Hawaiian Islands Weather details & Aloha paragraphs / January 4-5, 2012

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

Lihue, Kauai –                    79
Honolulu airport, Oahu –      83    
Kaneohe, Oahu –                77
Molokai airport –                 M
Kahului airport, Maui –            86  (Highest temperature for this date was 89 – in 1952)
Kona airport –                    82
Hilo airport, Hawaii –          80   

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

Kahului, Maui – 81
Princeville, Kauai – 73

Haleakala Crater –  43 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea –         32 (near 13,800 feet on the Big Island)

Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live web cam on the summit of near 13,800 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. Here's the Haleakala Crater webcam on Maui…which is working only sometimes lately.

 Aloha Paragraphs

Returning trade winds, a few windward showers –
Lowering surf north and west shores –
Gradually fading volcanic haze

As this weather map shows high pressure systems to the north through northeast, with a dissipating cold front to the northeast of the central islands. The location of these high pressure cells, and their associated ridges will keep light to moderately strong trade winds blowing…which will prevail through the next week.

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

22                 Port Allen, Kauai – ENE
22                 Honolulu, Oahu – NE
22                 Molokai – NE  
M                  Kahoolawe
20                 Lipoa, Maui – NE
07                 Lanai – E 
24                    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 evening.  Looking at this NOAA satellite picture we see low level clouds around the islands, mostly remaining offshore, although they are over the islands locally from Oahu down through the Big Island.  We can use this looping satellite image to see what's left of a dissipating cold frontal cloud band across the state. There are also high clouds offshore to the northeast of the islands…moving away. Checking out this looping radar image we see just a few showers over the ocean, coming into the islands locally.

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

0.11               Lihue, Kauai
0.17               Manoa Lyon Arboretum Pump, Oahu
0.00               Molokai
0.00               Lanai
0.00               Kahoolawe
0.45                 Puu Kukui, Maui
0.13               Kapapala Ranch, Big Island

Sunset Commentary:   A high pressure system is located to our north now which is moving northeast, although it has brought back strengthening trade winds today. These winds will blow the volcanic haze out to sea, clearing our atmosphere in the process, more so on Thursday than what we found today. The trades will blow through Friday, and then slow down a touch this weekend…although continue right on into next week. 

The cold front that dropped down to near Kauai is falling apart now, and is no longer an issue. A trough of low pressure has slipped into the state at the same time, which increased showers a bit locally…although they are fading away as well. As the trade winds become more pronounced over the next 24 hours, we'll see a few showers being carried into the windward sides locally. The leeward sides will remain generally dry through the weekend. There are no significant rainfall areas that are taking aim on our islands at this time.

Here in Kula, Maui at around 530pm HST, it was partly cloudy and still very hazy…with an air temperature of 66F degrees. I must say that I was surprised how tenacious the volcanic haze was today here on Maui, despite the return of the trade winds. Clouds gathered around the Haleakala Crater during the day, with a couple of light showers during the afternoon hours here at my place. Now, before sunset, there are some blue patches, and no breeze. I'm expecting the vog to be carried away during the day Thursday, although it sure stuck like glue to Maui today! The trade winds will take over their duty now, and keep blowing through the next week. As long as these light to moderately strong winds blow, we'll see any cold fronts riding by well to our north. This weekend we might see the tail-end of a front approaching, although its not expected to even reach Kauai. It may however knock our trade wind speeds down a little, but not stop them altogether. In other words, our weather looks reasonably good through the next week, which is rather unusual for this time of year. Often, during January we would be thinking in terms of a few more cold fronts diving down into our tropical latitudes. ~~~ I'll be back early Thursday morning with your next new weather narrative from paradise. I hope you have a great Wednesday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting:  Deep down under the sea is another universe of sheer blackness hidden from the sun. Yet a busy blackness in some cases. Communities of species previously unknown to science have been discovered on the seafloor near Antarctica, clustered in the hot, dark environment surrounding hydrothermal vents.

The discoveries, made by teams led by the University of Oxford, University of Southampton and British Antarctic Survey (BAS), include new species of yeti crab, starfish, barnacles, sea anemones and an octopus. Deep down under the sea is another universe of sheer blackness hidden from the sun. Yet a busy blackness in some cases.

Communities of species previously unknown to science have been discovered on the seafloor near Antarctica, clustered in the hot, dark environment surrounding hydrothermal vents. The discoveries, made by teams led by the University of Oxford, University of Southampton and British Antarctic Survey (BAS), include new species of yeti crab, starfish, barnacles, sea anemones and an octopus.

For the first time, researchers used a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) to explore the East Scotia Ridge deep beneath the Southern Ocean, where hydrothermal vents, (including black smokers reaching temperatures of up to 382 degrees Celsius) create a unique environment that lacks sunlight, but is rich in certain chemicals.

The team reports its findings in this week’s issue of the on-line journal PLoS Biology. Normally stormy and cold, this sea is the area of water between Tierra del Fuego, South Georgia, South Sandwich Islands, South Orkney Islands and the Antarctic Peninsula, and bordered on the west by Drake Passage.

These island groups all sit on top of the Scotia Ridge. "Hydrothermal vents are home to animals found nowhere else on the planet that get their energy not from the Sun but from breaking down chemicals, such as hydrogen sulfide," said Professor Alex Rogers of Oxford University’s Department of Zoology, who led the research.

"The first survey of these particular vents, in the Southern Ocean near Antarctica, has revealed a hot, dark, lost world in which whole communities of previously unknown marine organisms thrive." Highlights from the ROV dives include images showing huge colonies of the new species of yeti crab, thought to dominate the Antarctic vent ecosystem, clustered around vent chimneys.

Elsewhere the ROV spotted numbers of an undescribed predatory sea-star with seven arms crawling across fields of stalked barnacles. It also found an unidentified pale octopus, nearly 2,400 meters down, on the seafloor. "What we didn’t find is almost as surprising as what we did," said Professor Rogers.

"Many animals such as tubeworms, vent mussels, vent crabs, and vent shrimps, found in hydrothermal vents in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans, simply weren’t there." Life has traditionally been seen as driven by energy from the sun, but deep sea organisms have no access to sunlight, so they must depend on nutrients found in the dusty chemical deposits and hydrothermal fluids in which they live.

Previously, benthic oceanographers assumed that vent organisms were dependent on marine snow, as deep sea organisms are. This would leave them dependent on plant life and thus the sun. Some hydrothermal vent organisms do consume this rain, but with only such a system, life forms would be very sparse.

Compared to the surrounding sea floor, however, hydrothermal vent zones have a density of organisms 10,000 to 100,000 times greater. Hydrothermal vent communities are able to sustain such vast amounts of life because vent organisms depend on chemosynthetic bacteria for food.

The water that comes out of the hydrothermal vent is rich in dissolved minerals and supports a large population of chemo-autotrophic bacteria. These bacteria use sulfur compounds, particularly hydrogen sulfide, a chemical highly toxic to most known organisms, to produce organic material through the process of chemosynthesis.

The team believe that the differences between the groups of animals found around the Antarctic vents and those found around vents elsewhere suggest that the Southern Ocean may act as a barrier to some vent animals. The unique species of the East Scotia Ridge also suggest that, globally, vent ecosystems may be much more diverse, and their interactions more complex, than previously thought.

BAS author Dr Rob Larter explains how complex it is to operate the ROV at depth. "Beneath 2.5 km of water it is totally dark and the lights on the remotely operated vehicle only give a few meters visibility. Therefore it was essential to have detailed maps of the sea bed to navigate the vehicle around the vent sites. At the start of the project we had low resolution maps of the sea bed topography from work done by BAS in the 1990s."