Hawaiian Islands Weather details & Aloha paragraphs / March 17-18, 2012

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

Lihue, Kauai –                     79  
Honolulu airport, Oahu –      82   
Kaneohe, Oahu –                 M
Molokai airport –                 79
Kahului airport, Maui –      84   (Record high temperature for Saturday – 90 / 1952)
Kona airport –                    80
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 Saturday evening:

Barking Sands, Kauai – 82
Hilo, Hawaii – 72

Haleakala Crater –  48 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea –         34 (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…although this webcam is often not working correctly.

 Aloha Paragraphs

   
Nice weather in general…gusty trades then
lighter from the southeast starting Monday

  Volcanic haze (vog) starting Monday locally

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

As this weather map shows, we have a near 1030 millibar high pressure system to the north-northeast, with associated ridges extending far east and west of the islands.  Our winds will remain active from the trade wind direction, locally strong and gusty into Sunday…then lighter from the southeast going into the new week.

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

30                 Lihue, Kauai – NE
35                 Kuaokala, Oahu – NNE
33                 Molokai – NE
42                 Kahoolawe – E
35                 Kahului, Maui – NE
30                 Lanai – NE
31                 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 Saturday evening.  Looking at this NOAA satellite picture we see scattered low clouds over the ocean approaching the islands from the east…with some high cirrus clouds to our west. We can use this looping satellite image to see low clouds coming into the state, carried by the gusty trade winds.  Checking out this looping radar image we see just a few showers being carried over the islands by the trade winds, mostly over the windward coasts and slopes…which will increase some tonight locally.

Here are the 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands as of Saturday evening:
 
0.67               Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.05               Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.01               Molokai
0.00               Kahoolawe
0.07               Puu Kukui, Maui
0.25               Mountain View, Big Island  

Sunset Commentary:   A trade wind weather pattern will last one more day, with locally gusty winds prevailing. Small craft wind advisories remain active in the major channels from Oahu down through the Big Island…and in a few of those windiest coastal zones too. The NWS office in Honolulu is keeping the wind advisory active over the summit of the Haleakala Crater on Maui. Generally fair weather will continue Sunday, before these trade winds veer to the southeast.

As we push into the new week, these strong and gusty trade winds will give way to lighter southeast breezes. This will be due to a trough of low pressure, and an associated cold front edging into the area west of Kauai. The models show this area of low pressure stalling before arriving into the Aloha state however. The winds are forecast to veer to the southeast, drawing vog over the smaller islands…from the Big Island vents.

Here in Kula, Maui at 5pm HST, we had light breezes, with partly cloudy skies…and an air temperature of 69.3F degrees. As I was mentioning above, the trade winds will be our main weather influence here in the islands for one more day. These will carry a few windward biased showers our way, while the leeward sides remain generally dry. The high cirrus clouds (the brighter white ones) we see on satellite imagery to our southwest and west, seem to be staying away for the moment. The computer models are showing these high clouds shifting over the islands with time. When they do make it over us, then we'll see sun filtering and dimming happening during the days. At the moment, they remain a good distance offshore to our west, and continue to just fade away as they try to get closer to Kauai. As we move into the early part of the new work week ahead, the winds will turn southeast, carrying volcanic haze over the smaller islands, making for hazy conditions. Those southeast winds may be able to carry some moisture from over the ocean onto our islands locally too. The trade winds will rebound by mid-week, ushering in windward showers for several days then. ~~~ I'll be back Sunday morning with your next new sunrise commentary. I hope you have a great Saturday night wherever you're spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting:  There are 28,000 square miles of roadways spread across the 48 continental states. With the cost of traditional paving materials going up and their availability going down, innovator Scott Brusaw sees solar highways as the solution to several energy and transportation problems.

Brusaw is an electrical engineer (MSEE) with over 20 years of industry experience, and is the co-founder of Idaho-based Solar Roadways Incorporated. His solar roadway concept won a $50,000 Community Award from the 2010 GE Ecomagination Challenge, and also received the most community votes in the 2011 event.

Brusaw's 12 x12 ft solar road prototype incorporates an array of solar panels. Each panel includes three yellow and three white LEDs, with just over 6,000 LEDs in the whole prototype. The system's internal microprocessor determines which LEDs light up, allowing the mechanism to spell out almost any message.

Once the first phase of the Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) contract was completed, the Federal Highway Administration awarded Brusaw's company a $750,000 Phase II SBIR contract in July 2011. That equals roughly two years' worth of funding for solar streets, according to Brusaw.

Phase II involves building a parking lot paved with embedded solar panels outside of the company's electronics lab in Sandpoint, Idaho.

The plan is to break ground for the parking lot next month, but that’s only if Mother Nature cooperates. "Right now, there's snow and ice on the ground," explains Brusaw.

Interesting2: The city of Manila holds the human world record for the most densely populated space and now an international team of ecologists are seeking the natural equivalent, the most species rich area on earth. The team's findings, published in the Journal of Vegetation Science, reveal the record is contested between South America's tropical rainforests and Central European meadows.

"The coexistence of large numbers of species in one space and the questions it raises have long fascinated ecologists," said Professor Bastow Wilson, from the University of Otago, New Zealand. "For example it's a core ecological principle that two species occupying the same niche cannot co-exist long-term, so how can 942 plant species co-exist in one hectare of tropical rainforest?"

While tropical rainforests of South America and Central Africa are often believed to be the most species rich areas on Earth, Professor Wilson's team sought to establish if this is true, especially if smaller spatial scales are analysed. "We surveyed the global literature to find records of plant species richness at scales from 1 mm² up to 1 hectare.

Above 50 m², all the maximum values were from tropical rainforests in Costa Rica, Columbia or Ecuador," said Wilson. "However, looking at smaller scales we have found that long-grazed or mown grasslands are the most species rich places on Earth."

These very rich grasslands were found in the eastern half of Europe, from the German border through to Romania, although two examples were also found in Argentina. Most were over limestone, and two were from wooded meadow, a landscape once common over northern Europe but now very rare.

Using these data the team asked if there is a theoretical maximum for the number of species which can co-exist in one area. They extrapolated the relationship up to 1 hectare, predicting the number of plant species over the whole earth.

"Any scientific hypothesis should be tested in a new situation, and the strongest test is extrapolation, even if school teachers warn their pupils not to do it," concluded Wilson. "This left us with a predicted number of 219,204 species, remarkably close to the latest estimate of the world's vascular flora at 275,000 species."