May 18-19, 2009
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Monday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 79
Honolulu, Oahu – 82
Kaneohe, Oahu – 78
Kahului, Maui – 80
Hilo, Hawaii – 75
Kailua-kona – 78
Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountains…at 5 p.m. Monday evening:
Kapalua, Maui – 81F
Princeville, Kauai – 72
Haleakala Crater – 41 (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 Monday afternoon:
0.51 Kapahi, Kauai
1.71 Bellows AFB, Oahu
0.01 Molokai
0.42 Lanai
0.02 Kahoolawe
0.43 West Wailuaiki, Maui
1.68 Laupahoehoe, Big Island
Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map shows a low pressure system to the north of the state, with a weakening cold front just to the east of the Big Island. Winds will be northwest to north Tuesday, becoming lighter and variable Wednesday or Thursday.
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 Haleakala Crater…from West Maui
A late season cold front swept down through the island chain, bringing some showers…and ventilating our haze away. Our local atmosphere was very hazy, at least locally on Sunday, so that was so nice to see the clear air back in our area today. A low pressure system is evident on this weather map, more or less to the north of the islands. This is the parent low for the dissipating cold front, which is located to the south and east of the Big Island Monday evening. Winds will remain light from the northeast through mid-week, with returning light and variable winds thereafter. Light and variable winds are famous for hot and muggy weather…along with localized haze.
The heaviest rainfall associated with the cold front continue to fall over the ocean to the northeast of Hawaii. Using this satellite image, we can see the band of clouds which brought the showery weather into our island chain. The brighter, whiter clouds to the northeast of Hawaii, consist of some thunderstorms. We can check out this looping radar image, to see that there are a few showers around, generally the most active of which are falling near the Big Island, and a few along the windward side of Maui. All of this shower activity is associated with the departing cold front, and should be gone for the most part by Tuesday.
It’s early Monday evening as I begin writing this last section of today’s weather narrative. The atmosphere remains haze free Monday evening, although there are still quite a few clouds around, which is the leftover moisture from the recently retiring cold front. Rainfall has ended across most areas, not that all that much fell in general, although some showers are noted in some parts of Maui and the Big Island going into Monday night. ~~~ Looking out the window here in Kihei, just before I take the drive back upcountry, there really isn’t all that much blue sky over Maui, in what I would rate as partly to mostly cloudy. It’s good to get through Monday, the first day back to work, although on the other hand, I really enjoyed the work despite it’s interruption to the weekend! ~~~ I’ll return early Tuesday morning with your next new weather narrative, I hope you have a great Monday night until then! Again, we are moving into a new light wind reality, with clear mornings giving way to afternoon clouds, and a few showers. It’s still a little sketchy about whether we will have another bout of voggy weather, although I do anticipate at least some amount of haze starting by mid-week, which may accompany us through most of the rest of this week. ~~~ A couple of more things, the first of which is that I saw some increase in haze already in the central valley, from up here in Kula when I got home. Next, when I went out on my evening walk, a black pit bull attacked me in the street, geez, fortunately I jumped high enough that the dog went right under me, before his owner came out and called him off, and apologized to me. Finally, while sitting out watching the sunset, or trying to, a cloud of fog enveloped Kula, sending the temperature plummeting to 63.1 degrees just before dark, which I really enjoyed! I have to get out in the garden and pick some fresh lettuce for my bean and cheese tortilla’s before it gets too late, so bye for now…Glenn.
Interesting: The long awaited and historic dredging of the Upper Hudson River to remove PCB-contaminated sediment began today near Roger’s Island in Fort Edward, NY. The start of the first phase of the six-year dredging project, which is being conducted under an agreement with the General Electric Company, was marked today by officials from the U.S. environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and New York State, elected representatives, and a broad group of community representatives and environmental stakeholders at a river’s edge ceremony in Fort Edward.
"The start of Hudson River dredging is a symbol of victory for the environment and for its river communities," said George Pavlou, Acting EPA Regional Administrator. "Dredging will help restore the health of the river, and will one day allow people to eat fish that are caught between Fort Edward and Albany. This is an historic day for an historic river." From approximately 1947 to 1977, the General Electric Company (GE) discharged as much as 1.3 million pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from its capacitor manufacturing plants at the Hudson Falls and Fort Edward facilities into the Hudson River.
The primary health risk associated with the site is the accumulation of PCBs in the human body through eating contaminated fish. Since 1976, high levels of PCBs in fish have led New York State to close various recreational and commercial fisheries and to issue advisories restricting the consumption of fish caught in the Hudson River. The dredging and related work will be conducted by GE under the terms of a November 2006 consent decree. EPA will oversee all aspects of the work; dredging will continue through October 2009, weather permitting.
At the conclusion of this first phase of the project, an independent panel of experts will review the results of the dredging and potentially make recommendations for changes that may be incorporated throughout the remainder of the dredging, which is targeted for completion in 2015. This first phase of the dredging project will be conducted 24 hours a day, six days a week and targets the removal of 265,000 cubic yards of sediment and 20,300 kilograms of PCBs from a six-mile stretch of the river between Roger’s Island and Thompson Island.
Sediment removed from the river will be carried by barge to a dewatering facility located on the Champlain Canal in Fort Edward. At this facility, water will be squeezed from the sediment and treated to drinking water standards before being returned to the canal. The remaining PCB-laden dirt will be loaded onto railcars for ultimate disposal at a permitted landfill facility in Andrews, Texas. The entire project will remove an estimated 1.8 million cubic yards of sediment and 113,000 kg of PCBs.
Interesting2: PlasticNews reports that Palo Alto, Calif. will officially ban take out containers starting April 22, 2010. The move is a growing trend as 22 other coastal California towns are prohibiting the use of polystyrene takeout containers. San Francisco was the first major city to enact the ban in 2007. The ban extends to containers, clam shells, bowls, plates, cartons and cups. However, it does not affect straws, utensils or hot up lids.
In January, Palo Alto stopped accepting polystyrene packing peanuts and polystyrene blocks used in consumer goods packaging. But while the ban will reduce Palo Alto’s waste, that’s not the initial intention of the prohibition. The current economic recession carried a lot of weight for lawmakers proposing the ban.
"Part of the rationale for a ban was the economy and the recycling markets in general," says Mike Levy, director of the Plastics Foodservice Packaging Group of the American Chemistry Council. "It is a difficult decision for a city to add recycling when the market is down." However, Levy adds that fewer than 5 percent of the cities in California have enforced this ban, and as the economy picks up, so will the market for recycling materials.
Therefore, Levy hopes that other cities will look at the sustainability aspect of the situation and its potential for recycling, not just from an economic standpoint. Litter audits have shown that the polystyrene ban has not significantly reduced the littler. The 2008 audit shows that on and item-by-item basis, the 36 percent reduction in polystyrene litter was offset by an equal increase in coated paperboard.
Nevertheless, the ban is seen as a step forward considering the complexity of polystyrene (Styrofoam) recycling. Because it’s so lightweight, polystyrene takes up to 0.01 percent of the total municipal solid waste stream by weight, but as you may have guessed, its volume is a greater problem than its weight. It takes up space in landfills and doesn’t biodegrade.
The recent H1N1 influenza epidemic has raised many questions about how animal viruses move to human populations. One potential route is through veterinarians, who, according to a new report by University of Iowa College of Public Health researchers, are at markedly increased risk of infection with zoonotic pathogens — the viruses and bacteria that can infect both animals and humans.
Interesting3: While there is no evidence that veterinarians played a direct role in the current H1N1 epidemic, the review found that veterinarians can serve as a "bridging population," spreading pathogens to their families, their communities and the various groups of animals for which they provide care. While conducting previous occupational research studies, the study’s authors, Whitney Baker, a doctoral student in epidemiology at the University of Iowa College of Public Health, and Gregory Gray, M.D., University of Iowa professor of epidemiology and director of the University of Iowa Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases, observed that veterinarians often have evidence of zoonotic influenza virus infection.
To better understand this finding, Baker and Gray conducted a review of medical literature published between 1966 and 2007 and identified 66 journal articles that specifically addressed veterinarians and zoonotic infections. "Our review of the literature found that veterinarians’ risk of zoonotic infections is often higher than that of other occupational groups with extensive exposure to animals, such as farm workers," Baker said. "This is remarkable since veterinarians have professional training in how to protect themselves from zoonotic infections."
Interesting4: Ciguatera poisoning, the food-borne disease that can come from eating large, carnivorous reef fish, causes vomiting, headaches, and a burning sensation upon contact with cold surfaces. An early morning walk on cool beach sand can become a painful stroll on fiery coals to a ciguatera victim. But is this common toxin poisoning also the key to a larger mystery?
That is, the storied migrations of the Polynesian natives who colonized New Zealand, Easter Island and, possibly, Hawaii in the 11th to 15th centuries? Could ciguatera be the reason masses of people left paradise?
Teina Rongo, a Cook Island Maori from Rarotonga and a Ph.D. student at the Florida Institute of Technology, and his faculty advisers Professors Robert van Woesik and Mark Bush, propose this intriguing theory in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Biogeography.
Based on archeological evidence, paleoclimatic data and modern reports of ciguatera poisoning, they theorize that ciguatera outbreaks were linked to climate and that the consequent outbreaks prompted historical migrations of Polynesians. Why would historic populations of Cook Islanders take the chance of voyaging?
A journey beyond the horizon was risky and favorable landfalls were uncertain. It is known that this population was heavily reliant on fish as a source of protein, and the scientists suggest that once their fish resources became inedible, voyaging became a necessity.
Modern Cook Islanders, though surrounded by an ocean teeming with fish, don’t eat fish as a regular part of their diet but instead eat processed, imported foods. In the late 1990s, lower-income families who could not afford processed foods emigrated to New Zealand and Australia. The researchers suggest that past migrations had similar roots.
The heightened voyaging from A.D. 1000 to 1450 in eastern Polynesia was likely prompted by ciguatera fish poisoning. There were few options but to leave once the staple diet of an island nation became poisonous. "Our approach brings us a step closer to solving the mysteries of ciguatera and the storied Polynesian native migrations. We hope it will lead to better forecasting and planning for ciguatera outbreaks" says van Woesik.
An international team of scientists has identified a nesting population of leatherback sea turtles in Gabon, West Africa as the world’s largest. The research, published in the May issue of Biological Conservation, involved country-wide land and aerial surveys that estimated a population of between 15,730 and 41,373 female turtles using the nesting beaches.
Interesting5: Blooms of algae in lakes and seas, sometimes called red tides, can release neurotoxins into the food chain or suffocate the local ecology by sucking up too much oxygen. When one occurs, the safest option is usually just to wait for the bloom to clear of its own accord, but now scientists at the University of Hull, UK, think they have found a way to put a stop to these deadly algal explosions- by exposing them to blasts of ultrasound.
The use of ultrasound has been explored before, but with mixed results. That may be because the mechanism was not well understood, say Michiel Postema and his colleagues, who successfully used ultrasound to kill off algae. Postema believes it affects buoyancy cells, known as heterocysts, which keep the algae afloat by enclosing a bubble of nitrogen gas.
He reckons the ultrasound pressure wave causes the gas in the cells to resonate. At high intensity it bursts the cell, and the algae sink. "Without sunlight they will then die," he says. Postema and his team tested three different frequencies on a particularly harmful species of blue-green algae, Anabaena sphaerica, which can cause respiratory disease and liver cancer in humans who come into contact with it.
Although all three frequencies worked to some extent, the most effective was close to 1 megahertz. That value matches the expected resonant frequency of this alga’s buoyancy cell, which is about 6 micrometers across. If they are right about the resonance mechanism, it would be good news, says Postema.
Any method for clearing toxic algal blooms should do as little damage as possible to the rest of the ecosystem. "You need to be sure you avoid other harmless species," says Deborah Long, conservation officer for the charity Plantlife Scotland in the UK.
The ultrasound could be targeted to specific species of algae, because the resonant frequency of heterocysts varies from species to species in accordance with their size. What’s more, such a measure should not damage ordinary water-filled plant cells, which are relatively impervious to pressure waves.
These high frequencies are absorbed rapidly as they travel through water, and at 1 megahertz the effective radius is less than 20 meters, says Postema. So the technique may be more practical for clearing algal blooms in lakes and ponds than for large-scale red tides that can cover hundreds of square kilometers of sea.
Interesting6: H1N1 swine flu appears to be spreading in Japan, pushing the world to the brink of an official flu pandemic. Japan’s cases of H1N1 spiked today with 104 new lab-confirmed cases, raising that nation’s swine-flu case count from 25 to 129. Ten schools in the Kobe City area reported 78 of the new cases. If the new cases do indeed represent "community-level sustained transmission" of the virus in Asia, it would be the second region of the world to have wide spread of H1N1 swine flu.
That would meet the official WHO criteria for moving from the current level 5 pandemic alert to the ultimate level 6 alert. Aside from the emotional shock, the formal pandemic declaration won’t mean a lot to the U.S., Anne Schuchat, MD, the CDC’s interim deputy director for science, said at a news conference.
"We have seen sustained spread of this virus in the U.S. and are acting aggressively, so a change from level 5 to level 6 will have less effect on us than on other regions that have done less to deal with virus," she said. Declaration of a pandemic does not mean that the virus has become more deadly, only that it is spreading more widely around the globe.
While H1N1 swine flu does appear more dangerous than seasonal flu bugs — especially for older children, teens, and young adults — the vast majority of cases have been relatively mild. "From the virus strains we have tested we see no indication of a change to more virulent strain. But viruses do change and we will continue looking at this," Schuchat said.
Even so, the U.S. has recorded its sixth swine flu fatality, a 55-year-old assistant principal at a school in the New York City borough of Queens. The city has closed eight schools in Queens and Brooklyn; news reports suggest that 40 other New York schools have high absentee rates. Despite the worrisome news from New York, Schuchat said the swine flu is now spreading most quickly in the Pacific Northwest and in the Southwest.
Case counts — 5,123 as of today — are "the tip of the iceberg." "The way this virus is spreading in the U.S., we are not out of the woods and disease is continuing," Schuchat said. More than 200 Americans have been hospitalized. Most of those hospitalized have been young people between that ages of 5 and 24, and very few have been over 65.
The reason for this is not clear. That’s the same disease pattern seen worldwide. In a speech today to the World Health Organization’s annual meeting of health ministers, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan, MD, said that while the WHO has not yet declared a pandemic, H1N1 swine flu is expected to spread rapidly to new countries.
Interesting7: Mockingbirds may look pretty much alike to people, but they can tell us apart and are quick to react to folks they don’t like. Birds rapidly learn to identify people who have previously threatened their nests and sounded alarms and even attacked those folks, while ignoring others nearby, researchers report in Tuesday’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"This shows a bird is much more perceptive of its environment than people had previously suspected," said Douglas J. Levey, a professor in the zoology department of the University of Florida. "We are a part of their environment and we are a concern to them," Levey said in a telephone interview.
The researchers are studying mockingbirds as part of an effort to better understand how species adapt to urbanization. With more and more areas being converted into towns and cities, animals that adapt well seem to be those that are especially perceptive about their environment, he said.
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