Air Temperatures The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Friday afternoon:

Lihue, Kauai –                        76  
Honolulu airport, Oahu –         80
 
Molokai airport –                    76

Kahului airport, Maui –           80 

Kona airport     –                 82   

Hilo airport, Hawaii –              79

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops around the state…as of 630pm Saturday morning:

Kailua Kona – 72
Kahului, Maui – 64

Haleakala Summit    37     (near 10,000 feet on Maui)

Mauna Kea Summit – 37      (13,000+ feet on the Big Island)
 

Hawaii’s MountainsHere’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…if it's available.

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.  The 2012 hurricane season is over in the eastern and central Pacific…resuming on May 15th and June 1st 2013.

 

Aloha Paragraphs

http://www.hcr.com/images/sized/images/topphotos/aerial-view-952x342.jpg

Small Craft Advisory for locally strong trade winds…
and a large, though declining northwest swell

Great weekend…with lots of sunshine
during the days…and hardly a drop of rain!

~~~645am HST Saturday morning: clear and near calm…at my
upcountry Kula, Maui  weather tower: 47.8F
degrees~~~


The following numbers represent the most recent top wind gusts (mph), along with directions as of Friday evening:

31       Port Allen, Kauai – NE 
40       Kahuku Trng, Oahu – ESE    

27 
      Molokai – NE
32       Kahoolawe – NE
33       Kaupo Gap, Maui – NNW  
39       Waikoloa, Big Island – NE


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

 

0.01          Kilohana, Kauai
0.06          Pupukea Road, Oahu

0.35          Molokai

0.00          Lanai
0.00          Kahoolawe

0.68          Puu Kukui, Maui
1.69          Kawainui Stream, Big Island  


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 imageand finally the latest looping radar image for the Hawaiian Islands.


                   ~~~ Hawaii Weather Commentary ~~~
 


Our winds are blowing from the trade wind direction, which will remain moderately strong today, with some stronger gusts, then becoming slightly lighter this weekend…before accelerating again early in the new week ahead. Here's a weather chart showing several high pressure systems, located far to the northeast of Hawaii. Our primary trade wind producing high pressure system is now to our north, and moving slowly northeast. At the same time, we see a developing storm low pressure system far to our northwest…with its associated cold front far to the northwest, hear the International Dateline at the time of this writing.

Satellite imagery shows what's left of the old cold front…now to the east of the Big Island. It should be pointed out that we had pretty much wall-to-wall sunshine today here on our first day of February! We can also see the next cold front to our northwest, as it slowly approaches the state. Here's the satellite image, that shows a closer view of the islands, with just a few patchy clouds in some directions. As the trade wind are back online now, a few showers will arrive tonight will arrive along our north and east facing windward coasts and slopes…continuing on into Saturday morning. The south and west leeward sides should be in good shape, with more during the days both Saturday and Sunday. As a matter of fact, skies should remain quite clear and sunny everywhere this weekend!

The weather models continue showing the next cold front approaching the state this weekend, although it's expected stall before arriving. As this front gets closer however, it will cause our trade winds to falter a little late Sunday into Monday morning. As we get into later Monday, the cold front mentioned above, will have lost its influence…making way for strengthening trade winds. These trades will be able to carry windward biased clouds and showers our way, with a few sneaking over into the leeward sides at times too. This fairly normal trade wind weather pattern will prevail through Tuesday. Then, by mid-week or so, we'll find a trough of low pressure edging over the state, or close to it at least. This trough will bring colder than normal air overhead, in the middle layers of the atmosphere. This cold air aloft will help to destabilize the air mass below it. This in turn could bring snow to our higher summits, and increase showers locally…some of which may be locally heavy. There's a chance that we could see a thunderstorm or two here and there then too. I'll have more information on this extended forecast period, stay tuned.  ~~~ I'll be back Saturday morning with your next new weather narrative, I hope you have a great Friday night wherever you're reading from! Aloha for now, Glenn.

Friday evening film: My neighbors and I will be driving down to Kahului again, for a quick dinner, and to take in a new film. This one is called Parker, starring Jason Statham, Jennifer Lopez, Michael Chiklis, Patti LuPone, Sharon Landry, Charleigh Harmon, Rebecca Marks, Nick Nolte…among many others. The synopsis: Parker is a professional thief who lives by a personal code of ethics: Don't steal from people who can't afford it and don't hurt people who don't deserve it. But on his latest heist, his crew double crosses him, steals his stash, and leaves him for dead. Determined to make sure they regret it, Parker tracks them to Palm Beach, playground of the rich and famous, where the crew is planning their biggest heist ever. Donning the disguise of a rich Texan, Parker takes on an unlikely partner, Leslie, a savvy insider who's short on cash but big on looks, smarts and ambition. Together, they devise a plan to hijack the score, take everyone down and get away clean. ~~~ This film isn't garnering the highest ratings from critics, although I think it will be fun to watch all the action, and the top actors, Jason and Jennifer…do their things. It's definitely a hot blooded action flick, and I must admit, as many of you already know, I'm a sucker for them. I'll let you know what we thought Saturday morning, and until then, here's the trailer.


World-wide tropical cyclone activity:

Atlantic Ocean/Caribbean Sea:
  There are no active tropical cyclones

Gulf of Mexico: There are no active tropical cyclones

Eastern Pacific Ocean: There are no active tropical cyclones

Central Pacific Ocean:  There are no active tropical cyclones

Western Pacific Ocean:  There are no active tropical cyclones

South Pacific Ocean:  There are no active tropical cyclones

North and South Indian Oceans:  Tropical cyclone 13S (Felleng) remains active in the South Indian Ocean, located approximately 275 NM west-southwest of La Reunion Island. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) shows this cyclone with 70 knot sustained winds, with gusts to 85 knots. 13S will remain active over the next 72 hours, moving by offshore to the east and southeast of Madagascar, and southwest and south of La Reunion Island…gradually weakening. Here's the graphical track map, along with a satellite image.

Interesting:
 
In an amazing feat of science and engineering, a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded research team has successfully drilled through 2,600 feet of Antarctic ice to reach a subglacial lake and retrieve water and sediment samples that have been isolated from direct contact with the outside world for many thousands of years. Scientists and drillers with the interdisciplinary Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling project (WISSARD) announced January 28th that they had used a customized clean hot-water drill to directly obtain samples from the waters and sediments of subglacial Lake Whillans.

Upon study this may reveal an unique perspective on life and how it evolves. Whillans Ice Stream is one of about a half-dozen large, fast-moving rivers of ice pouring from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet into the Ross Ice Shelf.

The ice stream is the subject of different glaciological studies, one of which is looking at subglacial lakes that researchers believe may be speeding the movement of the ice as they periodically fill and drain. In total around 250-300 subglacial lakes are currently known in Antarctica. There are currently three projects to directly sample subglacial lakes in Antarctica.

These are the British led Subglacial Lake Ellsworth project, the U.S. led Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access (WISSARD) and the Russian led Lake Vostok program. This water exists because geothermal heat flow from below, coupled with pressure, movement, and the insulating nature of the ice sheet above, is great enough to maintain some areas at the base of the ice sheet above the freezing point, even in the extreme cold of Antarctica.

In topographic depressions there are hundreds of lakes, both large and small; some are isolated, but many are interconnected by water channels and large areas of saturated sediments, the water eventually running out into the Southern Ocean as the ice sheet becomes a floating ice shelf.

The samples may contain microscopic life that has evolved uniquely to survive in conditions of extreme cold and lack of light and nutrients. Studying the samples may help scientists understand not only how life can survive in other extreme ecosystems on Earth, but also on other icy worlds in our solar system.

The WISSARD teams' accomplishment, the researchers said, "hails a new era in polar science, opening a window for future interdisciplinary science in one of Earth's last unexplored frontiers." WISSARD targeted a smaller lake (1.2 square miles in area), where several lakes appear linked to each other and may drain to the ocean, as the first project to obtain clean, intact samples of water and sediments from a subglacial lake.

The achievement is the culmination of more than a decade of international and national planning and 3 1/2 years of project preparation by the WISSARD consortium of U.S. universities and two international contributors. The WISSARD team will now process the water and sediment samples they have collected in hopes of answering seminal questions related to the structure and function of subglacial microbial life, climate history and contemporary ice-sheet dynamics.

This information may also foretell how life may exist on other worlds where similar under ice water bodies may exist. Video surveys of the lake floor and measurements of selected physical and chemical properties of the waters and sediments will allow the team to further characterize the lake and its environs.

A team of engineers and technicians directed by Frank Rack, of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, designed, developed and fabricated the specialized hot-water drill that was fitted with a filtration and germicidal UV system to prevent contamination of the subglacial environment and to recover clean samples for microbial analyses.

In addition, the numerous customized scientific samplers and instruments used for this project were also carefully cleaned before being lowered into the borehole through the ice and into the lake. The key is to collect a good sample without contamination and without contaminating the sub glacial lake.

Following their successful retrieval, the samples are now being carefully prepared for their shipment off the ice and back to laboratories for numerous chemical and biological analyses over the coming weeks and months.