Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / March 10-11, 2011

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

Lihue, Kauai –                   79
Honolulu airport, Oahu –     82
Kaneohe, Oahu –               77
Molokai airport –                80
Kahului airport, Maui –       84
Kona airport –                    83
Hilo airport, Hawaii –          81

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

Kailua-kona – 81F
Kaneohe, Oahu – 75

Haleakala Crater –     missing (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 34 (under 14,000 feet on the Big Island)

Precipitation Totals – The following numbers represent the largest precipitation totals Thursday evening:

1.66    Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.85    Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.04    Molokai
0.00    Lanai
0.00    Kahoolawe
0.02    Oheo Gulch, Maui
0.71    Waiakea Uka, Big Island

Marine Winds – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing trade wind producing high pressure system just to the north of the islands…moving eastward. At the same time we have a weak frontal boundary to our northeast. Our trade winds will remain moderately strong into the weekend.

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

Good weather continuing Friday…into the weekend
 

The trade winds will gradually ease off in strength through the weekend…into early next week. According to this weather map, we see a 1027 millibar high pressure systems positioned not far to the north of our Hawaiian Islands Thursday night. The NWS office in Honolulu is keeping the small craft wind advisory active across only those windiest areas across the state. These trade winds will be somewhat lighter during the upcoming weekend, then even lighter into the first couple of days of next week. The long range outlook shows that we may see blustery trade winds returning around next Wednesday for several days. There has been intimations of wind advisories or even high wind warnings being needed then.     

Locally gusty trade winds…the following numbers represent the strongest gusts, along with directions Thursday evening:

27 mph       Port Allen, Kauai – ENE
24              Honolulu, Oahu – ENE
29              Molokai – NE
36              Kahoolawe – ESE
31              Kahului, Maui – NE
05              Lanai Airport – SW
32                South Point, 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 rather extensive high clouds to our north…and to our south as well. Looking at this NOAA satellite picture, we see scattered lower level clouds around the state, especially around Oahu and Kauai, in addition to the colder topped brighter clouds now to the southeast of the Big Island. We can use this looping satellite image to see the islands sandwiched in between high clouds approaching from the south and north…along with the thin line of departing high clouds leaving the Big Island at the time of this writing. Checking out this looping radar image, shows that most of the showers are over the ocean, although they seem to be taking aim generally on the islands of Oahu and Kauai…with a few more near the Big Island at the time of this writing.

The trade winds will gradually taper off through the weekend into early next week…before winding up again around next Wednesday.  This doesn’t mean that the trade winds are going down into the calm realms, at least through the rest of this week. Actually, we can expect moderately strong trade winds to prevail. As we move into early next week our winds are expected to tumble in strength, as a cloud band approaches the state. This may be a short period of lighter winds, before north to northeast winds arrive in the wake of this band of showers. These will tend to be cool winds, which could top 50 mph in gusts, giving a chilly feel due to the wind chill factor…in addition to the cool north or northeasterly source of this air flow. We may have to dig those seldom used words “batten down the hatches” out of the weather closet then…if this windy episode unfolds as the models are predicting.

Here in Kihei, Maui, at around 530pm Thursday evening, the weather is near perfect. I anticipate that that near perfect weather will persist Friday right through the weekend, and why not lets stretch it out through next Tuesday…what the heck! Looking beyond that we might run into several days of strong to very strong trade winds. A blustery couple of days then won't hurt us, although we may need to secure our outdoor lawn furniture in those windiest locations. We have plenty of time to fine tune this long range windy weather forecast. I'm heading back upcountry to Kula now, and will be back here with your next new weather forecast for paradise early Friday morning. I hope you have a great Thursday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

AN EARTHQUAKE HAS OCCURRED WITH THESE PRELIMINARY PARAMETERS

   ORIGIN TIME - 0746 PM HST 10 MAR 2011
   COORDINATES - 38.0 NORTH  142.9 EAST
   LOCATION    - NEAR EAST COAST OF HONSHU  JAPAN
   MAGNITUDE   - 7.9  MOMENT

A Widespread Tsunami Warning is in Effect - Please see this latest Tsunami Bulletin.
The warning is in effect through 7am Friday morning here in Hawaii.

Interesting: The 2010 Russian heat wave that killed thousands and cut into that country's grain harvest was primarily due to natural variability, not human-spurred climate change, U.S. scientists said on Wednesday. There was plenty of circumstantial evidence pointing to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but close investigation showed this was not a major factor, the scientists said in research published online in Geophysical Research Letters.

"It was an off-the-charts intensity event," Randall Dole of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said at a telephone news briefing. "It certainly was the most extreme event we had seen, dating back to at least 1880," when modern weather record-keeping began.

Temperatures soared above 100 degrees F. in western Russia from July through mid-August 2010. In Moscow, where long-term daily average temperatures for July range from 65 to 67 degrees F, daily average July 2010 temperatures climbed to 87 degrees F. Daily average temperatures include night time.

More severe heat waves, intense droughts and wildfires were among the predictions made for a warming world in the 2007 report by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Also, the first six months of 2010 were the hottest, globally, on record.

However, Dole and his co-authors found that the kind of massive heat wave that hung over western Russia from July through mid-August was due mainly to a natural phenomenon called atmospheric blocking. This occurs when high atmospheric pressure builds up and refuses to budge, forcing any cool air and rains to detour around it, like a traffic island on a busy street.

Interesting2: The news just seems to be getting worse and worse coming out of the Arctic and Antarctic. The melting of ice is not appearing to let up, and is in fact, getting faster. A new NASA-funded satellite study shows that the two biggest ice sheets on Earth — Greenland and Antarctica — are losing mass at an accelerating rate.

This is the longest study ever conducted to analyze changing ice conditions at the poles, spanning nearly 20 years. Researchers concluded that the melting of ice caps has overtaken the melting of mountain glaciers to be the most dominant source of global sea level rise, much sooner than previous forecast models predicted.

Over the length of the study, the ice caps have lost an average combined mass of 475 gigatons per year (1 gigaton = 1 billion metric tons). Over the course of the study, that number has risen by 36.3 gigatons for each consecutive year on average.

In comparison, the loss of mountain glaciers was estimated at 402 gigatons per year on average. However, the rate of acceleration for mountain glacier loss is three times smaller than that of the ice caps.

"That ice sheets will dominate future sea level rise is not surprising — they hold a lot more ice mass than mountain glaciers," said lead author Eric Rignot, jointly of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and the University of California, Irvine.

"What is surprising is this increased contribution by the ice sheets is already happening. If present trends continue, sea level is likely to be significantly higher than levels projected by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007. Our study helps reduce uncertainties in near-term projections of sea level rise."

Over the next four decades, the researchers conclude that if ice sheets keep melting at their current rate, sea levels could rise by 15 centimeters (5.9 inches) by 2050. However, they caution that there are number of uncertainties remaining in accurately predicting future ice loss acceleration. This study is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Interesting3: In the first census of its kind, research led by UC Davis and Stanford University found that there are far fewer white sharks off central California than biologists had thought. The study, published in the journal Biology Letters, is the first rigorous scientific estimate of white shark numbers in the northeast Pacific Ocean.

It is also the best estimate among the world's three known white-shark populations (the others are in Australia/New Zealand and South Africa). The researchers went out into the Pacific Ocean in small boats to places where white sharks congregate.

They lured the sharks into photo range using a seal-shaped decoy on a fishing line. From 321 photographs of the uniquely jagged edges of white sharks' dorsal fins, they identified 131 individual sharks.

From these data they used statistical methods to estimate that there are 219 adult and sub-adult white sharks in the region. (White sharks are classed as sub-adults when they reach about 8-9 feet in length and their dietary focus shifts from eating fish to mostly marine mammals.

They are adults when they reach sexual maturity — for males that’s about 13 feet long; for females, it is about 15 feet.) "This low number was a real surprise," said UC Davis doctoral student Taylor Chapple, the study's lead author.

"It's lower than we expected, and also substantially smaller than populations of other large marine predators, such as killer whales and polar bears. However, this estimate only represents a single point in time; further research will tell us if this number represents a healthy, viable population, or one critically in danger of collapse, or something in-between."

"We've found that these white sharks return to the same regions of the coast year after year," said study co-author Barbara Block, a Stanford University marine biologist and a leading expert on sharks, tunas and billfishes. "It is this fact that makes it possible to estimate their numbers.

Our goal is to keep track of our ocean predators." Satellite tagging studies have demonstrated that white sharks in the northeast Pacific make annual migrations from coastal areas in Central California and Guadalupe Island, Mexico, out to the Hawaiian Islands or to the "White Shark Café," a region of the open ocean between the Baja Peninsula and Hawaii where white sharks have been found to congregate — and then they return to the coastal areas.