohol. Both estimates were nearly double what the men actually preferred. They also found the women who overestimated the men’s preferences were more likely to engage in excessive drinking.
Interesting3: Researchers have found what they say is some of the first unambiguous evidence that an animal other than humans can make spontaneous plans for future events. The report in the March 9th issue of Current Biology highlights a decade of observations in a zoo of a male chimpanzee calmly collecting stones and fashioning concrete discs that he would later use to hurl at zoo visitors. "These observations convincingly show that our fellow apes do consider the future in a very complex way," said Mathias Osvath of Lund University.
"It implies that they have a highly developed consciousness, including life-like mental simulations of potential events. They most probably have an ‘inner world’ like we have when reviewing past episodes of our lives or thinking of days to come. When wild chimps collect stones or go out to war, they probably plan this in advance. I would guess that they plan much of their everyday behavior."
While researchers have observed many ape behaviors that could involve planning both in the wild and in captivity, it generally hasn’t been possible to judge whether they were really meeting a current or future need, he added. For instance, when a chimp breaks a twig for termite fishing or collects a stone for nut cracking, it can always be argued that they are motivated by immediate rather than future circumstances.
And that’s what makes the newly described case so special, Osvath said. It is clear that the chimp’s planning behavior is not based on a "current drive state." In contrast to the chimp’s extreme agitation when throwing the stones, he was always calm when collecting or manufacturing his ammunition.
Osvath said he thinks wild chimps in general, as well as other animals, probably have the planning ability demonstrated by the individual described in the study. Indeed, experiments conducted recently with other captive chimpanzees have shown they are capable of making such plans.
Interesting4: University of Illinois plant geneticist Stephen Moose has developed a corn plant with enormous potential for biomass, literally. It yields corn that would make good silage, Moose said, due to a greater number of leaves and larger stalk, which could also make it a good energy crop. The gene known as Glossy 15 was originally described for its role in giving corn seedlings a waxy coating that acts like a sun screen for the young plant.
Without Glossy 15, seedling leaves instead appear shiny and glossy in sunlight. Further studies have shown that the main function of Glossy15 is to slow down shoot maturation.
Moose wondered what would happen if they turned up the action of this gene. "What happens is that you get bigger plants, possibly because they’re more sensitive to the longer days of summer. We put a corn gene back in the corn and increased its activity. So, it makes the plant slow down and gets much bigger at the end of the season."
The ears of corn have fewer seeds compared to the normal corn plant and could be a good feed for livestock. "Although there is less grain there is more sugar in the stalks, so we know the animal can eat it and they’ll probably like it." This type of corn plant may fit the grass-fed beef standard, Moose said>
Interesting5: Khajura, Bangladesh – In this obscure village perched on the rugged coastline along the Bay of Bengal, climate change exudes a taste — the taste of salt. As recently as five years ago, water from the village well tasted sweet to Mohammed Jehangir.
But now a glassful, flecked with tiny white crystals, tastes of brine. Like other paddy farmers in this southern village, Mr Jehangir is baffled by the change. But international scientists are not surprised as global warming causes sea levels to rise. It is a sign that the brackish water from the Bay of Bengal is encroaching, surging up Bangladesh’s freshwater rivers, percolating deep into the soil, fouling ponds and the underground water supply that millions depend on to drink and to cultivate their farms.
Salt is slowly making its way to the rice paddies of farmers like Mr Jehangir, destroying their only source of income. “These white particles severely impede rice productivity,” he said, darting his finger at a patch of mud covered in traces of white. “Paddy husks take on an abnormal red coloration before drying and wilting away”, he said. “The poor quality of rice doesn’t sell much. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to feed my family.”
Khajura is on the front lines of climate change, and some of the poorest of the world’s poor are feeling the consequences of the fossil-fuel emissions by industrialized nations half a world away. There is little chance of, literally, turning back the tide. So the implications are dire for many millions living in here and for others in low-lying areas around the world.
Bangladesh tops the 2009 Global Climate Risk Index, a rating of 170 countries most vulnerable to climate change complied by Germanwatch, an international non-governmental organization. The nation is particularly at risk because it is a vast delta plain with 230 small and large rivers, many of which swell during the monsoon rains.
This, combined with water from the melting Himalayan mountain glaciers in the north, and an encroaching Bay of Bengal in the south, makes the region prone to floods and the effects of intense storms that are also seen as a marker of climate stresses. Calamities like Cyclone Sidr — the category four tropical storm that ravaged southern Bangladesh in November 2007, killing about 3,500 people and displacing two million — have wiped out homes and paddy fields.
The cyclone was followed by two heavier-than-normal floods that killed some 1,500 people and damaged about two million tons of food. The United Nations warns that one-quarter of Bangladesh’s coastline could be inundated if the sea rises one meter in the next 50 years, displacing 30 million Bangladeshis from their homes and farms. If that happens, the capital, Dhaka, now at the centre of the country, would have its own sea promenade.
But beyond the long-term peril, an immediate threat comes from soil salinity that jeopardizes food output in Bangladesh, a country where 40 per cent of its 150 million people live below the poverty line. In the past few years, due to rising soil salinity, Mr Jehangir has begun noticing a white film of salt that envelopes his paddy farm.
To boost his declining income, he may follow the example of many of his neighbors who switched to shrimp farming, making money from the salty water awash over Khajura’s fields. In an occupational shift, shrimp farming is becoming more popular than cultivation. But this has come with its own share of problems.
Because it is less labor-intensive, shrimp farming has contributed to unemployment, compelling some residents to migrate to cities. Recognizing the plight of farmers, the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) has increased research on salinity issues.
Interesting6: As part of a National Geographic expedition, scientists caught what could be the world’s biggest stingray. The fish was tagged and released in central Thailand on Jan. 28, during the expedition, which seeks to find and protect specimens of the world’s largest freshwater fish. A photo marking the catch was widely circulated along with a rumor that it weighed a whopping 771 pounds. But while the stingray was indeed a heavyweight, its exact weight is unknown.
"While the photo is genuine and there’s no denying that this is a huge stingray, the stingray in the photo was never weighed," said conservation biologist Zeb Hogan of the University of Nevada, Reno. Hogan was the lead researcher on the expedition. Freshwater giant stingrays are among the largest of the approximately 200 species of rays.
They can be found in a handful of rivers in Southeast Asia and northern Australia. The fish, caught by volunteer angler Ian Welch from a small boat using a rod and reel, will be featured in an upcoming documentary airing on the National Geographic Channel.
Hogan, along with his team of researchers and anglers on site at the time of capture, approximate the fish’s weight to be between 550 and 770 pounds. An even slightly larger fish than the one tagged would almost certainly be a world record freshwater fish, he said. "In terms of disk width, this is the second largest stingray I’ve seen, the largest was in Cambodia in 2003," Hogan said.
"This recent fish was very thick, so it may have weighed more." "It’s clear that this species of giant freshwater stingray has the potential to be the largest freshwater fish in the world," Hogan said. The current record holder for world’s largest freshwater fish is a 646-pound Mekong giant catfish caught by fishermen in northern Thailand in 2005.
Email Glenn James: 