Hawaiian Island weather details & Aloha paragraphs / January 28-29, 2010

January 28-29, 2010

Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Thursday afternoon:

Lihue, Kauai – 78
Honolulu, Oahu – 82
Kaneohe, Oahu – 74
Kaunakakai, Molokai – 77
Kahului, Maui – 80
Hilo, Hawaii – 85
Kailua-kona – 81

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level around the state – and on the highest mountains…at 5pm Thursday evening:

Honolulu, Oahu – 79F
Kapalua, Kauai – 73

Haleakala Crater –    50 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 43 (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 Thursday afternoon:

0.33 Wainiha, Kauai  
1.05 Wilson Tunnel, Oahu
0.16 Molokai 
0.02 Lanai
0.05 Kahoolawe
4.84 West Wailuaiki, Maui 
2.64 Honokaa, Big Island

Marine Winds – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a cold front dissipating over the Big Island end of the chain. A weak 1018 millibar high pressure system, to the north of the islands…is moving east. Our winds will be southeast…all the way around to the south to SW later Friday into Saturday.

Satellite and Radar Images: To view the cloud conditions we have here in Hawaii, please use the following satellite links, starting off with this 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.

Tropical Cyclone activity in the eastern and central Pacific – Here’s the latest weather information coming out of the National Hurricane Center, covering the eastern north Pacific. You can find the latest tropical cyclone information for the central north Pacific (where Hawaii is located) by clicking on this link to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center. Here’s a tracking map covering both the eastern and central Pacific Ocean. A satellite image, which shows the entire ocean area between Hawaii and the Mexican coast…can be found here.

Aloha Paragraphs

The Hawaiian Islands underwater…and above

The latest cold front has stalled over the southern part of the island chain…keeping partly cloudy skies, and a few showers active. Despite the fact that this cold front is still around, it has lost its forward speed, and is just hanging around…ahead of the next cold front. This satellite image shows the dissipating cold front’s clouds still over much of the state Thursday night, as well as the next new cold front approaching from the northwest. Here’s a closer view, using this IR satellite image, showing the bulk of the clouds stretched from Maui up through Kauai at the time of this writing. The few leftover showers will generally end up along the southeast to south sides of the islands overnight. As the next front gets closer, the southwest Kona winds will likely carry some pre-frontal showers onto the south and west leeward sides.

This next cold front will arrive later Friday into Saturday, followed by yet another…as we move into early next week. The usual Kona winds will precede the cold fronts, followed by slightly cooler north to northeast breezes in their wake. This pattern has been happening all winter thus far. The computer models are showing more than the ordinary amount of moisture in the atmosphere as this next cold front gets into range. If this pans out as expected, we could see more widespread showers associated with this upcoming frontal boundary. This would be a very good thing, and each of the islands could use the precipitation. Time will tell, but later Friday and Saturday’s front looks fairly encouraging! Perhaps its time to do a rain dance or two…or at least a crossing of our fingers in this regard.

It’s Thursday evening, as I begin writing the last section of today’s narrative. As set forth in the two paragraphs above, we’re still quite cloudy, due to the remnant cloudiness associated the old cold front over us now. This is good, as it could be used to bring more showers as the new cold front gets closer. Clouds drop showers, and as dry as we are in many parts of the state now, we like clouds! Although, before we get too excited, we should check out this looping radar image. At the time of this writing, most of the showers were located offshore of the islands, although there were a few showers along the Koolau Mountains of Oahu, and around Maui County too. The main thing I notice about this radar image, is that the showers are now being carried along on southeast breezes. This suggests strongly that it won’t be long before we see voggy skies again, as volcanic haze issuing from the Big Island, moves up over the smaller islands. As is often the case under such conditions, leading up to a cold front passing through the state, I get excited, sometimes really excited! I’ve always been this way, especially as a little weather loving kid. For some reason, this charge has never really left, and even now, as an adult Maui weatherman, it still gets me going! ~~~ Speaking of getting me going going, I’m just about ready to take the drive back upcountry, to my home in Kula. My neighbors have emailed me and said that it’s good and foggy up there, up there from down here in Kihei. Fog is one of my favorite weather circumstances, especially when I’m out walking. So, I’m outta here, although will join you again very early Friday morning, with your next new weather narrative from paradise. I hope you have a great Thursday night until then! A little bit more: I just finished dinner, and was walking up the stairs to the weather tower, which is my office and where I sleep both…and found it to be foggy as can be, and lightly raining too, glory be! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting: Vancouver is set to register the warmest January on record with average temperatures more than twice as high as normal, according to Environment Canada. "It’s quite possible this will be the warmest January. We’re sitting at 7.1 Celsius (45F) for an average right now and it will take a lot of cooling to knock that down," meteorologist David Jones said.

The highest recorded average temperature for the month is 6.3 C (43F), set in 1983 and matched in 1994, 2003 and 2006. Since record-keeping began in 1937 at Vancouver International Airport, the average temperature in January has been 3.3 C (38F). The forecast for the rest of the month calls for rain with highs of 8 C and lows of 6C (46-43F).

"We’re attributing this to El Nino and we’ve been particularly warm," said Jones, referring to the recurring climate pattern that brings warm air from the south. Vancouver has set four daily high records as temperatures soared into double digits an unprecedented 11 times in the first 21 days of January.

A normal month would have only three to four days above 10 C (50F). There have only been two days this month when the temperature dipped below freezing; normally Vancouver sees 12 January days below zero. The balmy winter has been worrying fans, officials and athletes of the 2010 Winter Games.

The forecast may go from bad to terrible for Cypress Mountain, an Olympic venue that has already seen close to 500 mm (19.70") of rain this month. "We know El Nino has its strongest effect in the month of February," Jones said, adding that the average temperature in February should be about 1.5 degrees above average, according to long-term models.

"We’re just not seeing anything that would lend me, as a skier, to have some hope about the snow situation in the mountains," Jones said. But average temperatures don’t reflect day-to-day weather, he said, and a cold snap is still possible. Jones noted that weather forecasts are not reliable more than about seven days into the future.

He added that this year’s El Nino is only of moderate strength and warm-weather records are being set only because of normal temperature variability. "Even without El Nino, you can have warm stretches of weather," he said.

Interesting2: Earthquakes triggered the deadliest disasters of the past decade and remain a major threat for millions of people worldwide who live in some of the world’s megacities, the United Nations said Thursday. A UN-backed study said nearly 60 percent of about 780,000 people killed by disasters in 2000 to 2009 died during earthquakes. But climate events affected far more people — nearly three quarters of the two billion hit by catastrophes.

Storms accounted for 22 percent of the overall death toll while extreme temperatures claimed 11 percent of lives lost in 3,852 disasters over the period. Officials and researchers also maintained their alarm over climate or weather-related disasters as the overall number of catastrophes more than doubled compared to the previous decade.

The global bill for disasters reached 960 billion dollars according to the study by the Center for Research on Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) at Belgium’s Catholic University of Louvain. “Earthquakes are the deadliest natural hazard of the past 10 years and remain a serious threat for millions of people worldwide as eight out of the 10 most populous cities in the world are on earthquake fault-lines,” said Margareta Wahlstroem, UN Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction.

But just four percent of those hit by catastrophes over the decade suffered in earthquakes, while 44 percent of them were affected by floods and 30 percent by droughts, the study found. The deadliest disasters in the first decade of the 21st century were the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004, which killed 226,408 people in several countries, Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar, which claimed 136,366 lives in 2008 and the Sichuan earthquake in China that year, with 87,476 deaths.

Some 73,338 people were also killed in an earthquake in Pakistan (2005) and 72,210 in heat waves in Europe (2003). The current decade has got off to an equally deadly start, with about 170,000 feared dead in the powerful and unprecedented earthquake that struck Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince and the surrounding area on January 12.

Interesting3: The government has aired fears that global food prices would spike this year, as India suffers its worst drought in nearly four decades. “There’s been a big drought in India which affected half of her territory and which may affect global food prices,” Economic Planning Undersecretary Dennis Arroyo told reporters yesterday. Arroyo listed the Indian dry spell as among the potential obstacles to a full Philippine recovery this year from the global financial crisis, which dragged its economic growth last year to an 11-year low 0.9 percent.

He noted that the Philippines, a huge rice consumer like India, was among the worst nations hit in 2008 when the global prices of the grain spiked to 34-year highs. The Philippines, the world’s largest rice importer, is expected to ramp up rice imports this year after two devastating tropical storms that hit Luzon, the northern part of the country, in September and October last year trimmed annual farm output growth to 0.1 percent. Luzon is the prime location of rice and corn farmlands and granaries and is the chief source of such crops domestically.

“In 2008 you had the global food and fuel crisis. In 2009 we had the financial crisis. Now we’re seeing a global climate crisis. The world is vulnerable to this,” Arroyo said. India, the world’s second most populous country, said last year it was suffering its worst drought since 1972. Low rains had ravaged the country’s rice, cane sugar and groundnut crops.

The Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) has told the public to brace for higher prices of pork and chicken as a consequence of the El Niño phenomenon that is expected to again affect several parts of Asia after hitting the region a few years ago. The BAI said the foreseen heat wave will cause big problems for the agriculture sector of tropical countries, including the Philippines, and will stunt the growth of their swine and poultry industries.

The agency projects that the local hog and poultry industry will lose some P10 billion due to the anticipated dry spell. The BAI moreover said among those that would suffer are the backyard businesses since almost three-quarters of the country’s swine and poultry production come from such small suppliers. The BAI said the country still has five million kilos each of pork and chicken in its inventory.

Market vendors are worried that pork and chicken price increases could affect their profitability as a result of declining demand. The current price of pork in local public markets is around P160-P170 per kilo. The Department of Agriculture (DA) said it is already taking steps to head off the effects of El Niño. “The Agriculture department has laid down a program to help our fishermen and farmers.

We (though) expect only moderate effects from El Niño,” Agriculture Undersecretary Bernado Fondevilla told a television interview. He said the El Niño phenomenon, which can bring global weather chaos such as droughts and floods, is expected to hit 500,000 hectares of the country’s farmlands, affecting the local production of rice, corn and vegetables. The fisheries sector is also seen to be affected.

Fondevilla said the DA will start cloud seeding, a process that stimulates cloud precipitation to form rain, to help irrigate the farmlands. He said the DA is eyeing to get an extra funding of P1.7 billion from the national government to be able to put in place measures to address the foreboding climate problem. Among the provinces experiencing the early effects of the dry spell are Isabela, Cagayan, as well as some parts of Bulacan and Pampanga in Luzon; and Panay, Samar and Leyte in the Visayas, Fondevilla said.

“(The condition in those areas, however) is not that arid. (They are only) experiencing low rainfall,” he, though, clarified, adding that the country’s irrigation systems bear enough water supply to provide for the irrigation of the farmlands. Fondevilla said there should be no need for the country to raise rice imports as long as the effects of El Niño are mitigated. “NFA (National Food Authority) stocks (of rice) are in place.

We are hoping that with our intervention, there will be no need to import (rice),” he said. But should there be a need to import rice, the government could bring in 300,000 metric tons of the staple grain, he added. The government has said crop losses from the intensifying dry spell, which is seen to affect at least 47 provinces in the country until early next year, could reach P56.4 billion. Besides palay, corn and fish products, the country’s coconut and sugarcane plantations are also threatened to be hit by El Niño.