Hawaiian Islands Weather details & Aloha paragraphs / December 8-9, 2011

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

Lihue, Kauai –                   78
Honolulu airport, Oahu –   83  (record high for the date: 89F degrees in 1983)  
Kaneohe, Oahu –               79
Molokai airport –                78
Kahului airport, Maui          82
Kona airport                      81
Hilo airport, Hawaii –          72

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

Barking Sands, Kauai  – 79
Hilo, Hawaii – 69

Haleakala Crater – 43 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Loa –         45 (near 13,670 feet on the Big Island)

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

0.50     Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.19     Wheeler Air Field, Oahu
0.05     Molokai
0.00     Lanai
0.00     Kahoolawe
0.74     Puu Kukui, Maui
0.71     Waiakea Uka, 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 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. The Haleakala Crater webcam on Maui just came back online, after being on the blink for several weeks.

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 wind weather pattern,
some showers…large surf
north and west shores
 

As this weather map shows, we find a strong 1036 millibar high pressure system located far to the northeast of the Hawaiian Islands Thursday evening.  This high pressure cell remains nearly stationary well offshore from the Columbia River mouth, between the Oregon and Washington borders.  This high has a ridge of high pressure running from its center southwest into the area north-northeast of Hawaii. Meanwhile, we see a 1032 millibar high closer, to the north of the islands.  Finally, we have troughs of low pressure located to the east and north of the state. The long and short of all this keeps moderately strong trade winds blowing across our latitudes of the north central Pacific…strongest over the Maui and Big Island end of the chain.

The following numbers represent the strongest wind gusts (mph), along with directions Thursday evening:

22                 Port Allen, Kauai – NE
28                 Kahuku Training, Oahu – E
32                 Molokai – NE
33                 Kahoolawe – E
32                 Kahului, Maui – NE
39                    Lanai – NE
35                 Waikoloa, Big Island – NE

We can use the following links to see what’s going on in our area of the north central Pacific Ocean early Thursday evening. Looking at this NOAA satellite picture we find that high and middle level cloudiness are located over the ocean to the east and southeast, along with fairly minor low clouds stretched across the windward sides, most concentrated on the Big Island at the time of this writing. We can use this looping satellite image to see low clouds being carried over the islands on the trade wind flow here and there…although skies were quite clear in most areas.  We can see a large area of thunderstorms over the ocean to the southeast of the Big Island, with high cirrus clouds flying off the tops of those storms…carried by the strong upper level winds that area. Checking out this looping radar image we see showers over the ocean, most of which are in the light to moderately heavy category. The most active precipitation areas are coming into the  windward sides..especially on Oahu, Maui, and to the southeast of the Big Island. 

Sunset Commentary:  The trade winds remain well established across our Hawaiian Islands today, with little change expected through the next week…other than a possible strengthening after this weekend. The main instigator here is a very steady and strong near 1036 millibar high pressure system, which seems to be cemented into place far northeast of us. This high pressure cell is in control of weather conditions from Alaska and the eastern half of the Gulf of Alaska, all the way down the west coast past BC Canada, Washington, Oregon, and the California coast into Baja, California…even down to the Central American coast!

This high pressure system is flooding air from the far north, down south into the tropics. This same high, or a new one with time, will keep up this conveyor belt of air coming over us well into the future. This is turning out to be, or will turn out to be in the end, an especially long lasting bout of late autumn trade winds. They are strong enough now to have overlapped almost the entire state with small craft wind advisories. We certainly haven’t seen the last of this advisory, which will be in force through the next week. These likely won’t become strong enough to cause trouble for our islands, although will make the east sides of the islands wavy, and cause rough choppy ocean conditions too…not to mention bringing lots of showers our way with time.

In terms of rainfall, we’ll find the usual passing windward showers for the time being, how many times have you read that…about a million? At any rate, they will be falling in an off and on fashion through Friday. As we push into the weekend, there’s still that chance of an increase in showers, although there are several variables that could come into play here. There could be more of those very common showers that the trade winds drag in, or they could become more numerous than usual, and even quite generous in their intensities. This has been an ongoing question in the weather forecasting community all this week, and still isn’t perfectly clear. It will be determined, in an easy way of stating the problem, by whether we get cold air aloft over the state, how cold it turns out to be, and, whether there is enough moisture around to feed these potentially frequent passing showers along our windward sides. This by the way could extend right on into the new week ahead, and could bring some much needed showers over into the leeward sides, especially on the smaller islands.

Here in Kihei, Maui at around 530pm Thursday evening, skies were mostly clear, with just a few scattered clouds around the edges. As noted above, the name of the game now will be the gusty trade winds, and the still large and rough surf along our north, west, and east facing beaches. These blustery trade winds will accompany us through the next week at least, and are slated to become even stronger later this weekend into early next week. ~~~ I'm going to strongly walk right out of this building here in Kihei now, jump in my car, and head back upcountry to Kula. I'll change clothes as soon as I get home, where it will be near 10 degrees cooler than down here near sea level, and head back on the street for my evening walk. I have the last of my vegetable soup to eat for dinner, along with a bit of avocado, cheese, and some crackers. I popped a nice bottle of Pinot Noir red wine back on Monday, which I'll finish off tonight. Drinking a quarter of a bottle each evening, is just the perfect amount for me. I'll be back early on Friday morning with your next new weather narrative, I hope you have a great Thursday night until then! By the way, don't forget to check out the close to full moon tonight, and perhaps you'll be interested in seeing the full lunar eclipse early Saturday morning (here in Hawaii), more about that just below. Aloha for now…Glenn.

Extra:  December 10 – Total lunar eclipse (visible in Hawai‘i)

There is a total lunar eclipse early in the morning on December 10.  This is the first total lunar eclipse visible in Hawai‘i since the one of December 20, 2010.   Hawai‘i and Alaska are well-place to view this December 2011 eclipse.   Please note that this eclipse happens early in the morning on December 10, 2011  – i.e., either stay up late on the 9th and then look for it starting at 3:00am on the 10th; or set your alarm very early on the 10th.

From the Hawaiian Islands, the partial phase on this lunar eclipse starts at about 2:45am on December 10, as the moon starts to enter the deep inner shadow (umbra) of the earth.  By 4:10am HST the eclipse will be total, with the entire moon now in the dark inner shadow of the earth. By this time, the moon should be dramatically darker and redder than usual.  This total phase, with the moon completely within the earth’s umbra, will last till 4:55am HST.  At that time the moon will start to leave the umbra, and you will see the moon start to lighten.  By 6:20am, just as the first glimmer of dawn appears in the east, the partial phase will be over.

Lunar eclipses occur when the earth comes in between the moon and sun.  The earth’s atmosphere blocks most of the light coming from the sun and stops that light from hitting the moon. However, the longer wavelengths of red light from the sun do make it through the earth’s atmosphere and continue on to strike to moon.  Thus, during lunar eclipses the moon can turn a pale copper color; or a deep shade of red; or can be just plain dark.  This is largely a function of the earth’s atmosphere at the time of the eclipse.  If there is a lot of material in the air, say from recent volcanic activity, the moon tends to be darker.  If the atmosphere is relatively clear, the moon is often more reddish.

All of Alaska will see this eclipse; the total phase there will run from 5:10 to 5:55am Alaska Standard Time.  The western half of the continental US will see the moon set while it’s total.  Viewers in the middle portion of the US will see the eclipse the partial phase start, but will see the moon set before the total phase begins.  Viewers on the eastern quarter of the continental US will not see any visible change.  The moon will set from the eastern part of the US while the eclipse is still penumbral (i.e. the moon is only in the earth’s fainter outer shadow, the penumbra) and there is no visible change in the moon’s brightness during the penumbral phrase.

Elsewhere: virtually all of Asia will see this eclipse.

Interesting:  We put a lot of energy into improving our memory, intelligence, and attention. There are even drugs that make us sharper, such as Ritalin and caffeine. But maybe smarter isn't really all that better. A new paper published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, warns that there are limits on how smart humans can get, and any increases in thinking ability are likely to come with problems.

The authors looked to evolution to understand about why humans are only as smart as we are and not any smarter. "A lot of people are interested in drugs that can enhance cognition in various ways," says Thomas Hills of the University of Warwick, who cowrote the article with Ralph Hertwig of the University of Basel.

"But it seems natural to ask, why aren't we smarter already?" Tradeoffs are common in evolution. It might be nice to be eight feet tall, but most hearts couldn't handle getting blood up that high. So most humans top out under six feet. Just as there are evolutionary tradeoffs for physical traits, Hills says, there are tradeoffs for intelligence.

A baby's brain size is thought to be limited by, among other things, the size of the mother's pelvis; bigger brains could mean more deaths in childbirth, and the pelvis can't change substantially without changing the way we stand and walk. Drugs like Ritalin and amphetamines help people pay better attention.

But they often only help people with lower baseline abilities; people who don't have trouble paying attention in the first place can actually perform worse when they take attention-enhancing drugs. That suggests there is some kind of upper limit to how much people can or should pay attention.

"This makes sense if you think about a focused task like driving," Hills says, "where you have to pay attention, but to the right things — which may be changing all the time. If your attention is focused on a shiny billboard or changing the channel on the radio, you're going to have problems."

It may seem like a good thing to have a better memory, but people with excessively vivid memories have a difficult life. "Memory is a double-edged sword," Hills says. In post-traumatic stress disorder, for example, a person can't stop remembering some awful episode.

"If something bad happens, you want to be able to forget it, to move on." Even increasing general intelligence can cause problems. Hills and Hertwig cite a study of Ashkenazi Jews, who have an average IQ much higher than the general European population. This is apparently because of evolutionary selection for intelligence in the last 2,000 years.

But, at the same time, Ashkenazi Jews have been plagued by inherited diseases like Tay-Sachs disease that affect the nervous system. It may be that the increase in brain power has caused an increase in disease. Given all of these tradeoffs that emerge when you make people better at thinking, Hills says, it's unlikely that there will ever be a supermind.

"If you have a specific task that requires more memory or more speed or more accuracy or whatever, then you could potentially take an enhancer that increases your capacity for that task," he says. "But it would be wrong to think that this is going to improve your abilities all across the board."