Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Friday:
Lihue, Kauai – 79
Honolulu airport, Oahu – 78
Kaneohe, Oahu – 76
Molokai airport – 80
Kahului airport, Maui – 84
Kona airport 85
Hilo airport, Hawaii – 78
Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops…as of 5pm Friday evening:
Barking Sands, Kauai – 83
Honolulu, Oahu – 73
Haleakala Crater – 45 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 34 (over 13,500 feet on the Big Island)
Here are the 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands as of Friday evening:
3.22 North Wailua Ditch, Kauai
5.02 Moanalua RG, Oahu
0.13 Molokai
0.16 Lanai
0.04 Kahoolawe
0.73 West Wailuaiki, Maui
0.47 Pohakuloa Kipuka Alala, Big Island
Marine Winds – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a 1030 millibar high pressure system…to the north-northeast of our islands. Our local winds will become lighter through this 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. 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.
Aloha Paragraphs
Localized heavy showers…a few thunderstorms
Our local winds will continue to ease up Saturday…with even a more pronounced softening later this weekend into early in the new week. Glancing at this weather map, we find a 1030 millibar high pressure system located to our north-northeast…with a ridge extending from its center to the west-southwest. The trade winds began relaxing in strength Friday afternoon, and will continue this trend into the weekend and beyond. The trade winds will become very light, and veer to the southeast by Sunday into Monday and Tuesday. This unusual wind shift and downgrade in speed will bring humid and muggy weather to the state. It will take returning trade winds to bring back more refreshing environmental conditions. We could see volcanic haze (vog) begin to filter in over the smaller islands with time.
Our trade winds will begin to ease up now into the weekend…the following numbers represent the strongest gusts, along with directions Friday evening:
20 Port Allen, Kauai – NE
16 Kahuku, Oahu – NE
22 Molokai – NE
25 Kahoolawe – E
27 Kahului, Maui – NE
11 Lanai – NE
31 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 Friday night. Looking at this NOAA satellite picture we see that most of the clouds in our area are located over the ocean, although continue to extend over the islands in places. We can use this looping satellite image to see areas of high and middle level clouds moving by to our south and then veering up towards the northeast…to the east of the Big Island. We can also see the counterclockwise rotating upper level low pressure system near Kauai, with towering cumulus and thunderstorms forming in its rotation field. Checking out this looping radar image we see lots of showers over and around the islands, many of which are quite heavy, some with thunder and lightning…especially around Oahu at the time of this writing.
Sunset Commentary: If we didn’t know better, we could quite easily think the current weather pattern was happening during our winter rainy season. All it takes however is a quick glance at the calendar to know we’re rapidly heading towards the beginning of summer! Interestingly enough, if we looked at the air temperatures early Friday afternoon, even at sea level locations, it’s actually somewhat cooler than it might be during a wet period in December or January…at least on Kauai and Oahu!
Here were some of the representative examples at noon Friday:
Lihue, Kauai – 71F degrees
Port Allen, Kauai – 70
Honolulu, Oahu – 72
Kaneohe, Oahu – 72
Kahuku, Oahu – 68
Hilo, Hawaii – 72
I think we could easily picture these primary locations in the Aloha state being 10-15 degrees warmer on a more normal early June afternoon! In contrast to those abnormally cool readings, here’s were a few other examples, outside of the rain shield that was happening then:
Kahului, Maui – 83 degrees
Kapalua, Maui – 81
Kailua Kona – 83
Now that we’ve established the odd character of the day in terms of coolness, we definitely need to turn our attention towards the rainfall department. There’s been lots of water falling out of our skies…although not everywhere. This precipitation has been coming of localized thunderstorms, with lots of lightning and thunder of course. There were several reports of damage from lightning, with even an injury to an Oahu fire fighter. Small hail has been reported on Oahu as well, everything except a waterspout!
This looping radar image shows the whereabouts of this rainfall, with Maui County and the Big Island outside the heaviest rainfall shield…not that there’s a few showers on those two islands too. In contrast however, Kauai and Oahu have been inundated with rainfall in an off and on manner, each island taking turns. Oahu has had the greatest totals, at least so far. Here’s a couple of the larger accumulations as of Friday evening:
5.02 – Moanalua RG, Oahu
4.75 – Ahuimanu Loop, Oahu
The upper level low pressure system near Kauai, and its associated cold air, the culprit for this unsettled weather situation, will stick around into the weekend. As long as that cold air resides up high, our current instability will keep the threat of heavy showers in the air. Meanwhile, the trade winds were still blowing, which is unusual to have happening, while thunderstorms are firing-off.
The computer models continue to suggest that our trade winds will falter rather remarkably this weekend. This would put us into a muggy convective weather pattern, with still the chance of isolated interior heavy showers, may even a thundershower during the afternoon locally on Saturday. When will all this craziness end? It will take the return of our trade winds, and the exit of the upper level low pressure system, with its cold air aloft…maybe the middle of the new week. If you’re thinking in terms of very unusual…so am I.
Here in Kihei, Maui at 540pm Friday evening, skies were partly cloudy, after we had just a minor light shower during the afternoon (.02")…hardly enough to even mention compared to many other places today! We're still in a favorably inclined weather pattern for showers. Oahu had the distinction of having the most rainfall, as the heavy rains anchored over that island much of the day. I'm heading out now, I think over towards Wailuku town, where lots of people congregate on the first Friday of the month. I'll be back Saturday morning with your next new weather narrative, I hope you have a great Friday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting: Manitoba, Canada will tighten rules on expanding hog farms and ban manure spreading to cut the flow of phosphorus into the world's 11th-biggest freshwater lake, as Lake Winnipeg deteriorates from algae growth. The western Canadian province, which has the country's third-largest pig herd, will also protect wetlands that filter out pollutants and force the capital Winnipeg to build a sewage treatment plant, Premier Greg Selinger said on Thursday.
The buildup of nutrients like phosphorus from sewage, farms or natural sources is a major environmental problem for the world's lakes and rivers, including Lake Winnipeg. It causes growth of blue-green algae that can produce toxins that sicken humans and animals, and use up the water's oxygen.
"The objective is to save the lake from going dead on us," Selinger told reporters. Canada is the world's third-biggest shipper of pork. But changes in Manitoba are not likely to impact markets because hog production has been falling for several years in the province.
The 24,000-square-kilometre (9,000 square mile) Lake Winnipeg collects water from a farming area across four Canadian provinces and the northern U.S. Plains. The lake ultimately drains into Hudson Bay. Fertilizer use on crops and Manitoba's expansion of its livestock herds since the 1990s are key causes of blooming algae on Lake Winnipeg, according to a five-year study commissioned by the province, which called for a 50 percent reduction of phosphorus into the lake.
Selinger said that is the province's goal, but he gave no timeframe. He said Manitoba will block hog farm expansions that don't use environmental practices to protect water, such as chemically treated lagoons. From 2013 it will also ban the spreading of pig manure on fields in winter to fertilize soil. Karl Kynoch, a hog farmer and chairman of the Manitoba Pork Council said the government was already planning to ban winter manure spreading, which few hog farmers still do.
Interesting2: A new study concludes that models may be predicting releases of atmospheric carbon dioxide that are either too high or too low, depending on the region, because they don't adequately reflect variable temperatures that can affect the amount of carbon released from soil. The study points out that many global models make estimates of greenhouse gas emissions from soils based on "average" projected temperatures.
But temperatures vary widely from those averages. That variability, along with complex biological processes, makes the issue far more complicated. Researchers said that climate projections, in general, don't effectively incorporate into their calculations a major component of global warming — the enormous amounts of carbon found in dead, decaying organic matter, which represent up to three times the amount of carbon in Earth's live vegetation.
The study was just published in the journal Biogeosciences by scientists from the College of Forestry at Oregon State University and other institutions. "We've done a pretty good job of determining how much carbon is getting absorbed by growing trees and vegetation, how much is coming in," said Mark Harmon, professor and holder of the Richardson Chair in Forest Science at OSU, and one of the world's leading experts on the effect of decomposition on Earth's carbon cycle.
"However, we know much less about how carbon is released to the atmosphere through the process of decomposition, how much is going out," he said. "This is half of the equation, and there's just a huge amount we don't know about it."
Interesting3: A new E. Coli outbreak has struck Europe. It started with a few deaths in Germany from what were thought to be Spanish cucumbers. Then more people in Germany and around the continent got infected. Trade tensions mounted and vegetable producers from various other countries became affected by the new outbreak. Now there have been cases reported in the United States, and Russia has banned the importing of fresh vegetables from the European Union.
Vegetable producers around the continent are suffering from a worried public not buying their goods. The issue is a new strain of the E.Coli bacteria, rare but highly infectious. It sticks to the intestines where it causes diarrhea and vomiting. It can even cause hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) which attacks the kidneys, possibly causing coma, seizure, or stroke.
Germany now has 470 cases of HUS which is ten times greater than the previous largest outbreak. The main difference between this strain and other less toxic strains is the special "glue" which it uses to stick to the body. In total, Germany has 1,500 people affected with the new E. Coli and at least four people have died.
The majority of infections have hit middle to old age women. Most of the cases found outside the country are from German's travelling abroad or foreigners who have recently been to Germany. For example, there are 30 cases in Sweden, 11 in Denmark, three in the UK, one in the Netherlands, and one in Austria.
Three victims have even been identified in the United States, thousands of miles away. The source of the outbreak was believed to be fresh cucumbers from Almeria and Malaga, Spain back on May 26. However, German scientists later confirmed that the Spanish cucumbers were not the source. Testing is continuing to identify where this vicious bug is coming from.
Farmers from Spain as well as other areas of Europe are demanding compensation for their lost business since this crisis began. According to Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, deputy prime minister of Spain, "We do not rule out taking action against authorities which have cast doubt on the quality of our produce, so action may be taken against the authorities, in this case Hamburg."
Russia promptly banned all vegetable imports from Europe amid cries of protest from European governments and the European Commission. They had already banned imports from Germany and Spain since the outbreak began when they thought it was from Spanish cucumbers in Germany.
Now that the source is still unknown, Russia is not taking any chances. Shops across the country are preparing to dump their EU vegetables. Poland, a major vegetable and fruit exporter, and the Netherlands, a major salad exporter, describe the ban as a major blow.
"After the collapse of the German consumer market, sales to Russia are now also impossible," the Dutch junior minister for economic affairs, agriculture and innovation Henk Bleker said. According to Poland's government, Moscow’s move was "excessive compared to the danger."
Meanwhile, Germany is suffering from one of its worst bacterial outbreaks ever. Some German citizens are concerned the disease may spread by human contact as well as ingestion. For example, at a high-profile church event in Dresden with over 120,000 people, there were no raw vegetables served. However, others are more hopeful, believing this whole thing will blow over and be forgotten. Only time will tell.
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