Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Wednesday:
Lihue, Kauai – 85
Honolulu airport, Oahu – 87 (record for Wednesday – 92 in 1985)
Kaneohe, Oahu – 82
Molokai airport – 84
Kahului airport, Maui – 87 (record for Wednesday – 91 in 1984, 1993)
Kona airport 83
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:
Barking Sands, Kauai – 85
Kaneohe, Oahu – 80
Haleakala Crater – 43 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea Summit – 48 (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:
0.74 Kilohana, Kauai
0.50 Manoa Lyon Arboretum, Oahu
0.22 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.12 Kahoolawe
0.43 Puu Kukui, Maui
0.25 Laupahoehoe, Big Island
Marine Winds – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a 1037 millibar high pressure system to the north of our islands. Our local trade winds will remain active Thursday through Friday.
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 winds with varying degrees of shower activity,
depending upon the availability of incoming moisture…
most commonly along our windward sides at night.
Moderately strong trade winds will prevail this week…continuing on into next week. Glancing at this weather map, we find a rather strong 1037 millibar high pressure system located to the north of the islands Wednesday night. This dynamic high pressure cell dominates the Pacific from the International Dateline, up into the Gulf of Alaska…and then across the eastern Pacific to the Baja California coast of Mexico. There’s still no end in sight to this common summertime trade wind flow.
Our trade winds will remain active…the following numbers represent the strongest gusts (mph), along with directions early Wednesday evening:
28 Port Allen, Kauai – NE
23 Honolulu, Oahu – NE
30 Molokai, – NE
24 Kahoolawe – SE
27 Kahului – NE
08 Lanai – NE
23 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 cumulus clouds scattered around the area, generally over the ocean. There are more clouds upstream of the islands, which the trade winds will carry our way. We can use this looping satellite image to see thunderstorms far to our south, southwest…with a counterclockwise rotating low pressure system far to the west…out over the ocean. Checking out this looping radar image we see scattered showers being carried along in the trade wind flow…which will bring showers to our windward sides tonight into Thursday morning.
Sunset Commentary: Steady trade winds through Thursday, increasing a notch Friday through the weekend into next week. Small craft wind advisories likely around those windiest areas in Maui County and the Big Island as we end our work week. Clouds continued to stack up around the mountains this afternoon, especially on Maui and the Big Island…with the biggest geography. Showers have been spilling from these clouds locally, even down to the coasts on the leeward sides. Kihei, Maui, which hasn’t had a drop of moisture for a long time, had a light shower around noon, which was unusual for July.
This looping satellite image shows part small clumps of cumulus, with larger patches…all moving smartly along in the trade wind flow. This looping radar image shows the associated moisture falling here and there. It looks as if these showers are light for the most part, although there is some spotty yellow color mixed into these, indicating moderately heavy parts to them. The windward sides will be most affected by these showers at night…while the leeward sides, at least on the larger islands, will see afternoon showers at times. The latest thinking is that Kauai and Oahu may see the most active shower activity tonight.
Here in Kihei, Maui at around 530pm HST, skies were mostly clear, after lots of clouds along the leeward slopes of the Haleakala Crater earlier. There were some more showers up that way this afternoon, although not nearly as many as the previous afternoon. As noted above, the trade winds are still blowing, which is one of the most common weather features here in our summer month of July. I'm about to take the drive back upcountry to Kula, and will be up again early Thursday morning, preparing your next new weather narrative from paradise. Oh yeah, I almost forgot to tell you to be sure and check out that very near full moon tonight, which will reach its largest extent tomorrow. I hope you have a wonderful Wednesday night! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting: What constitutes a tool use? For humans we always seem to be using tools like hammers, pencils etc. The tool use behavior has been observed in dolphins, elephants, otters, birds, primates and octopuses. While exploring Australia's Great Barrier Reef, professional diver Scott Gardner heard an odd cracking sound and swam over to investigate.
What he found was a footlong blackspot tuskfish holding a clam in its mouth and whacking it against a rock. Soon the shell gave way, and the fish gobbled up the bivalve, spat out the shell fragments, and swam off. Tool use? Considering the limits of a fish to manipulate objects it may well be.
Many creatures without hands have managed to use other body parts to their advantage, notably the mouth. Tool-using fish have been few and far between, however, particularly in the wild. Archerfish target jets of water at terrestrial prey, but whether this constitutes tool use has been contentious.
There have also been a handful of reports of fish cracking open hard-shelled prey, such as bivalves and sea urchins, by banging them on rocks or coral, but there's no photo or video evidence to back it up, according to Culum Brown, a behavioral ecologist at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. The tuskfish caught on camera was clearly quite skilled at its task.
A scattering of crushed shells around its anvil rock suggests that Gardner did not just stumble upon the fish when it got lucky. In fact, numerous such shell middens are visible around the reef. Blackspot tuskfish, members of the wrasse family, are popular food fish, so it's surprising that its shell-smashing behavior has remained unknown, Brown says.
"I absolutely loved it," says ethologist Michael Kuba of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem of the finding. Last year, Kuba and two colleagues documented stingrays in a laboratory forming jets of water with their bodies to flush food out of a pipe. But solid external objects like rocks are harder to dismiss as tools than water jets, Kuba says, and examples from the wild avoid concerns about whether a behavior elicited in the lab is "natural."
Primatologist Elisabetta Visalberghi of the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies in Rome is less convinced. Visalberghi, who documented the hammer-wielding monkeys, adheres to a stricter definition of tool use that requires the animal to hold or carry the tool itself, in this case the rock.
Seagulls dropping shellfish onto hard surfaces to crack them or lab rats pushing levers to get rewards would join tuskfish in the category of proto-tool—but not true tool—users. Scientists have observed limited groups of Bottlenose Dolphins around the Australian Pacific using a basic tool.
When searching for food on the sea floor, many of these dolphins were seen tearing off pieces of sponge and wrapping them around their "bottle nose" to prevent abrasions. Dolphins are often seen engaging in playful behavior and create tools to use for entertainment. They have been observed to blow bubbles which they form into rings to play with.
After creating the bubble ring, a dolphin will use its nose and body to maintain the shape of the bubble and keep it from floating to the surface. Elephants also show a remarkable ability to use tools, despite having no hands. Instead, they use their trunk much like one would an arm.
Elephants have been observed digging holes to drink water and then ripping bark from a tree, chewing it into the shape of a ball, filling in the hole and covering over it with sand to avoid evaporation. The elephant later went back to this spot for a drink. They also often use branches to swat flies or scratch themselves. Elephants have also been known to drop very large rocks onto an electric fence to either ruin the fence or cut off the electricity.
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