Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / February 24-25, 2011

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

Lihue, Kauai –                   76
Honolulu airport, Oahu –    80
Kaneohe, Oahu –               76
Molokai airport –                78
Kahului airport, Maui –        78
Kona airport –                    77
Hilo airport, Hawaii –          75

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops…as of 5pm Thursday evening:

Port Allen, Kauai – 81F
Hilo, Hawaii – 72

Haleakala Crater –     missing (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 30 (under 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 evening:

5.09    Kapahi, Kauai
3.22    Maunawili, Oahu
0.58    Molokai
1.33    Lanai
0.55    Kahoolawe
2.20    Kaupo Gap, Maui
2.26    Waikoloa, Big Island

Marine Winds – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a 1030 millibar high pressure system to our northeast of the islands. At the same time we find low pressure trough over the islands. Our winds will be generally light, although stronger locally through 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 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 web cam 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 web cams 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. Of course, as we know, our hurricane season ends November 30th here in the central Pacific.

 Aloha Paragraphs

Gradually improving weather…still a few showers around

 

Generally light and variable winds through the rest of the week, trade winds returning after the weekend briefly…before fading away again by mid-week. A 1030 millibar high pressure system is located to our northeast Thursday night. At the same time we find a low pressure trough over the islands. Our winds will be generally light, although stronger locally at times. We should finally see the return of our long lost trade winds Monday, although this may turn out to be a short return to the lime light. The computer models, or at least some of them…are showing a faltering of those trades already by around next Wednesday or Thursday.

Winds will be generally light, although locally stronger…the following numbers represent the strongest gusts, along with directions Thursday evening:

24 mph       Barking Sands, Kauai – NNE
17              Waianae, Oahu – SE 
06              Molokai – NE
13              Kahoolawe – SE
08              Kapalua, Maui – NE
00              Lanai Airport 
29              Kona airport, Big Island – NE

We can use the following links to see what’s going on in our area of the north central Pacific Ocean Thursday night. This large University of Washington satellite image shows that most of the rain producing clouds have moved eastward, with just Maui County and the Big Island covered at this time. Looking at this NOAA satellite picture, we see partly to mostly cloudy conditions over those islands…although the rest of the islands are generally on the clear side…other than clouds banking up over and around the mountains. We can use this looping satellite image to see counterclockwise rotating clouds and showers to the south of Maui County. We can also see an area of high cirrus clouds approaching to the north.  Checking out this looping radar image, it shows showery clouds rotating around a low pressure center to our south, with that precipitation mostly over the ocean…although it could easily shift over the islands at times.

Wednesday into early Thursday saw a very unstable atmosphere hanging over many parts of the Hawaiian Islands…with lots of thunderstorms and locally heavy rain. This winter has seen more than its normal amount of these cumulonimbus clouds, with its attendant lightning and thunder. The cold air associated with an upper level low pressure system moved over the state yesterday, bringing those thunderstorms and even hail to Oahu…which is unusual. This upper low, with its cold air shifted its influence down the island chain to Maui County late yesterday afternoon. This brought a night’s worth of almost constant flickering lightning, and rumbling thunder. Meanwhile, Kauai and Oahu ended up winning the prize for heaviest rainfall accumulations during the last 24 hours, as shown in the numbers below. As noted above, skies have cleared more quickly than expected, especially near sea level towards Kauai. The higher elevations become quite cloudy during the afternoon, and with the cold air still up…there could still be rainfall developing later into the evening hours.

~~~ Here in Kula, Maui at around 540pm Thursday evening, skies were mostly cloudy, with light rain falling. The state began the day quite nicely, although clouds developed in an off and on basis during the afternoon hours. At the time of this writing, there were still showers falling, although most of them were over the ocean. I don't see any signs of thunderstorms for tonight, like we had locally last night, although showers may continue to fall in places. I anticipate a general improvement, although I'm now eyeballing those high cirrus clouds to our north and northwest, and am wondering if they will dim and filter our Hawaiian sunshine during the day Friday? We'll have to check that out early Friday morning, when I'll be back with your next new weather narrative. I hope you have a great Thursday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting: For a relatively small earthquake, the aftershock that struck New Zealand (February 22) packed a deadly punch. The earthquake measured only magnitude 6.3 but killed at least 65 people and destroyed buildings across the southeast city of Christchurch — an important lesson to cities that face similar risks up and down the West Coast of North America, one expert says.

"The same characteristics that caused such destruction and so many deaths in Christchurch are similar to those facing Portland, Seattle, parts of the Bay Area and many other West Coast cities and towns," Robert Yeats, a professor emeritus of geology at Oregon State University in Corvallis, said in a statement.

Today's temblor was an aftershock of the much more powerful 7.0-magnitude earthquake that struck about 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of Christchurch last September, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. That earlier quake did not result in any fatalities, however.

Different place, similar risks

Even though today's earthquake was weaker than last year's, it was much shallower and directly under Christchurch; it also hit during the lunch hour, when more people were exposed to damage. The quake shook sediments that were prone to so-called liquefaction,which can magnify the damage done by the ground shaking.

Yeats said that same description fits many major cities and towns in Washington state, Oregon and California, as well as British Columbia, Canada.

"The latest New Zealand earthquake hit an area that wasn't even known to have a fault prior to last September; it's one that had not moved in thousands of years," Yeats said. "But when you combine the shallow depth, proximity to a major city and soil characteristics, it was capable of immense damage."

Yeats added, "It's worth keeping in mind that New Zealand has some of the most progressive building codes in the world. They are better prepared for an earthquake like this than many U.S. cities would be."

The risks from shallow "crustal faults," Yeats said, are often given less attention than the concerns about the major subduction zone earthquakes that are in the Pacific Northwest's future, or other major quakes on famous plate boundaries such as the San Andreas Fault. There are dozens or hundreds of shallow faults that can cause serious earthquakes in the West, Yeats said.

Liquid soil

Among the dangers is the risk of liquefaction — the characteristic of some soils, particularly sediments deposited over long periods of time, to become saturated with water and quiver like a bowl of gelatin during an earthquake. Such motions can significantly increase building damage and loss of life.

"Much of the Willamette Valley in Oregon is a prime example of soils that could liquefy, old sediments deposited during floods and coming down from the Cascade Range," Yeats said. "It's very similar in that sense to the area around Christchurch, which sits on sand, silt and gravel from the Southern Alps to the west.

"This issue, along with the risks posed by crustal faults, has to be considered in our building codes."

Unknown faults

The city of Portland, Ore., sits astride the Portland Hills Fault — which may or may not still be active — and faces significant liquefaction concerns in many areas. Seattle faces similar risks from the Seattle Fault, which is active. And whether or not an earthquake has happened lately offers little reassurance — the New Zealand fault that just crippled Christchurch hadn't moved in millennia.

"The damage in New Zealand in the past day has been terrible, just horrible," Yeats said. "But as bad as it has been, it's worth noting that it could have been a lot worse. In the earlier earthquake, as well as this one, their building codes have saved a lot of lives. If the same type of event had happened in urban areas of many developing nations, the damage would have been catastrophic."

Like much of the West Coast, Yeats said, New Zealand sits near a major boundary of the Earth's great plates — in this case, the junction of the Australia Plate and the Pacific Plate. Despite intensive seismic studies in that nation, no one had yet identified the related fault that just devastated Christchurch.

"We can learn about earthquakes and help people understand the seismic risks they face," Yeats said. "But it's still an inexact science, the exact timing of an earthquake cannot be predicted, and the best thing we can do is prepare for these events before they happen."

Interesting2: When humans turned wolves into dogs, we created a social companion that keys in on our every move and look. That attentiveness was one of the big effects of domestication, some scientists have argued, and a clear difference between the two species. But wolves raised with humans also pay close attention to our actions and even follow our eye gaze, say two researchers. They even pass a gazing test that dogs fail.

The findings "seem to put a big nail in the coffin" of the dog-domestication theory, says Frans de Waal, a primatologist at Emory University in Atlanta who specializes in social cognition. The results should also help researchers better understand the evolution of gazing abilities overall, say the authors of the new study.

Previous studies have concluded that wolves are not interested in human social cues and will not, for example, follow a pointing finger, even if that finger would lead them to food. By contrast, dogs seem to instantly grasp the connection. "For a dog, understanding pointing is a natural thing to do," says Friederike Range, a cognitive ethologist at the University of Vienna and the lead author of the new study. "But how important is pointing to a wolf naturally?"

Because it's not possible to test wild wolves' abilities to follow a person's gaze, Range and her co-author, Zsófia Virányi, a cognitive ethologist at the Wolf Science Center in Ernstbrunn, Austria, hand-raised nine wolf pups born in captivity. The pups were separated from their mothers 10 days after birth and bottle- and hand-fed for their first 5 months of life.

In the ensuing months, the wolves continued to have daily social contact with humans and five adult dogs of various breeds, with which they developed close relationships. Like trainers raising dog puppies, the scientists gave the wolf pups intensive obedience training, teaching them to sit, lie down, roll over, and look into a person's eyes.

Interesting3: Drinking diet soda is associated with a 50-percent increase in stroke risk, according to a study presented earlier this month at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference in Los Angeles. Not surprisingly, reaction to the news among dieters has been disparaging and defensive, as each person cycles through the Kubler-Ross five stages of grief, from denial and anger to bargaining, depression and acceptance.

"Now the health police tell us we can't drink Diet Coke," captures the tone on many of the diet blogs.

If it's any consolation for diet-soda fans, the results presented at the meeting — based on preliminary analysis from a 2,500-person subset of the ongoing Northern Manhattan Study (NOMAS) — are far from definitive. There's no way to tell yet, for example, what ingredient would be associated with strokes or whether lifestyle choices among drinkers are the real cause.

That said, is drinking diet soda safe? Of course not, especially when it is the main source of liquid refreshment every day. You're drinking copious amounts of phosphoric acid, artificial colors, artificial flavors, and some laboratory-crafted chemical that tricks your brain into perceiving the sensation of sweet.

Diet soda is an alternative to regular soda, but neither is healthy. You are merely trading calories from sugar for chemicals of questionable nature.

Hooked on sugar

The proliferation of diet soda cuts to the core of what's wrong with the Western diet. The Western approach is to remove the most obvious dangers from an unhealthy habit — in this case, removing the 12 teaspoons of sugar per can of fizzy water laced with acids, colors and flavors of uncertain origin — so that we can continue that habit in denial of other dangers.

The underlying problem is that we are addicted to sugar; beverages without a sweetener now seem bland. For the first million years or so of pre-human and human existence, water was adequate to quench our thirst. But apparently no longer.

Hold the sugar and corn syrup and pass the aspartame. Some doctors actually encourage dieters to drink diet soda to cut calories instead of recommending zero-calorie water or tea.

We see this "short-cut" diet phenomenon also among some people who want to be vegetarian. They eat vegetarian hot dogs and other faux-meat dishes made from heavily processed soy and vegetable meal loaded with salt, sugar and fat. This is likely unhealthier than the meat they are shunning.

So, similarly, at issue is that we are so addicted to meat that meals without it no longer seem satiating. To do vegetarianism right, you'd have to learn how to cook lentils, beans, grains and other staples of a vegetarian diet, and that's too consuming for many people.

Writing on the wall

Studies on diet soda have been flawed, because researchers have discounted one important fact: Those drinking diet soda likely drink it not because they are health nuts but because they have a certain health condition. They are either overweight or diabetic. Thus, they are at risk for strokes, heart attacks and cancer regardless of the type of beverage they prefer.

One of the more impressive aspects of the NOMAS project is that researchers can control for weight and other health conditions. It's inevitable that NOMAS and similar studies will tease out the dangers of drinking too much soda in general, either diet or regular.

It is a shame the United States cannot adopt Asia's tradition of unsweetened teas, ubiquitous in shops and vending machines. But even otherwise healthy green tea in the United States is tainted with sugar or artificial sweetener — yet another example of corrupting a healthy alternative.

The bottom line is that dieters need to cycle through those Kubler-Ross stages to reach acceptance: Diet soda is no healthy alternative, and nothing beats water.