Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Wednesday:
Lihue, Kauai – 86
Honolulu airport, Oahu – 85
Kaneohe, Oahu – 80
Molokai airport – 85
Kahului airport, Maui – 87 (record for Wednesday – 93 in 1980)
Kona airport 84
Hilo airport, Hawaii – 82
Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops…as of 5pm Wednesday evening:
Honolulu, Oahu – 84
Kaneohe, Oahu – 78
Haleakala Crater – 59 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea Summit – 52 (over 13,500 feet on the Big Island)
Here are the 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands as of Wednesday evening:
0.69 Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.07 Wilson Tunnel, Oahu
0.00 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.10 Oheo Gulch, Maui
0.29 Saddle Quarry, Big Island
Marine Winds – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing high pressure systems far to the north through northwest of our islands. Our local trade winds will remain active Thursday and Friday…blowing generally in the light to moderately strong category during the days.
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
Good weather into the weekend
The trade winds will continue blowing through the rest of this week, generally in the light to moderately strong category…most gently by Sunday into the July 4th holiday on Monday. Glancing at this weather map, we find our primary high pressure systems located to our north through northwest Wednesday afternoon. The placement of these area of high pressure areas, and their associated ridges, will keep our trade winds blowing. There are no wind or surf advisories in our coastal or channel waters…with none expected through the rest of this week at least.
Our trade winds will remain active…the following numbers represent the strongest gusts (mph), along with directions early Wednesday evening:
22 Port Allen, Kauai – ESE
23 Kahuku, Oahu – NE
25 Molokai – NE
28 Kahoolawe – ESE
30 Kahului, Maui – NE
09 Lanai – WNW
25 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 Wednesday night. Looking at this NOAA satellite picture we find high cirrus and middle level clouds moving over the state, from the deeper tropics to our southwest. We can use this looping satellite image to see a bare minimum amount of low clouds being carried towards our windward sides by the trade winds. We find those near constant high cirrus clouds stretching into the state from the southwest…with areas of thunderstorms to the far southeast, northwest, and southwest. Checking out this looping radar image we see a few light showers being carried along in the trade wind flow, falling across the windward sides in a few places locally.
Sunset Commentary: Our local trade winds will gradually become lighter, bottoming-out by the upcoming Sunday-Monday time frame. These trades won’t go away completely, although will become lighter than normal for this time of year. Sometimes as the winds slow down, we find increased afternoon showers in our leeward upcountry areas. It appears that this won't happen this time around however…as a very stable overlying atmosphere will reside aloft. There may be a couple of minor sprinkles, although it likes a dry and warmer holiday weekend coming up.
What does warmer mean in this context? We’ll, we’ve been having maximum temperatures at sea level running around 78-86F degrees lately. We could find daytime temperatures edging up closer to 90 degrees, you know like 87-90 or so. For context, the following record high temperatures have occurred at the following major airport weather stations…on July 4th:
Honolulu – 91 / 1991
Lihue – 88 / 1981
Kahului – 94 / 1953
Hilo – 87 / 1971, 1995
What does drier mean? This could mean mostly no rainfall anywhere, to less than .25” at those wettest windward areas. Depending upon just how light the trade winds become, there’s always that chance of a few drops falling out of those afternoon cumulus clouds, in the upcountry leeward sides here and there too. I think that most of us are hoping that those winds don’t get too light, as we need them to ventilate away our fireworks smoke…especially in Town on Oahu.
Looking a bit further ahead, the winds will become more active around next Tuesday or Wednesday. This in turn will likely bring back some windward biased showers then too. The leeward sides will see another rise in surf then too, coming up from the southern hemisphere. Otherwise, there’s nothing else, out of the ordinary, as far as the eye can see…or the computer forecast models can detect that is.
At 530pm Wednesday evening here in Kihei, Maui, the skies are partly cloudy again, with a combination of both high cirrus, and lower level cumulus clouds too. Those semi-permanent [apparently] high cirrus will provide us a nice colorful sunset tonight! The trade winds are still blowing, like they will continue to do…although gradually becoming lighter in the process. We may very well begin to feel pretty hot and muggy by this weekend, that is if the trade winds become as light as the models are suggesting. I'm ready to get on the road back upcountry to Kula now, and shortly thereafter on the road to walk upon arriving there. I hope you have a great Thursday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting: The Prius, Toyota's flagship green vehicle, is facing some stiff competition from other automakers launching their own hybrids, so Toyota is responding by making the Prius its own brand. Lauren Squires, a resident of Ann Arbor, Mich., has heard all the stereotypes about Prius owners, and she's not a bit defensive about it. "I don't own Birkenstocks anymore," she says, though she used to.
"I do make my own granola." Squires bought her Prius in 2007, a year Toyota sold more than 181,000 Priuses in the U.S. Car sales of all kinds have dropped since then, but Toyota is still the undisputed king of the hybrid. In fact, the Prius accounts for more than half of all the hybrid cars sold in the U.S. Squires says her Prius suits her lifestyle just fine — most of the time.
"The only thing … sometimes I'm lacking on space," she says. "I can't fit my bike inside, which I could fit inside some vehicles." More space: That's what Americans always seem to crave in their cars. Toyota's Kirk Forscht says the five-passenger Prius v will appeal to people who have always wanted a Prius, but figured it was just too small.
"They've got two kids, a dog, and all the things that come with that, all the strollers and baggage and bags, and it's a little tight. So the Prius v gives them the option with all this extra cargo space to be able to get all the things they need and still drive a green vehicle," he says.
Interesting2: Cook Inlet stretches 180 miles from the Gulf of Alaska to Anchorage in south-central Alaska. Cook Inlet branches into the Knik Arm and Turnagain Arm at its northern end, almost surrounding Anchorage. The watershed covers about 100,000 km² of southern Alaska, east of the Aleutian Range and south of the Alaska Range, receiving water from its tributaries the Knik River, the Little Susitna River, and the Susitna and Matanuska rivers.
The watershed includes the drainage areas of Mount McKinley. Within the watershed there are several national parks and the active volcano Mount Redoubt, along with three other historically active volcanoes. Approximately 400,000 people live within the Cook Inlet watershed. Before the growth of Anchorage, Knik was the destination for most marine traffic in upper Cook Inlet.
The Cook Inlet Region of Alaska contains an estimated mean of 19 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, about 600 million barrels of oil, and 46 million barrels of natural gas liquids, according to a new assessment by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). This estimate is of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil and gas resources, and includes both unconventional and conventional resources.
These gas estimates are significantly more than the last USGS assessment of southern Alaska in 1995, in which a mean of 2.14 trillion cubic feet of gas was estimated. This increase in the undiscovered resource is attributed to new geologic information and data.
Since oil and gas production began in the Cook Inlet region in 1958, more than 1.3 billion barrels of oil and 7.8 trillion cubic feet of gas have been produced, yet the new USGS assessment shows that significant undiscovered gas remains. The Cook Inlet basin contains large oil and gas deposits including several offshore fields.
As of 2005 there were 16 platforms in Cook Inlet, the oldest of which is the XTO A platform first installed by Shell in 1964, and newest of which is the Osprey platform installed by Forest Oil in 2000. Most of the platforms are operated by Union Oil, which was acquired by Chevron in 2005.
There are also numerous oil and gas pipelines running around and under the Cook Inlet. The main destinations of the gas pipelines are to Kenai where the gas is primarily used to fuel commercial fertilizer production and a liquified natural gas (LNG) plant and to Anchorage where the gas is consumed largely for domestic uses.
This USGS assessment includes estimates of conventional and unconventional, or continuous, accumulations, including coalbed gas and tight gas formations. Coalbed gas is a form of natural gas extracted from coal deposits, whereas tight gas is natural gas occurring in impermeable, compact rock formations. Both require different development techniques than conventional gas accumulations.
The USGS assessment of undiscovered gas resources ranges from 4.976 to 39.737 trillion cubic feet (95 percent and 5 percent probability, respectively. Of this total, about 72 percent is estimated to be found in conventional accumulations, 25 percent in coalbed gas accumulations, and 3 percent in tight gas accumulations. The USGS assessment of undiscovered oil resources ranges from 108 to 1,359 million barrels of oil (95 to 5 percent probability, respectively).
These resources are all conventional resources; there are no unconventional oil resources assessed in the Cook Inlet region. These new estimates are for technically recoverable oil and gas resources, which are those quantities of oil and gas producible using currently available technology and industry practices, regardless of economic or accessibility considerations.
As such, these estimates include resources beneath both onshore and offshore areas of the Cook Inlet region (exclusive of the Federal offshore) and beneath areas where accessibility may be limited by policy and regulations imposed by land managers and regulatory agencies.
Email Glenn James: 
