Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Wednesday:
Lihue, Kauai – 86
Honolulu airport, Oahu – 88 (record for Wednesday – 92 in 1990)
Kaneohe, Oahu – 82
Molokai airport – 83
Kahului airport, Maui – 87
Kona airport 86
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 – 86
Princeville, Kauai – 79
Haleakala Crater – 46 (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 Wednesday evening:
0.09 Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.33 Manoa Lyon Arboretum, Oahu
0.04 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.47 West Wailuaiki, Maui
0.69 Kealakekua, Big Island
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. This web cam is 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…a few showers –
large surf on the north shores –
high cirrus clouds eastern islands
The trade winds will become softer as we get into the upcoming weekend…into early next week. Glancing at this weather map, it shows a near 1022 millibar high pressure system to the northeast of our islands, with a ridge of high pressure extending west…to the north of our islands. Our local trade winds will be light to moderately strong through Friday, strongest during the afternoon hours.
Our trade winds will remain active…the following numbers represent the strongest gusts (mph), along with directions Wednesday evening:
14 Princeville, Kauai – NE
30 Honolulu, Oahu – NE
23 Molokai – NE
28 Kahoolawe – E
28 Kahului, Maui – NE
20 Lanai – NE
28 Kawaihae, Big Island – ENE
We can use the following links to see what’s going on in our area of the north central Pacific Ocean Wednesday evening. Looking at this NOAA satellite picture we find a mix of low clouds offshore, some clouds over and around the islands…in addition to some high cirrus clouds locally as well. We can use this looping satellite image to see the low clouds moving along in the trade wind flow, impacting our islands locally. At the same time, the high cirrus are located over the eastern half of the island chain. Checking out this looping radar image we see just a few showers around, most of which are falling over the ocean at the time of this writing, which may increase modestly during the night.
Sunset Commentary: There’s not much going on during this last full day of summer 2011, at least nothing unusual for this time of year. Looking further afield for some sort of more dynamic weather influences, we have to set our sights well west and east. In the eastern Pacific Ocean, we find the 9th tropical cyclone of the 2011 hurricane season, named tropical storm Hilary. Hilary is expected to increase to a category 2 hurricane within a couple of days. It’s still too early to know exactly what will happen with this hurricane, although indications would seem to dissipate this female hurricane in the eastern Pacific…giving us no trouble here in the central Pacific.
Meanwhile, glancing in the other direction, to our west, we find dissipating tropical storm Roke in the far western Pacific. It was a long lived tropical cyclone, which recently raked the Japanese coastline with very strong winds, storm surge, heavy surf, and flooding rainfall. The thing about Roke however, is that it will likely influence our own local weather with time. The computer models show it moving more or less eastward, and in the process, with the help of the overlying polar jet stream, may support sending us an early season cold front. It’s still not certain, although this shower bearing frontal cloud band could arrive near Kauai later this Sunday, and even make it as far southeast as Oahu Monday morning.
Back to the present, we have our trade winds blowing, which will carry on into the first couple of days of our soon to be autumn season. As we move into the weekend however, and as this aforementioned cold front gets closer, we’ll see some corresponding changes. As this front gets closer by Saturday, its approach will shove our trade wind producing high pressure ridge down close to, or even over the islands. This in turn will cause our trade wind speeds to falter, being replaced with lighter sea breezes during the afternoon, and offshore flowing land breezes at night. Air temperatures will feel warmer during the days this weekend, and somewhat cooler than normal during the early morning hours, as this convective weather pattern settles over us. Kauai and Oahu may remain a little showery at times into Tuesday, although the rest of the state will probably miss this moisture. This weather plan will likely take some fine tuning over the next couple days, even into the weekend…more about this ahead.
Here in Kihei, Maui at around 530pm HST Wednesday evening, skies were clear to partly cloudy, along with some lovely high cirrus clouds from Oahu down through Maui and the Big Island too. These icy high clouds will make for a nice sunset this evening. I'm heading back upcountry now, where I'll be looking for those sunset colors myself. These streaky high cloudy may put on another show early Thursday morning, that is if they're still around. I'll catch up with you in the early morning, at around 530am or so, when I'll have your next new weather narrative waiting here for your review. I hope you have a great Wednesday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting: Observations from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission indicate the family of asteroids some believed was responsible for the demise of the dinosaurs is not likely the culprit, keeping open the case on one of Earth's greatest mysteries. While scientists are confident a large asteroid crashed into Earth approximately 65 million years ago, leading to the extinction of dinosaurs and some other life forms on our planet, they do not know exactly where the asteroid came from or how it made its way to Earth.
A 2007 study using visible-light data from ground-based telescopes first suggested the remnant of a huge asteroid, known as Baptistina, as a possible suspect. The hunt for the killer asteroid goes on.
According to that theory, Baptistina crashed into another asteroid in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter about 160 million years ago. The collision sent shattered pieces as big as mountains flying.
One of those pieces was believed to have impacted Earth, causing the dinosaurs' extinction. Since this scenario was first proposed, evidence developed that the so-called Baptistina family of asteroids was not the responsible party.
With the new infrared observations from WISE, astronomers say Baptistina may finally be ruled out. In 2007, a study by William F. Bottke, David Vokrouhlický and David Nesvorný proposed that several known asteroids can be regarded as the "Baptistina family" because they share similar orbital elements.
Further, the study argues that the family is the remnant of a 110 mile parent asteroid that was destroyed in a collision with a smaller body some 80 million years ago, with Baptistina itself being the largest remnant.
Until recently, it was believed that this collision event occurred 160 million years ago, but NASA's WISE (Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer), used to determined the age of things in space, revealed that this collision event occurred more recently, some 80 million years ago.
"As a result of the WISE science team's investigation, the demise of the dinosaurs remains in the cold case files," said Lindley Johnson, program executive for the Near Earth Object (NEO) Observation Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
"The original calculations with visible light estimated the size and reflectivity of the Baptistina family members, leading to estimates of their age, but we now know those estimates were off.
With infrared light, WISE was able to get a more accurate estimate, which throws the timing of the Baptistina theory into question." WISE surveyed the entire celestial sky twice in infrared light from January 2010 to February 2011.
The asteroid-hunting portion of the mission, called NEOWISE, used the data to catalogue more than 157,000 asteroids in the main belt and discovered more than 33,000 new ones. Visible light reflects off an asteroid.
Without knowing how reflective the surface of the asteroid is, it's hard to accurately establish size. Infrared observations allow a more accurate size estimate. They detect infrared light coming from the asteroid itself, which is related to the body's temperature and size.
Once the size is known, the object's reflectivity can be re-calculated by combining infrared with visible-light data. The NEOWISE team measured the reflectivity and the size of about 120,000 asteroids in the main belt, including 1,056 members of the Baptistina family.
The scientists calculated the original parent Baptistina asteroid actually broke up closer to 80 million years ago, half as long as originally proposed. This calculation was possible because the size and reflectivity of the asteroid family members indicate how much time would have been required to reach their current locations — larger asteroids would not disperse in their orbits as fast as smaller ones.
The results revealed a chunk of the original Baptistina asteroid needed to hit Earth in less time than previously believed, in just about 15 million years, to cause the extinction of the dinosaurs.
"This doesn't give the remnants from the collision very much time to move into a resonance spot, and get flung down to Earth 65 million years ago," said Amy Mainzer, a co-author of a new study appearing in the Astrophysical Journal and the principal investigator of NEOWISE at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena. Calif.
"This process is thought to normally take many tens of millions of years." Resonances are areas in the main belt where gravity nudges from Jupiter and Saturn can act like a pinball machine to fling asteroids out of the main belt and into the region near Earth.
The asteroid family that produced the dinosaur-killing asteroid remains at large. Evidence that a about 6.2-mile asteroid impacted Earth 65 million years ago includes a huge, crater-shaped structure in the Gulf of Mexico and rare minerals in the fossil record, which are common in meteorites but seldom found in Earth's crust.
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