Hawaiian Islands Weather details & Aloha paragraphs / July 25-26, 2011

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

Lihue, Kauai –                    85                  
Honolulu airport, Oahu –      86 
Kaneohe, Oahu –                81
Molokai airport –                 83
Kahului airport, Maui –           91  (record for Monday – 95 in 1951)
Kona airport                       85  
Hilo airport, Hawaii –           83

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops…as of 5pm Monday evening:

Honolulu, Oahu – 85
Kaneohe, Oahu – 79

Haleakala Crater –     48 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea Summit – 45 (over 13,500 feet on the Big Island)

Here are the 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands as of Monday evening:

2.84     Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.52     Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.00     Molokai
0.00     Lanai
0.02     Kahoolawe
0.08     Puu Kukui, Maui
0.05     Glenwood, Big Island

Marine Winds – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing two near 1030 millibar high pressure systems to the north of our islands. Our local trade winds will remain active through this new week, although slightly lighter through Tuesday…strengthening thereafter.

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, passing windward showers at times…
a few in the upcountry areas of Maui and the Big Island

The winds will be lighter now, then strengthening around mid-week…likely right on into next week. Glancing at this weather map, we find two near 1030 millibar high pressure systems, generally to the north of our islands Monday night. There are no small craft wind advisories anywhere in the state. The trades will likely be the lightest of this new week through Tuesday…then stronger mid-week onwards.

Our trade winds will remain active…the following numbers represent the strongest gusts (mph), along with directions Monday evening: 

23                 Lihue, Kauai – SE  
20                 Honolulu, Oahu – ENE  
24                 Molokai – NNE
25                 Kahoolawe – ESE
28                    Kahului, Maui – NE
07                 Lanai – NW  
28                    Upolu 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 Monday night.  Looking at this NOAA satellite picture we find scattered lower level clouds, which are generally out over the ocean, although stretching over the islands locally. A band of showery looking clouds will bring an increase in showers to our windward sides into Tuesday morning. At the same time we find an area of departing high level clouds to the east of the Big Island. We can use this looping satellite image to see lower level clouds being carried along in the trade wind flow…although the clouds have taken on a southeast direction from Maui up through Kauai. It looks like we may have our next batch of high cirrus clouds approaching from the southwest too. Checking out this looping radar image we see light to moderately heavy showers being carried along in the wind flow, bringing moisture to the windward sides of some of the islands…although most of the showers were offshore.

Sunset Commentary:  We’ve dipped into a two day period of considerably lighter winds…then we’ll see in quite a while. We can see that early this afternoon there wasn’t even a gust that was up to 20 mph. There’s even a shift of the trade winds around to the southeast direction from Maui up towards Kauai. This lighter than usual wind flow will stick around through Tuesday, although by mid-week, more normal conditions, in terms of our summertime trades, should kick back in.

An upper level trough of low pressure is at least partially responsible for this brief slacking-off of the winds. At the same time, we’re seeing some form of mild towering cumulus clouds that have formed over and around some of our mountains. This suggests that there could be somewhat more showers, and even some more intense showers during the afternoon hours today and tomorrow. As the lighter winds give way to strengthening trade winds, the shower activity will shift back over to the windward sides starting Wednesday.

Typically, even during the summer months, when the winds become lighter than normal for whatever reason, we can see pretty hot days…at least they feel that way. At the same time, those places, like Kahului and Hilo can find air temperatures getting cooler than what they normally run during this season…at night. We’re not talking about more than 1-3 degrees, with the other smaller islands not experiencing these downslope cool breezes that Maui and the Big Island can provide. As the trade winds strengthen, and the air comes off our warm ocean more fully, temperature patterns will return to normal.  

Here in Kihei, Maui, at around 500pm HST Monday evening, skies were mostly clear to partly cloudy. The trade winds were blowing, in what looks like light to moderately strong realms. I'll be heading back upcountry to Kula soon, and will have your next new weather narrative available in the morning. I hope you have a great Monday night! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting: Cleanup work at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant is proceeding smoothly and the prospects are good for bringing it under control, the head of the U.N. atomic watchdog said Monday after a visit to the crisis-hit plant. Japan said last week that it was on track with efforts to take control of the Fukushima nuclear plant, more than four months after it was hit by a massive earthquake and tsunami that triggered meltdowns and radiation leaks, but cautioned that a final clean-up of the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl would take many years.

"Looking at the site, work is moving very smoothly," said Yukiya Amano, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). "So many people are working with passion, so I felt that the outlook is bright," the veteran diplomat was shown on public broadcaster NHK as telling reporters.

Amano's comments were in line with a statement released on Friday, when he said significant progress had been made in efforts to contain Japan's atomic crisis. The government and Tokyo Electric Power, the operator of the Fukushima plant, have so far met the July target of stably reducing radiation but officials have said it could take more than 10 years to decommission the reactors, whose troubles have heightened public safety concerns over nuclear power.

More than two-thirds of Japanese support Prime Minister Naoto Kan's call for the country to wean itself from nuclear power, a Kyodo news agency poll showed Sunday.

Interesting2: Recent satellite images of a remote Alaska volcano along a flight route for major airlines show it may be poised for its first big eruption in 10 years, scientists said. The Alaska Volcano Observatory has issued an eruption advisory for the 5,676 foot-tall Cleveland Volcano, located on the uninhabited island of Chuginadak in the Aleutian chain about 940 miles southwest of Anchorage.

The advisory was based on "thermal anomalies" detected by satellite, the observatory said on Thursday. Those measurements indicate the volcano could erupt at any moment, spewing ash clouds up to 20,000 feet above sea level with little further warning, the observatory said.

A major eruption could disrupt international air travel because Cleveland Volcano, like others in the Aleutians, lies directly below the commercial airline flight path between North America and Asia, said John Power, scientist-in-charge at the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

The volcano's last major eruption came in 2001, when it blasted ash more than 5 miles into the sky and spilled lava from the summit crater. Cleveland has experienced several smaller eruptions or suspected eruptions since then. So far, airlines have not changed their flight patterns because of Cleveland's heat emissions, said Steve McNutt, a University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist who works at the observatory.

Scientists are not always certain about what is happening at the remote volcano, observatory officials said. The town of Nikolski, the nearest settlement to Cleveland Volcano, is 45 miles away. Although Cleveland is among the most active of Alaska's roughly 90 volcanoes, no seismic equipment is set up there because the costs of working in such a remote area are prohibitive, observatory officials said.

Interesting3: Large fires in Yellowstone National Park could dramatically increase by mid-century due to climate change, which could create a very different park than the one people know today, a new study suggests. An increase in the number of severe fires in and around Yellowstone National Park would not destroy the popular park, the study authors say, but it could reduce the park's conifer-dominated mature forests (pines and firs) to younger stands and more open vegetation.

"Large, severe fires are normal for this ecosystem. It has burned this way about every few hundred years for thousands of years," said study author and ecologist Monica Turner of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "But if the current relationship between climate and large fires holds true, a warming climate will drive more frequent large fires in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in the future."

Wildfires in this ecosystem are climate-driven and are primed by hotter, drier conditions, such as those predicted by numerous global climate models. Already, fire ecologists have noticed increased fire frequency in the West, associated with temperature increases of less than 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) and early spring snowmelt in the mountains.

For the new study, the researchers analyzed large wildfires (those greater than 500 acres) and climate data in the northern Rocky Mountains from 1972 to 1999 — a period that includes the massive 1988 wildfire that burned some 793,880 acres, the largest wildfire in the recorded history of the park — then used these observed relationships with global climate models to project how expected climate change will affect fires during the 21st century.

"What surprised us about our results was the speed and scale of the projected changes in fire in Greater Yellowstone," said study team member Anthony Westerling of the University of California, Merced. "We expected fire to increase with increased temperatures, but we did not expect it to increase so much or so quickly. We were also surprised by how consistent the changes were across different climate projections."

They found that fires larger than 500 acres will likely be an annual occurrence by 2050, with fire rotation — the time span over which the entire landscape burns — reduced from a historic range of 100 to 300 years to less than 30 years. Interestingly, the predicted new fire regime closely resembles patterns typical of other landscapes, such as the ponderosa pine forests of the Southwest.

"More frequent fires will not be catastrophic to the area — Yellowstone will not be destroyed — but they will undoubtedly lead to major shifts in the vegetation," says Turner. "It is critical to keep monitoring these forests and study how they respond to future fires."

For example, the iconic lodge pole pines that dominate much of the current landscape may not have time to recover between big fires, especially if hot, dry summers make it difficult for tree seedlings to germinate and grow following future fires. Some forests could shift toward fast-growing aspen and Douglas fir, or even shrubs and grassland. Such changes would also affect the region's wildlife, hydrology, carbon storage and aesthetics.

Westerling, an expert on climate-fire interactions, cautions that the models used in the study will not work once the increase in fires creates a fundamental change in the ecosystem. As the landscape changes, the relationships between climate and fire will change as well. For example, with more frequent fires, available fuels will also dwindle and eventually become more important than climate in limiting fires, so large fires could even become less severe in the future, making it an important topic for continued study.

"Our research after the immense 1988 fires revealed surprises and tremendous resilience in Yellowstone's ecosystems, and Yellowstone is likely to surprise us again in the future," Turner said. "It is an incredibly valuable natural laboratory for studying how natural ecosystems adapt to changing environmental conditions." The study was published online in the July 25 edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.