March 23-24, 2009
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Monday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 75
Honolulu, Oahu – 81
Kaneohe, Oahu – 77
Kahului, Maui – 80
Hilo, Hawaii – 78
Kailua-kona – 81
Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountains…at 4 p.m. Monday afternoon:
Barking Sands, Kauai – 80F
Hilo, Hawaii – 72
Haleakala Crater – missing (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 30 (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 early Monday afternoon:
0.88 Mount Waialaele, Kauai
0.18 Poamoho 2, Oahu
0.00 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.11 West Wailuaiki, Maui
1.31 Glenwood, Big Island
Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a strong 1038 millibar high pressure system far to the northeast of the islands. Our trade winds will be moderate to locally strong and gusty Tuesday and Wednesday…lighter in those more protected places.
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 wonderful colors of Hawaii…and the Hula kids!
Photo Credit: Google.com
The trade winds will blow steadily through this new work week…then gradually become softer by the weekend. A strong 1037 millibar high pressure system, far to the northeast of Hawaii, is the source of these rather strong and gusty trade winds Monday evening. These winds are strong enough to keep small craft wind advisories active in just about all Hawaiian coastal and channel waters, from Kauai down through the Big Island. Those areas that are more protected from the trade winds will have lighter winds as usual.
We have a temporary break from the high cirrus clouds, which have been around for the last several days…allowing lots of warm sunshine through now. Looking at this satellite image, we see more of that high cloudiness up to the northwest of Kauai. This may sweep down over some parts of the state tonight, especially on the Garden Island. The only showers that are expected, will be those few being carried towards the windward coasts and slopes…most often during the night and early morning hours. There are no organized rainmakers on our weather horizon at this time.
As noted in the two paragraphs above, we are now involved in what can be considered…a fairly normal early spring trade wind weather pattern. These winds will remain amply strong to chalk-up our ocean surface with countless white caps. At the same time, our coconut palm trees will be bending over under their influence as well. The winds are blowing from a direction that is slightly south of directly east. We refer to this direction as east-southeast, which puts some locations in a minor wind shadow. These areas will have some protection from the gusty winds, and will be where the best beaching prospects will happen through Tuesday.
As for the rainfall, there won’t be too much, with just the typical showers falling along the windward sides. As usual, the nights and early morning hours will have the most common showers falling. The leeward sides, the south and west facing beaches, will tend to be completely dry. Looking at this looping radar image, confirms that nothing much is being carried our way on the trade wind flow. The most frequent showers, at least for the moment, appear to be heading towards the windward side of the Big Island. The fuzzy area, that comma shaped hook near the Big Island, isn’t precipitation, but rather sea spray being picked up by the low beam of the radar…there’s a little of that going on for Kauai too.
It’s been a simply beautiful day here in the Islands Monday…the kind that the chamber of commerce loves to see! There were several sea level locations, including Honolulu, Kahului, and Kailua-kona, that reached 80F degrees, or a little more during the afternoon hours. The trade winds were warm, and slightly humid, as they came towards us, a tad south of directly east. This made the air temperatures Monday feel a little warmer than the thermometers actually registered. ~~~ Looking out the window here in Kihei, before I leave for the drive upcountry to Kula, it’s a bit hazy, and partly cloudy in general. The high clouds, which are evident up near Kauai, didn’t slide down over the rest of the state today, as shown by that satellite image above. They may edge further into the state with time, beautifying our local skies in the process. ~~~ I expect Monday night to be slightly cooler than normal in a few places, like Kahului, Maui again, while others, that are more exposed to the ESE winds, to remain near 70 overnight, or even a few degrees warmer than that. Upcountry in Kula, at my house, I’ll make a guess that the low temperature will be near 46 degrees again Tuesday morning, as it was Monday morning. I hope you have a great Monday night wherever you happen to be reading from, and that you will join me here again Tuesday! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting: Alaska’s Mount Redoubt Volcano has erupted, spewing ash thousands of feet into the air. The volcano, 106 miles southwest of Anchorage, erupted explosively on March 22, 2009, at approximately 10:38 PM AKDT, sending a cloud of volcanic ash to an estimated 50,000 feet above sea level. Scientists from the Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO) are monitoring the volcano closely as the eruption continues.
Ash plumes generated by the explosive bursts are drifting north-northeast. Ash fall has been reported in Skwentna and the Chuitna area. The eruption follows an increase March 15 of seismic activity at Mount Redoubt, when approximately four hours of continuous volcanic tremor ensued.
The onset of the tremor was associated with a small explosion that produced a plume of gas and ash that rose to about 15,000 feet above sea level and deposited a trace amount of ash over the summit-crater floor and down the south flank of the volcano to about 3,000 feet.
The Alaska Volcano Observatory is a cooperative program of the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, and the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys.
Interesting2: At least 63 whales of a pod of 80 that came ashore near Margaret River on Australia’s west coast on Monday have died. Residents and tourists at Margaret River, 270 kilometres south of Perth, called in help after early morning walkers found the pod of long-finned pilot whales and dolphins at Hamelin Bay. Initial reports stated the stranded creatures were False Killer Whales, but a Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC) spokesman said that on closer inspection they were pilot whales.
"The main strategy is to regroup the animals, which are spread over five to six kilometres of beach, into one pod and hold them overnight in Hamelin Bay until daybreak when they will be transported by truck to Flinders Bay for release (on Tuesday)," DEC spokesman Greg Mair said in a statement.
Mair said Flinders Bay was picked because it is sheltered and far enough away from the original stranding site to deter the whales from coming back on shore. Liz Carion, one of 100 volunteers caring for the whales, said the scene was one of great sorrow. "I have never seen this sort of thing happen in real life," she said. "I have only seen it with photos.
But I went down to the beach to have a look myself and … just held back the tears. I thought one was still alive because there is a bit of a swell down here, and the dorsal fin or part of the whale had moved, but it wasn’t, it was just the waves." Opinions differ on why strandings happen. Whales are highly socialized animals and seemed wired to come to the aid of one of their number that gets into difficulties in shallow water.
Interesting3: Tens of thousands of animals were at risk in Kenya on Monday after forest fires sent wildlife fleeing and dried up water sources in a country already suffering from drought. A fire at Mount Longonot, an extinct volcano popular with hikers, continued to burn on Monday, with game wardens concerned that animals such as baboons, rabbits and mongoose were trapped inside the crater of the extinct volcano.
On Sunday, thousands of zebras, buffalo, giraffes and antelopes fled the blaze in the Longonot National Park, blundering through villages and across busy roads. Other fires broke out over the weekend, with particular concern caused by a blaze in the Mau forest in south-west Kenya. According to the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), many of the rivers feeding Lake Nakuru – home to hundreds of thousands of flamingoes – have partially dried up because of the blaze.
Authorities suspect the fire in the Mau forest was started by settlers that the government is trying to move out of the forest. The KWS has previously warned that human settlement in the Mau forest was drying up the rivers and threatening Lake Nakuru. Kenya is facing a drought that the government says is leaving up to 10 million people hungry.
Interesting4: Deep-sea corals are the oldest living animals with a skeleton in the seas, claims new research that found a 4,265-year-old coral species off the coast of Hawaii. Deep-sea corals, which are threatened by climate change and pollution like shallow water corals are, grow on seamounts (mountains rising from the seafloor that don’t reach the ocean’s surface) and continental margins at depths of about 1,000 to 10,000 feet (300 to 3,000 meters). These corals play host to many other marine organisms, and are hotspots of ocean biodiversity.
The largest coral reef system in the world is the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Queensland, Australia. Big reefs are also found in the Red Sea, along the coast of Mexico and Belize, the Bahamas and the Maldives. Samples of two species examined in the study, gold coral (Gerardia sp.) and deep-water black coral (Leiopathes sp.), were gathered from off the coast of Hawaii with submersibles. Previous estimates of the corals’ ages, made by counting what were thought to be annual growth rings, put the maximum age for Gerardia sp. in Hawaii at about 70 years.
But radiocarbon studies had pinned ages of about 2,000 to 3,000 years on other Gerardia colonies in the Atlantic and Pacific. Similar dates were found for some Leiopathes specimens. Brendan Roark of Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, and his colleagues made radiocarbon measurements of the skeletons of the Hawaiian specimens and came up with similarly ancient ages: about 2,742 years for Gerardia and 4,265 years for Leiopathes.
"These results show that Leiopathes is the oldest skeletal-accreting marine organism known and, to the best of our knowledge, the oldest colonial organism yet found," the study authors wrote. Their findings are detailed in the March 23 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The ages imply that the corals’ skeletons grow much more slowly than previously thought, only a few micrometers a year (one micrometer is about the diameter of a human blood cell).
Interesting5: Toxic algal blooms are bad enough on the ocean surface, but now it turns out that the toxin in them sinks to the ocean floor – where it persists for weeks. Far from degrading soon after the bloom, as previously assumed, new research suggests that the neurotoxin that causes shellfish poisoning, domoic acid, sinks to the ocean floor and could poison marine mammals, birds and humans.
"The first signs of an algal bloom are often birds washing up on the shore or seals acting funny, aggressive and twitching, looking as if they were drunk," says Claudia Benitez-Nelson of the University of South Carolina. "We used to think that once the bloom died, the danger was over, but now it turns out that domoic acid is a ‘gift’ that just keeps on giving."
Benitez-Nelson’s team are the first to look for the chemical in algae particles sinking through the ocean, as well as in sediment samples on the ocean floor, up to 800 meters down. They found copious amounts of the neurotoxin, reaching concentrations eight times the US federal limit for the substance in shellfish.
The team also compared the peak of domoic acid levels from the sediment with those of algae blooms at the surfaces. Their findings indicate that the toxin reaches the bottom of the ocean in only three days but stays there for much longer – at least several weeks. The speedy trip to the bottom is probably driven by dead algae clumping together at the surface to form heavier aggregates, says the team, a process that also protects the toxin from degradation.
Interesting6: Scientists at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory say there has been more than a 30% ice decline on the lakes since the 1970s. The drop attributed to global climate change leaves the largest system of freshwater lakes on Earth open to evaporation that can lead to lower lake levels. Ice also protects the shoreline from erosion and protects underwater fish eggs.
Scientists who have studied the lakes at the lab in Ann Arbor, Mich., say the waters also are influenced by natural cycles that counter global warming. Researcher Jia Wang says natural variability is at least as large a factor as global warming. He says regional climate patterns and global climate change are competing over the Great Lakes.
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