Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Wednesday:
Lihue, Kauai – 80
Honolulu airport, Oahu – 84 (Record high temperature for Wednesday – 89 / 1978)
Kaneohe, Oahu – 82
Molokai airport – 80
Kahului airport, Maui – 83
Kona airport – 83
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 evening:
Kailua-kona – 81
Princeville, Kauai – 73
Haleakala Crater – 46 (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…although this webcam is not always working correctly.
Aloha Paragraphs
Locally gusty trades – windward showers at times, with
localized leeward showers here and there as well
As this weather map shows, we have a large near 1027 millibar high pressure system to the northeast of the islands. Our local winds will remain locally strong and gusty for the time being…then gradually become lighter into the weekend.
The following numbers represent the most recent wind gusts (mph), along with directions as of Wednesday evening:
16 Lihue, Kauai – NE
28 Honolulu, Oahu – NE
30 Molokai – NE
40 Kahoolawe – ESE
33 Kahului, Maui – NE
16 Lanai – ENE
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. Here's the latest NOAA satellite picture – the latest looping satellite image…and finally the latest looping radar image for the Hawaiian Islands.
Here are the latest 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands as of Wednesday evening:
1.48 Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.64 Waiawa, Oahu
0.04 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.51 Puu Kukui, Maui
0.54 Kealakekua, Big Island
Sunset Commentary: There will be some fairly minor fluctuations in wind speeds, and continue to blow from the trade wind direction well into the future. High pressure will continue its normal presence to our northeast and north, thus keeping our springtime trade winds blowing. They will be strongest around Maui County and the Big Island, which is often the case. Small craft wind advisory flags continue around parts of those eastern islands Wednesday evening, which will likely last through the day Friday. These trade winds will carry showers into the windward sides at times. The leeward sides in contrast should remain drier, although a few showers will fall in these areas on the smaller islands locally as well.
Here in Kula, Maui at 540pm, skies were partly cloudy (and quite hazy too) with light breezes, and an air temperature of 74.7F degrees. Our trade winds will remain quite blustery, although for the most part blow in the 10-30 mph range…with higher gusts around Maui and the Big Island at times. As for precipitation, there will be some showers along the windward sides in particular. Wednesday saw hardly any clouds along the windward sides, much less showers. However, as this satellite image shows, we have the next batch of showery clouds approaching our windward sides now. These showers will arrive tonight, and continue into the morning on Thursday. ~~~ I just got out of the garden, after having a good time doing some digging and spreading of compost out of our bins too. I'm getting more and more into working in our organic gardens, which is very enjoyable. I'll be heading out on my fast 2.2 mile walk next, then back to watch the sunset from my weather deck, before dinner and reading, and finally bedding down. I'll be back early Thursday morning with your next new weather narrative, I hope you have a great Wednesday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Extra: Tango video…so beautiful!
Interesting: Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and other organizations are targeting thunderstorms in Alabama, Colorado, and Oklahoma this spring to discover what happens when clouds suck air up from Earth’s surface many miles into the atmosphere. Thunderstorms result from the rapid upward movement of warm, moist air. They can occur inside warm, moist air masses and at fronts. As the warm, moist air moves upward, it cools, condenses, and forms cumulonimbus clouds that can reach heights of over 20 kilometers.
The Deep Convective Clouds and Chemistry (DC3) experiment, which begins the middle of this month, will explore the influence of thunderstorms on air just beneath the stratosphere, a little-explored region that influences Earth’s climate and weather patterns. Scientists will use three research aircraft, mobile radars, lightning mapping arrays, and other tools to pull together a comprehensive picture.
"We tend to associate thunderstorms with heavy rain and lightning, but they also shake things up at the top of cloud level," says NCAR scientist Chris Cantrell, a DC3 principal investigator. "Their impacts high in the atmosphere have effects on climate that last long after the storm dissipates."
Past field projects have focused on either the details of thunderstorms but with limited data on the atmospheric chemistry behind them, or on the chemistry but with little detail about the storms themselves. DC3 is the first to take a comprehensive look at the chemistry and thunderstorm details, including air movement, cloud physics, and electrical activity.
One of the key goals of DC3 is exploring the role of thunderstorms in forming upper-atmosphere ozone, a greenhouse gas that has a particularly strong warming effect high in the atmosphere. "When thunderstorms form, air near the ground has nowhere to go but up," says NCAR scientist Mary Barth, a principal investigator on the project.
"Suddenly you have an air mass at high altitude that’s full of chemicals that can produce ozone." Ozone in the upper atmosphere plays an important role in climate change by trapping significant amounts of energy from the Sun. However, ozone is difficult to track. Low level ozone (or tropospheric ozone) is an atmospheric pollutant.
It is not emitted directly by car engines or by industrial operations, but formed by the reaction of sunlight on air containing hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides that react to form ozone directly at the source of the pollution or many kilometers down wind.
Updrafts within thunderstorm clouds range from about 20 to 100 miles (about 30-160 kilometers) per hour, so air arrives at the top of the troposphere, about 6 to 10 miles (10-16 kilometers) up, with its pollutants relatively intact. "In the mid-latitudes, the tropopause is like a wall," says Barth.
"The air bumps into it and spreads out." The DC3 scientists will fly through these plumes to collect data as a storm is under way. Then they’ll fly through the same air mass the next day, using its distinctive chemical signature to see how it’s changed over time.
"We are pretty sure lightning is the largest natural source of nitric oxide," says NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory scientist Don MacGorman. "It is important to know the naturally occurring contribution." Scientists at each of the sites will combine data from radars with Doppler capabilities (for wind information) and polarimetric capabilities (for wind and cloud particle information) with lightning mapping arrays to better understand both how storms produce lightning as well as how to use lightning mapping data to improve storm forecasts and warnings.
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