June 10-11, 2009
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Wednesday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 83
Honolulu, Oahu – 91
Kaneohe, Oahu – 82
Kahului, Maui – 84
Hilo, Hawaii – 83
Kailua-kona – 85
Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountains…at 4 p.m. Wednesday afternoon:
Honolulu, Oahu – 90F
Hilo, Hawaii – 79
Haleakala Crater – 46 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 39 (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:
0.19 Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.28 Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.00 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.25 West Wailuaiki, Maui
0.49 Kealakekua, Big Island
Marine Winds – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map shows a 1024 millibar high pressure system to the northeast of the islands, with a ridge extending from the southwest flank of this high…into the area north and northwest of Kauai. The trade winds will remain active, although will be lighter Wednesday into Thursday, as a surface trough, now just to the east of the Big Island…helps to tamp down the trade wind speeds a little.
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
Larger than normal waves…south shores
The trade winds will continue to blow, remaining light to moderately strong through Thursday…then strengthen again Friday into the upcoming weekend. Looking at this weather map Wednesday evening, we see a 1024 millibar high pressure system to our northeast. That same weather map shows a surface trough of low pressure just to our east…which is helping to keep our trade winds slightly lighter than normal now. The computer models continue to show the trade winds picking up again in strength around Friday, into the weekend and beyond. These breezy trade winds are very normal for this time of year, here in the tropics.
Whatever showers that fall from the clouds being carried our way on the trade winds…will end up along the windward sides. The leeward beaches will remain mostly dry, with generally favorable weather conditions through the rest of this week. The one exception may be a few generous showers along the Kona coast of the Big Island during the afternoon hours. As the trade winds increase Friday, there will continue to be a few passing showers along the windward sides. The overlying atmosphere remains fairly stable however, so that most areas will continue to be quite nice…especially those warm leeward beaches. Speaking of which, watch out for those larger than normal waves breaking there now.
It’s Wednesday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin writing this last section of today’s narrative. Looking out the window here in Kihei, before I take the drive back upcountry to Kula, it looks very typical out there. The skies are partly cloudy around the beaches, and cloudy over both the West Maui Mountains, and the Haleakala Crater. The trade winds blew today, and actually got a bit stronger than expected, although not too much. The main influence here in the islands now, continues to be the rather large surf breaking along our south and west facing leeward beaches…which is expected to continue through the rest of the week, into next week.
~~~ As I’ve been mentioning the last several days, I will be flying to the mainland Thursday. I’ll be there saying goodbye to a very good friend in northern California, and then flying south to Long Beach…to spend some time with my Mom and Dad. I’ll be back to the islands June 24th, and will try and stay in touch as I can while away.
~~~ I’ll be back early Thursday morning to prepare this website for the two week period while I’m over on the mainland. The forecasts, on the left hand margins of each page, will be kept current, so you can always depend on them for your daily weather forecast needs. As I mentioned above, I should be able to check in at times, and will make reports here on this page occasionally from California. Right now, as usual, I’m heading home for my evening walk, then dinner with my neighbors, and then some reading before hitting the hay. I hope you have a great Wednesday night. Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting: We all know the political winds surrounding what to do about global warming are fickle. But nobody planned for the newfound apparent fickleness in Mother Nature. Wind across the United States seems to be weakening, a new study suggests. The idea is contrary to what computer models predict should happen as the planet warms, and more research is needed to determine what’s cooking.
But "it’s a very large effect," said study co-author Eugene Takle, a professor of atmospheric science at Iowa State University, according to AP. We don’t need to point this out, but let’s do it anyway: What irony if the wind indeed dies down just as billions of dollars are being invested to harvest it in the effort to reduce the carbon emissions that contribute to global warming! Global investment in green energy quadrupled over the past four years and in 2008, wind got the most new money ($51.8 billion).
Interesting2: While most, but not all, models forecast the development of an El Niño this summer, forecasting these events is still a work in progress. The more compelling evidence comes from the observed data, such as this time diagram showing upper ocean temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific becoming anomalously warm this spring. El Niño conditions have a variety of impacts around the globe, although every event is different.
Typically, upper-level westerly winds intensify a circumstance that could suppress the development of some Atlantic hurricanes this summer. During winter, the North Pacific jet stream flattens its trajectory and moves farther south, which usually brings more warm winter storms across Southern California and Southeastern US. The Pacific Northwest often experiences warmer and drier winters.
Interesting3: The multiple frosts that have blanketed Western Canada in the last week are the most widespread in the top canola-growing province of Saskatchewan in at least five years, the Canola Council of Canada said on Tuesday. Two overnight frosts last week have already resulted in some Saskatchewan farmers reseeding their canola, a Canadian variant of rapeseed, said Jim Bessel, senior agronomy specialist in the province for the industry group Canola Council.
Other farmers are waiting to see growth signs that would suggest their canola plants have survived the frost, which lasted for up to five hours at a stretch. That new growth is slow to appear with generally cool temperatures holding crop development behind schedule.
Ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific are showing signs that an old acquaintance is about to pay a new visit. He will rearrange the meteorological furniture across the planet and probably outstay his welcome. According to the Climate Prediction Center, it looks like El Niño is coming back.
Sea surface temperatures have warmed across the Pacific’s midsection during the Spring, and more importantly, a large pulse of subsurface warmth has propagated from west to east. "These surface and subsurface oceanic anomalies typically precede the development of El Niño," the climate center observed in its monthly discussion of conditions in the region.
Interesting4: In the famed Sharktooth Hill Bone Bed near Bakersfield, California, shark teeth as big as a hand and weighing a pound each, intermixed with copious bones from extinct seals and whales, seem to tell of a 15-million-year-old killing ground. Yet, new research by a team of paleontologists from the University of California, Berkeley, the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and the University of Utah paints a less catastrophic picture.
Instead of a sudden die-off, the researchers say that the bone bed is a 700,000-year record of normal life and death, kept free of sediment by unusual climatic conditions between 15 million and 16 million years ago. The team’s interpretation of the fossils and the geology to establish the origins of the bone bed, the richest and most extensive marine deposit of bones in the world, are presented in the June 2009 issue of the journal Geology.
The mix of shark bones and teeth, turtle shells three times the size of today’s leatherbacks, and ancient whale, seal, dolphin and fish skeletons, comprise a unique six-to-20-inch-thick layer of fossil bones, 10 miles of it exposed, that covers nearly 50 square miles just outside and northeast of Bakersfield.
Since the bed’s discovery in the 1850s, paleontologists have battled over an obvious question: How did the bones get there? Was this a killing ground for megalodon, a 40-foot version of today’s great white shark? Was it a long-term breeding area for seals and other marine mammals, like Mexico’s Scammon’s lagoon is for the California gray whale? Did a widespread catastrophe, like a red tide or volcanic eruption, lead to a massive die-off?
Interesting5: Fuel-efficient and environmentally-friendly, hybrid buses starred at a public transportation congress in Vienna this week, but they still face a long road before becoming cost-effective on a mass scale. With fuel consumption cut by 20 to 30 percent and CO2 emissions down by about as much — thanks to power generated during braking — the hybrid diesel-electric bus is the way of the future, manufacturers say.
"Eventually, there won’t be any reason to drive with a traditional diesel anymore," Per-Martin Johansson, spokesman for Swedish carmaker Volvo, the world number-two after selling 10,000 buses last year, told AFP. "Besides the immediate environmental benefit, the 40-percent premium is redeemed within five to seven years," said Johansson, who spoke at the International Association of Public Transport (UITP) world congress ending Thursday.
Interesting6: Typhoons can trigger slow earthquakes—and that could be a good thing, according to new research. Slow earthquakes are seismic events during which pressure is released along fault lines over the course of minutes or even days. The slow quakes are so subtle that regular seismometers can’t detect them, and people on land can’t feel them.
But the events interest scientists, because the slow quakes could be breaking up larger regions of seismic stress that would otherwise create more powerful temblors. Alan Linde of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., and colleagues placed highly sensitive equipment along the eastern coast of Taiwan to record the otherwise imperceptible slow quakes.
To their surprise, the scientists noticed a strong link between slow quakes and typhoons, the name used for hurricanes in the western Pacific. Over a five-year study period, slow earthquakes happened only during the annual typhoon season, and 11 of the recorded quakes happened at the same time as typhoons.
"We had no idea that we’d see [these] events triggered by typhoons. That never crossed our minds," Linde said. Despite the surprise, the connection makes sense, the researchers say. Typhoons are low-pressure systems. When the storms stir up the ocean, local sea levels change to maintain a balance in pressure on the ocean floor.
"On the land side, however, there’s nothing to move [to create such a balance], so the pressure on the land is slightly decreased during the typhoon," Linde said. This means the storm becomes the proverbial last straw, pushing faults that were on the verge of movement into action. "The typhoons act as a trigger, but they can only do this if the fault is almost ready to fail," Linde said.
The new findings help shed light on how and why different kinds of earthquakes happen, which could eventually lead to better earthquake predictions. Slow earthquakes, for example, are already suspected of relieving seismic pressure in certain parts of the world. The relatively quiet events could explain why Taiwan has so much seismic motion but so few major quakes. "The Earth is so wretchedly complicated," Linde said. "Every time you get some new information that tells you something about the way a fault fails, it helps."
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