Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Thursday:
Lihue, Kauai – 81
Honolulu airport, Oahu – 86 (record for Thursday – 91 in 1989)
Kaneohe, Oahu – 79
Molokai airport – 85
Kahului airport, Maui – 86 (record for Thursday – 90 in 1969, 1980)
Kona airport 82
Hilo airport, Hawaii – 84
Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops…as of 5pm Thursday evening:
Honolulu, Oahu – 83
Hilo, Hawaii – 72
Haleakala Crater – M (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea Summit – 41 (over 13,500 feet on the Big Island)
Here are the 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands as of Thursday evening:
1.62 Mount Waialeale, Kauai
1.20 Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.02 Molokai
0.02 Lanai
0.01 Kahoolawe
0.46 West Wailuaiki, Maui
0.10 Hilo airport, Big Island
Marine Winds – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a 1029 millibar high pressure system to the north, with another similarly rated high pressure center to the northeast of our islands. Our local winds will remain locally strong and gusty Friday and 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. 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 13,500 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 shining down during the night at times. Plus, during the nights you will be able to see stars, and the sunrise and sunset 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. A satellite image, which shows the entire ocean area between Hawaii and the Mexican coast…can be found here. Here's a tropical cyclone tracking map for the eastern and central Pacific.
Aloha Paragraphs
Trade wind weather pattern…breaking waves leeward beaches
The trade winds will remain active through the rest of this week….increasing Friday into the weekend. Glancing at this weather map, we find two 1029 millibar high pressure systems located to our north and northeast. The placement of these areas of high pressure, and their associated ridge system…will keep our trade winds blowing in the moderately strong realms…although gradually increasing in strength. We now find a new small craft wind advisory, which went into effect Thursday evening in the Alenuihaha Channel between Maui and the Big Island, and wrapping around the Big Island locally…through Saturday at least.
Our trade winds will remain active…the following numbers represent the strongest gusts, along with directions early Thursday evening:
27 Port Allen, Kauai – ENE
27 Kahuku, Oahu – NE
25 Molokai – NE
18 Kahoolawe – ESE
29 Kahului, Maui – NE
17 Lanai – ENE
30 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. Looking at this NOAA satellite picture we find lots of lower level clouds to the east and northeast, as well as some high cirrus clouds to our northeast and southwest. We can use this looping satellite image to see shower bearing clouds being carried towards our windward sides by the trade winds. The departing upper level low pressure system to our west is moving away. Checking out this looping radar image we see showers being carried along in the trade wind flow, approaching from the east and northeast, keeping the windward sides showery at times.
Sunset Commentary: The recent instability caused by an upper level low pressure system is on the way out now….moving away towards the west. Although, the eastern portion of this departing low will hang back over some parts of the state, keeping somewhat more than the normal amount of showers falling at times through the rest of this week. At the same time, high pressure anchored to the north and northeast of the state…will keep our trade winds blowing as far out into the future as we can see from here. This means that we'll continue to see passing showers falling at times along our windward sides, although nothing too unusual. The leeward sides will find lots of warm daytime sunshine beaming down, with good weather prospects.
Here in Kihei, Maui, at 6pm Thursday evening, skies were quite cloudy, with just a few signs of blue skies off in the distance. It's particularly cloudy and gray up towards the Haleakala Crater, where I'm heading right now. It's been yet another long day of weather work, and I'm anxious to be home, and have a break, before I start up again early Friday morning. Speaking of which, I'll be back with your next new weather narrative around 530am HST. I just got home here in Kula, after driving through very low hanging clouds after passing Pukalani, and coming up through the pastureland. There were enough showers that I had to turn my wind shield wipers on, and found foggy conditions here at home. I enjoyed all of this of course, after a long day in the office in Kihei! I hope you have a great Thursday night until Friday morning arrives! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting: Scientists have developed a way to transform ordinary sand — a mainstay filter material used to purify drinking water throughout the world — into a "super sand" with five times the filtering capacity of regular sand. The new material could be a low-cost boon for developing countries, where more than a billion people lack clean drinking water, according to the report in the ACS journal Applied Materials & Interfaces.
Mainak Majumder and colleagues note that sand has been used to purify water for more than 6,000 years, and sand or gravel water filtration is endorsed by the World Health Organization. Their studies of a nanomaterial called graphite oxide (GO) suggest that it could be used to improve sand filtration in a cost-effective way, they write.
The researchers used a simple method to coat sand grains with graphite oxide, creating a super sand that successfully removed mercury and a dye molecule from water. In the mercury test, ordinary sand was saturated within 10 minutes of filtration, while the super sand absorbed the heavy metal for more than 50 minutes, the scientists discovered.
Its filtration "performance is comparable to some commercially available activated carbon," the scientists said. "We are currently investigating strategies that will enable us to assemble functionalized GO particles on the sand grains to further enhance contaminant removal efficiencies," they write.
Interesting2: The brilliant colors of birds have inspired poets and nature lovers, but researchers at Yale University and the University of Cambridge say these existing hues represent only a fraction of what birds are capable of seeing. The findings based on study of the avian visual system, reported in the June 23 issue of the journal Behavioral Ecology, show that over millions of years of evolution plumage colors went from dull to bright as birds gradually acquired the ability to create newer pigments and structural colors.
"Our clothes were pretty drab before the invention of aniline dyes, but then color became cheap and there was an explosion in the colorful clothes we wear today," said Richard Prum, chair and the William Robertson Coe Professor in the Department of Ornithology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and co-author of the paper. "The same type of thing seemed to have happened with birds."
Scientists have speculated for years on how birds obtained their colors, but the Yale/Cambridge study was the first to ask what the diversity of bird colors actually look like to birds themselves. Ironically, the answer is that birds see many more colors than humans can, but birds are also capable of seeing many more colors than they have in their plumage.
Birds have additional color cones in their retina that are sensitive to ultraviolet range so they see colors that are invisible to humans. Over time, birds have evolved a dazzling combination of colors that included various melanin pigments, which give human skin its tint, carotenoid pigments, which come from their diets, and structural colors, like the blue eyes of humans.
The study shows that the structural colors produce the lion's share of color diversity to bird feathers, even though they are relatively rare among birds. Co-author Mary Caswell Stoddard of Cambridge, who began investigating the avian visual system as an undergraduate at Yale, would like to know why birds have not yet developed the ability to produce, for example, ultraviolet yellow or red colors in their feathers — colors invisible to humans but visible to the birds themselves.
"We don't know why plumage colors are confined to this subset," Stoddard said. "The out of gamut colors may be impossible to make with available mechanisms or they may be disadvantageous." "That doesn't mean that birds' color palette might not eventually evolve to expand into new colors," Prum said.
"Birds can make only about 26 to 30 percent of the colors they are capable of seeing but they have been working hard over millions of years to overcome these limitations," Prum said. "The startling thing to realize is that although the colors of birds look so incredibly diverse and beautiful to us, we are color blind compared to birds."
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