Hawaiian Islands Weather details & Aloha Paragraphs / August 31 – September 1, 2013

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

86  Lihue, Kauai
88  Honolulu, Oahu
85  Molokai
90  Kahului, Maui
88  Kona, Hawaii
82  Hilo, Hawaii

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops on Maui and the Big Island…as of 843pm Saturday evening:

Kailua Kona – 82
Hana airport, Maui – 72

Haleakala Summit –   48 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea Summit – 41 (13,000+ 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 – if it’s working.

Aloha Paragraphs

Small Craft Wind Advisory…over those windiest coasts and channels
around Maui County and the Big Island

Red Flag Warning…leeward sections – high fire danger

Our local trade winds will pick up today into Sunday and Monday

Just a few windward showers, mostly at night…hardly
any elsewhere through this holiday

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

20  Port Allen, Kauai – SE
31  Kuaokala, Oahu – NE
22  Molokai – ENE
24  Lanai – NE
29  Kahoolawe -ESE
23  Kahului, Maui – NE
24  South Point, Big Island – NE

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

0.55  Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.42  Poamoho RG 1, Oahu
0.25  Molokai
0.00  Kahoolawe
0.04  Lanai
1.31  Puu Kukui, Maui
0.61  Waiakea Uka, 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 image… and finally the latest looping radar image for the Hawaiian Islands.

~~~ Hawaii Weather Narrative ~~~

The trade winds will remain locally gusty into Tuesday…then weaken again by the middle of the new week. Here’s a weather chart showing a near 1025 millibar high pressure system located to the north-northwest, and another weaker high pressure cell to the northeast of the islands. The forecast is for gusty trade winds…last for the next several days. The models then show our winds easing back again around the middle of the new week for a few days.

Windward showers, mostly during the night and early mornings…a few elsewhere at times. Satellite imagery scattered low level clouds out over the ocean, a few of which are covering parts of the islands too…especially the Big Island and Maui County at the time of this writing. There’s also the northern fringe of high cirrus clouds just to our south. Here’s the looping radar image, showing just a few light showers offshore of the islands. As the clouds offshore to our northeast and east-northeast arrive at times, we’ll see some shower activity along our windward coasts and slopes. Looking a bit further ahead, as the trade winds ease up during the second half of the upcoming work week, we may see an increase in afternoon upcountry clouds and showers…above the leeward beaches.

Reflections from Maui: Here on Maui this evening, skies were quite clear to partly cloudy. The air temperature here in Kula at 535pm was 78.3F degrees, while down at the airport in Kahului, at about the same time, it was near 85 degrees.  As expected, the trade winds have increased a little, and will remain somewhat elevated during the remainder of this long Labor Day holiday weekend. The NWS forecast office in Honolulu is continuing the small craft wind advisory, although it’s restricted to those windiest parts of Maui County and the Big Island. Otherwise, our weather should be fairly normal as we move out of these last few hours of August…into the first day of September. I drove down to Pukalani this morning, as I did last Saturday, to attend the farmers market there. I really enjoyed walking around and looking at all the stuff for sale, buying some things, and glancing at all the people walking around too. This evening my neighbors and I are driving down to Paia, to a restaurant on the beach, for a cocktail. If things go the way I hope they do, we might end up going dancing somewhere afterwards. Finally, I appreciated hearing President Obama’s speech today, holding off on bombing Syria. I’m certainly not in support of Syria’s chemical attacks on its own people, if that’s what the UN finds to be true, although I’m not into the United States killing more innocent people in Syria with our bombs either. I’ll be back with your next new weather narrative Sunday morning, I hope you have a great Saturday night wherever you’re spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Friday evening film: There continue to be lots available films to see, many of which look really good. I’m going to see one that I’m afraid will be leaving soon, even though it just got to Maui last weekend. It’s called Blue Jasmine by Woody Allen, starring Cate Blanchett, Sally Hawkins, Alec Baldwin, Bobby Cannavale...among many others. Here’s the synopsis: Woody Allen trades New York City for San Francisco with his comedy-drama Blue Jasmine, starring Cate Blanchett as a troubled former Manhattanite who moves to the City by the Bay to live with her sister after her wealthy husband divorces her. Forced to put her life back together piece by piece while under the effect of powerful anti-depressants, she dates a series of men, attempts to build a career, and slowly learns how to count on herself to survive. This film is getting high grades, and looked good, plus I typically enjoy seeing Woody Allen films. ~~~ As almost always, I enjoyed this film quite a bit, and was happy to have seen it. Cate Blanchett was sooo good in this film, with a riveting lead performance. She was more fiery than I’ve ever seen her before, and is apt to garner a best actress Academy Award. She was in every scene, grand and showy, I couldn’t keep my eyes off her for a second. As for a grade, I’d say somewhere between a B+ and an A-…just really good!  Here’s a trailer in case you’re curious.


World-wide tropical cyclone activity:

Atlantic Ocean: There are no active tropical cyclones

TROPICAL STORM FORMATION IS NOT EXPECTED DURING THE NEXT 48 HOURS.

AN ELONGATED AREA OF LOW PRESSURE...ASSOCIATED WITH A TROPICAL
WAVE...LOCATED ABOUT 150 MILES EAST OF THE LESSER ANTILLES
CONTINUES TO PRODUCE DISORGANIZED SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS. SOME
SLOW DEVELOPMENT OF THIS SYSTEM IS POSSIBLE WHILE IT MOVES WESTWARD
ACROSS THE CARIBBEAN SEA DURING THE NEXT SEVERAL DAYS. THIS SYSTEM
HAS A LOW CHANCE...10 PERCENT...OF BECOMING A TROPICAL CYCLONE
DURING THE NEXT 48 HOURS...AND A LOW CHANCE...20 PERCENT...OF
BECOMING A TROPICAL CYCLONE DURING THE NEXT 5 DAYS. SHOWER ACTIVITY
AND LOCALLY GUSTY WINDS ARE EXPECTED TO SPREAD OVER THE LESSER
ANTILLES LATER TODAY AND ON MONDAY.

A WEAK AREA OF LOW PRESSURE ASSOCIATED WITH A TROPICAL WAVE IS
LOCATED JUST TO THE EAST OF THE CAPE VERDE ISLANDS. THE ASSOCIATED
SHOWER AND THUNDERSTORM ACTIVITY HAS DECREASED...AND ENVIRONMENTAL
CONDITIONS DO NOT APPEAR FAVORABLE FOR DEVELOPMENT. THIS SYSTEM HAS
A LOW CHANCE...10 PERCENT...OF BECOMING A TROPICAL CYCLONE DURING
THE NEXT 48 HOURS...AND A LOW CHANCE...10 PERCENT...OF BECOMING A
TROPICAL CYCLONE DURING THE NEXT 5 DAYS...AS IT MOVES GENERALLY
WEST-NORTHWESTWARD OVER THE EASTERN ATLANTIC.

Caribbean Sea: There are no active tropical cyclones

AN AREA OF DISTURBED WEATHER IS EXPECTED TO FORM A COUPLE OF HUNDRED
MILES SOUTH OF THE SOUTHERN COAST OF MEXICO IN A FEW DAYS.
CONDITIONS COULD BE CONDUCIVE FOR SOME SLOW DEVELOPMENT OF THIS
DISTURBANCE...WHICH IS FORECAST TO MOVE SLOWLY TOWARD THE
WEST-NORTHWEST. THIS SYSTEM HAS A LOW CHANCE...NEAR 0 PERCENT...OF
BECOMING A TROPICAL CYCLONE DURING THE NEXT 48 HOURS...AND A MEDIUM
CHANCE...30 PERCENT...OF BECOMING A TROPICAL CYCLONE DURING THE
NEXT 5 DAYS.

Interesting: New Advancements in Fog-Harvesting – Fog-harvesting, an idea that has been around for several years and already in existence in 17 countries, is a technique that captures potable water from fog. Researchers at MIT, working in collaboration with scientists in Chile, have found a way to improve this technology, making potable water more easily attainable in arid countries.

Just as some plants and insects in the world’s driest regions have evolved ways to obtain water from the air, fog-harvesting collects tiny airborne droplets of fog. Existing systems, despite being inexpensive, have proved to be inefficient. They generally have filaments and holes that are too large, resulting in the extraction of only about two percent of water available in a mild fog condition.

The new, more efficient system consists of vertical mesh, which harvests the droplets according to three parameters: the size of the filaments in the nets, the size of the wholes between those filaments, and the coating applied to the filaments. As opposed to the old system, this new technique shows that finer mesh could extract ten percent more, according to MIT postdoc Kyoo-Chul Park PhD, MIT alumnus Shreerang Chhatre PhD, graduate student Siddarth Srinivasan, chemical engineering professor Robert Cohen, and mechanical engineering professor Gareth McKinley.

According to Park, “While some of the organisms that harvest fog do so using solid surfaces — such as the carapace of the Namib beetle, native to the Namib desert of southern Africa — permeable mesh structures are much more effective because the wind-blown fog droplets tend to be deflected around solid surfaces. Thus, a woven mesh structure resembling a window screen turns out to be most effective. With the right chemical coating, fog droplets that form on the screen then slide down to be collected at the bottom and are funneled into buckets or tanks.”

Chilean investigators have estimated that if just 4 percent of the water contained in the fog could be captured, that would be sufficient to meet all of the water needs of that nation’s four northernmost regions, encompassing the entire Atacama Desert area. And with the MIT-designed system, Park points out, 10 percent of the fog moisture in the air passing through the new fog collector system can potentially be captured.