Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / March 26-27, 2011

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

Lihue, Kauai –                    79
Honolulu airport, Oahu –      81
Kaneohe, Oahu –                75
Molokai airport –                 79
Kahului airport, Maui –         79
Kona airport –                       84
Hilo airport, Hawaii –           74

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops…as of 6pm Saturday evening:

Kailua-kona – 78F
Hilo, Hawaii – 69

Haleakala Crater –     missing (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 30 (over 13,500 feet on the Big Island)

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

3.85    Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.71    Manoa valley, Oahu
0.14    Molokai
0.00    Lanai 
0.00    Kahoolawe
2.64    Puu Kukui, Maui
0.88    Honaunau, Big Island

Marine Winds – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a large 1028 millibar high pressure system to the north of Hawaii. Our trade winds will be active through Monday.

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 ended November 30th here in the central Pacific…and begins again June 1st.

 Aloha Paragraphs

Trade wind weather pattern, still locally gusty,
some high cirrus clouds…some showers too
 
 

The trade winds will remain breezy through this weekend…continuing on into the new week ahead. According to this weather map, we find a large 1028 millibar high pressure system to the north of the islands Saturday night. We still have our small craft wind advisory flags up, although they are been scaled back to only those windiest channels for the most part…plus a few of our coastal zones. The long lasting trade winds continue generating breaking waves along our east facing beaches…thus we have a high surf advisory along those shores too. These trades will carry showers our way at times…with drier weather forecast as we move into the new week.

Trade winds will be active…the following numbers represent the strongest gusts, along with directions Saturday evening:

30 mph       Port Allen, Kauai – E
25              Waianae, Oahu – ENE
25              Molokai – NE
33                Kahoolawe 
33                Kapalua, Maui – ENE
14              Lanai Airport – NE    
33                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 Saturday night.  This large University of Washington satellite image shows streaky high cirrus clouds arriving over the state from the west, along with lots of high clouds to our south.  Looking at this NOAA satellite picture we see those streaks of high clouds, with lots of cumulus clouds coming our way from the east. We can use this looping satellite image to see high clouds coming our way, with clouds stacked up along our windward sides, some of which are being carried over into the leeward sides locally. Checking out this looping radar image shows quite a few showers arriving over our windward sides.

This past Thursday evening after work I went to see a new film in Kahului, Maui. There were several films that looked good to me, although I ended up seeing The Lincoln Lawyer, starring Matthew McConaughey, Marisa Tomei, Ryan Phillippe…among others. The synopsis: Mickey Haller is a Los Angeles criminal defense attorney who operates out of the back of his Lincoln sedan. Haller has spent most of his career defending garden-variety criminals, until he lands the case of his career: defending Louis Roulet, a Beverly Hills playboy accused of rape and attempted murder. But the seemingly straightforward case suddenly develops into a deadly game of survival. I'd seen the trailer for this film a couple of times, and it appealed to me right away. The critics are giving this film a B grade, while the viewers have given it an A-. As is often the case, I ended up liking this film very much, and as far as a grade goes, I'd give it an A- without any hesitation. I liked the actors, the acting, and the subject matter. It had all the things that I typically like in a film, including action, suspense, a good story, and the bottom line…it was very entertaining! Here's a trailer for this two hour hour film, which is being called a thriller.

Friday evening I went down to Kahului for dinner, before seeing another film. I ran into an old friend while picking up two slices of pizza and some salad. We ended sitting together, and then sat together for the film. This film was called Limitless, starring Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, Abbie Cornish, and Anna Friel…among others. This film was about an ordinary guy whose life transforms when he takes an experimental brain-altering "smart drug."  Once again, I thoroughly enjoyed this one, like I did the previous night. The critics are giving a B grade, with the viewers are giving a B+ rating. I'm going to up that a little, and give an A- grade, barely short of a solid A. I took me away from the first moment, carrying me through without missing a beat, with the film having an excellent ending ta boot. It was a great film, with twists and turns that were impressive. My friend and I ended up seeing several other old friends after the film, and we all concurred that we had liked it. It was one of the best films that I have seen lately! Here's the trailer, in case you want a sneak peek.  

~~~ It's late Saturday afternoon here on Maui, with partly to mostly cloudy skies. Those clouds have dropped off and on showers this afternoon, nothing heavy, although have kept our temperatures on the cool side. At around 430pm, it was only 61.9F degrees, which is quite a bit cooler than normal. It looks wet over on the windward side from here, while the leeward sides look like they are in pretty good shape…with sunshine. I ended up going down to Paia to do shopping, and then afterwards I came straight back here. I've been taking it easy this afternoon, doing some reading, and enjoying the showers and cool weather too. I'll meet you back here Sunday morning, I hope you have a great Saturday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting: Since the 9.0-magnitude earthquake hit northeast Japan on March 11, the country has seemed to be caught in a disastrous spiral of devastation. The earthquake and its resultant tsunami wiped out entire villages and have displaced more than 500,000 Japanese citizens.

The Japanese now also fear more lasting damage in the form of nuclear crisis, after explosions occurred at the nation's damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex. The widespread suffering caused by this crisis may be unimaginable for people watching thousands of miles away, but new analysis from the World Bank helps to put the catastrophe into context.

A World Bank report released this week shows the Japanese disaster to be one of the most costly in recent memory. The report estimates the quake's economic toll at $122 to 235 billion U.S. dollars, and furthermore estimating that the country could take five years to recover. The report also says that 15,214 are dead or missing.

The catastrophe in Japan is sure to be remembered as one of the greatest disasters of modern times. The high-magnitude quake, plus its widespread repercussions, puts it among the world's most costly recent disasters. The human and economic costs also far outweigh those of Japan's last major earthquake, the Kobe earthquake in 1995.

But in terms of the GDP of the countries hit by these disasters, Japan's current situation is overshadowed by several other recent disasters. The below table compares the quake with other recent natural disasters in terms of death toll and cost of recovery, as well as that economic cost as a percentage of countries' GDPs at the times the disasters happened.

Interesting2: Imagine being able to charge your cell phone in a matter of seconds or your laptop in a few minutes. That might soon be possible, thanks to a new kind of nanostructured battery electrode developed by scientists at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

The researchers found that their electrode can charge and discharge up to 100 times faster than existing devices while holding the same amount of energy. High-storage batteries that could charge and discharge quickly might make a number of still-marginal technologies much more attractive.

For example, if you could recharge an electric car in minutes rather than hours, filling up your battery at a charging station would take no longer than the amount of time it takes to buy a tank of gas. And batteries that gave up their stored energy quickly could mean uninterrupted solar power, pitching in when the sun goes behind a cloud and solar cells stop producing.

Electrical storage devices known as capacitors charge and discharge very quickly, but because they hold their charge on the surface of metal plates, their storage capacity is limited. Batteries, on the other hand, can store much more energy because they hold their charge inside the bulk of a material, usually an oxide or a phosphate compound located inside the cathode.

Unfortunately, because these materials are not good conductors of electric charge, it takes a long time to get the charge in or out of a battery. Scientists have tried to get around this problem in the past by adding electrical conductors to the energy-storage material, but this reduces the material's volume, so it tends to lower the battery’s capacity.

University of Illinois materials scientist Paul Braun and his colleagues came up with a novel solution, published online this month in Nature Nanotechnology. They built a tiny metal lattice with so many nooks and crannies that when it's filled with a charge-storage material, the electrons in the material never have far to go before reaching the metal and being conducted away.

Interesting3: The system is the first to offer consumers a simple way to charge their EVs with the ease of hands-free, automatic technology. Google is famous for giving the digital generation what it wants, so it only makes sense that the search giant would branch out into other technologies it feels are worth of its attention.

So it shouldn't come as a surprise that they would already be dabbling in smart grid technologies, and positioning themselves to be a leader in the future of both energy creation and distribution. Recently, the interwebs have been all aflutter over the fact that Google is trialing a Plugless Power charging station for electric vehicles at its Mountain View, Calif. headquarters.

Developed by Evatran, Plugless Power is based on technology similar to that of the electric toothbrush, which has been used in electrical transformers for more than 100 years. The system streamlines the charging of electric vehicles and extended-range hybrids by eliminating the nuisance of the cord and the plug.

For those that have been hesitant to purchase an electric vehicle because they fear what would happen if they stray too far without a charging station, Plugless Power could be the technology to sway their choice.

Interesting4: Investors and policy makers are increasingly advocating desalination technologies that use seawater to make freshwater. As reviewed in an EcoSeed Special Report, the interest in desalination technologies is growing due to the fact that there is insufficient fresh water to meet the daily drinking and sanitation needs of all those inhabiting the planet.

Desalination involves the process of removing salt from sea or brackish water to produce drinkable water. According to the International Desalination Association, there are over 13,000 desalination plants worldwide producing more than 12 billion gallons of water a day. Although this may seem like a lot, this represents only 0.2 percent of global water consumption.

A report by Lux Research indicates that to meet the demands of a growing human population, worldwide desalinated water supply must triple by 2020. This report indicates that desalination is feasible, as the global water desalination market is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 9.5 percent over the next 10 years.

While desalination is garnering considerable interest, it is not price competitive with traditional water sources. The construction, operation and maintenance costs make desalination at least three times as expensive as traditional sources.

Some argue that reverse osmosis (a method of passing saltwater through a membrane filter at high pressure) may be less expensive than distillation methods commonly used. The American Membrane Technology Association estimated that existing traditional water supplies cost 90 cents to $2.50 per 1,000 gallons produced. Brackish desalination technologies range from $1.50 to $3 for the same amount of water, and seawater desalination costs from $3 to as much as $8 per 1,000 gallons.

Interesting5: A new research report published online in The FASEB Journal suggests that pregnant mothers who eat high sugar and high fat diets have babies who are likely to become junk food junkies themselves. According to the report, which used rats, this happens because the high fat and high sugar diet leads to changes in the fetal brain's reward pathway, altering food preferences.

Not only does this offer insight into the ever-increasing rate of human obesity, but it may also explain why some people easily resist fatty and sugary foods, while others seem hopelessly addicted. "These results will help us to better help women about diet during pregnancy and breastfeeding for giving their infants the best start in life," said Beverly Muhlhausler, Ph.D., co-author of the study from the FOODplus Research Centre in the School of Agriculture Food and Wine at the University of Adelaide in Adelaide, Australia.

To make this discovery, Muhlhausler and colleagues studied two groups of rats, which during pregnancy and lactation, were either fed standard "rat chow" or a junk food diet made up of a selection of common human foods high in fat and high in sugar. After the baby mice were weaned, the pups from both groups were allowed to select their own diets from either the same range of junk food or the standard rat chow.

Brains from some of the pups also were collected at different times after birth and measured for the levels of the "feel good" chemicals (dopamine and opioids) and the receptors that these chemicals act upon. The scientists found that the group of rats whose mothers had eaten the junk food diet had higher levels of the receptor for opioids after they were weaned.

This group also chose to eat more of the fatty foods as compared to the pups whose mothers ate the standard rat chow. This suggests that infants whose mothers eat excessive amounts of high-fat, high-sugar junk foods when pregnant or breastfeeding are likely to have a greater preference for these foods later in life.

"How ironic that your mother nags you to eat your fruits and vegetables, but it could have been her actions that helped you to prefer junk food!" said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. "Perhaps in the future, studies like these will convince pregnant moms to go heavier on the green vegetables and a little lighter on the ice cream and Twinkies."