Hawaiian Islands Weather details & Aloha paragraphs / July 26-27, 2011

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

Lihue, Kauai –                    86                  
Honolulu airport, Oahu –      88  (record for Tuesday – 91 in 1987, 1995)
Kaneohe, Oahu –                82
Molokai airport –                 84
Kahului airport, Maui –         86 
Kona airport                       86  
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 Tuesday afternoon:

Kahului, Maui – 87
Kaneohe, Oahu – 78

Haleakala Crater –     52 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea Summit – 36 (over 13,500 feet on the Big Island)

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

0.25     Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.72     Manoa Lyon Arboretum, Oahu
0.01     Molokai
0.01     Lanai
0.00     Kahoolawe
0.18     Oheo Gulch, Maui
0.10     Pahoa, Big Island

Marine Winds – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a 1031 millibar high pressure system to the northeast of our islands. Our local trade winds will remain active through Thursday and beyond.

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 leeward areas…small surf rising
on the south and west shores Thursday.

The trade winds will strengthening some later Wednesday…remaining light to moderately strong into next week. Glancing at this weather map, we find a 1031 millibar high pressure system, located to the northeast of our islands Tuesday night. There are no small craft wind advisories anywhere in the state, and none are expected through the next several days…at least. 

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

17                 Princeville, Kauai – ENE  
23                 Kahuku, Oahu – ENE  
09                 Molokai – NNE
38                    Kahoolawe – ESE
28                 Kahului, Maui – NE
09                 Lanai – NW  
29                 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 Tuesday 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 from Kauai down through the Maui at the time of this writing. At the same time we find an area of high and middle level clouds to the northeast of the Big Island…and some small thunderstorms not too far north of Kauai. 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 and beyond. It looks like we may have our next batch of high cirrus clouds approaching from the west too. Checking out this looping radar image we see generally light showers being carried along in the wind flow, bringing moisture to the windward sides of some of the islands.

Sunset Commentary:  The local winds continue to exhibit this stronger and then lighter character. We were in one of the lighter phases today, as we were yesterday.  As we push into the mid-week time frame we'll find our winds returning to the moderately strong realms. This should last through the rest of this week, and then right on into the beginning of the month of August.

As the winds have slowed down so far this week, our rainfall has shifted inland over the slopes at times, especially during the afternoon hours. The winds have been blowing south of east in places, which has kept some showers falling along our east facing coasts and slopes. As we get into the later part of this last week of July, an upper level trough, with its colder air aloft may edge closer. This in turn could prompt an enhancement of our local showers, especially along the windward sides…as the trade winds will be blowing then.   

Looking at this looping satellite image it looks like we might have our next swath of high cirrus clouds approaching from the southwest and west. This satellite picture still shows the winds are coming up from the southeast, carrying the low level clouds, and some showers up along our windward sides. The thought is that these winds will veer back to the east and east-northeast soon. This wind direction allowed the Kahului airport to get up to 91F degrees on Monday, and then up to 88 today, as did the Honolulu airport.

Here in Kihei, Maui, at around 530pm HST Tuesday evening, skies were clear to mostly cloudy, depending upon which window one looks out of. The winds are starting to increase again now, with Kahoolawe gusting up towards 40 mph, after a two day pulling back of their strength. It looks as if they will pick up and stay up as we move into Wednesday onwards. They won't become all that strong, although if they keep going in this direction…we could begin to see small craft wind advisories around Maui County or the Big Island with time. ~~~ At any rate, I really must get on the road for my drive back upcountry to Kula, calling this the end of my long work day. I will however be back with your Wednesday morning weather narrative at around 530am HST. I hope you have a great Tuesday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting: Analysis of new images of a curious "hot spot" on the far side of the Moon reveal it to be a small volcanic province created by the upwelling of silicic magma. The unusual location of the province and the surprising composition of the lava that formed it offer tantalizing clues to the Moon's thermal history.

The hot spot is a concentration of a radioactive element thorium sitting between the very large and ancient impact craters Compton and Belkovich that was first detected by Lunar Prospector's gamma-ray spectrometer in 1998. The Compton-Belkovich Thorium Anomaly, as it is called, appears as a bull's-eye when the spectrometer data are projected onto a map, with the highest thorium concentration at its center.

Recent observations, made with the powerful Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) optical cameras, have allowed scientists to distinguish volcanic features in terrain at the center of the bull's-eye. High-resolution three-dimensional models of the terrain and information from the LRO Diviner instrument have revealed geological features diagnostic not just of volcanism but also of much rarer silicic volcanism.

The volcanic province's very existence will force scientists to modify ideas about the Moon's volcanic history, says Bradley Jolliff, PhD, research professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, who led the team that analyzed the LRO images.

"To find evidence of this unusual composition located where it is, and appearing to be relatively recent volcanic activity is a fundamentally new result and will make us think again about the Moon's thermal and volcanic evolution," he says.

The work is described in the July 24 advance online issue of Nature Geoscience.

Interesting2: Demographers aren't known for their sense of humor, but the ones who work for the United Nations recently announced that the world's human population will hit 7 billion on Halloween this year. Since censuses and other surveys can scarcely justify such a precise calculation, it's tempting to imagine that the UN Population Division, the data shop that pinpointed the Day of 7 Billion, is hinting that we should all be afraid, be very afraid.

We have reason to be. The 21st century is not yet a dozen years old, and there are already 1 billion more people than in October 1999 — with the outlook for future energy and food supplies looking bleaker than it has for decades. It took humanity until the early 19th century to gain its first billion people; then another 1.5 billion followed over the next century and a half. In just the last 60 years the world’s population has gained yet another 4.5 billion. Never before have so many animals of one species anything like our size inhabited the planet.

And this species interacts with its surroundings far more intensely than any other ever has. Planet Earth has become Planet Humanity, as we co-opt its carbon, water, and nitrogen cycles so completely that no other force can compare. For the first time in life's 3-billion-plus-year history, one form of life — ours — condemns to extinction significant proportions of the plants and animals that are our only known companions in the universe.

Did someone just remark that these impacts don't stem from our population, but from our consumption? Probably, as this assertion emerges often from journals, books, and the blogosphere. It's as though a geometry text were to propound the axiom that it is not length that determines the area of a rectangle, but width. Would we worry about our individual consumption of energy and natural resources if humanity still had the stable population of roughly 300 million people — less than today’s U.S. number — that the species maintained throughout the first millennium of the current era?