Hawaiian Islands Weather details & Aloha Paragraphs / August 12-13, 2014

Gradually returning trade winds. Here’s the latest weather map, showing the Hawaiian Islands, and the rest of the North Pacific Ocean, along with a real-time wind profile of the central Pacific…focused on the Hawaiian Islands. We have moderately strong high pressure systems located to the northwest and northeast of the state. There’s also a cold front from extending across the area north of the state as well. Hurricane Julio is located to the north of our islands. Our trade winds will gradually returning, from east to west through mid-week…lasting the rest of the week at least.

Satellite imagery shows a band of clouds over the central islands and the Big Island…moving westward. Looking at this larger looping satellite image, it shows the counterclockwise rotating Hurricane Julie to our north, and former Iselle far to the west. At the same time we see mostly clear to partly cloudy skies over Oahu and Kauai. Meanwhile, we see a more or less north to south band of clouds moving through the state. This band is moving westward, and will bring some showers with it into the night. Here’s the looping radar, showing hardly any showers over Kauai, with this band bringing some shower activity from Oahu down through the rest of the state. The returning trade winds, now filling back in, are helping to bring some of these windward showers.  There’s a small area of heavier showers offshore to the north of Oahu as well.

Julio has recently strengthened back into a hurricane…remaining active to the north of our islands. The trade winds will return through mid-week across the state…bringing back refreshing weather conditions. The cloud band that had been bringing some showers to the Big Island and Maui during the morning hours, is now pushing over parts of Oahu. This area of clouds will gradually move westward…finally reaching Kauai tonight. Otherwise, the islands are moving into a prolonged period of trade wind weather, with strengthening wind speeds expected. I’ll return with more updates on all of the above and below, I hope you have a great Tuesday night wherever you happen to be spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn.

~~~ Hurricane Julio: continues to move slowly away from Hawaii. The latest Central Pacific Hurricane Center (CPHC) forecast estimates the sustained winds are near 75 mph near the center…with stronger gusts.

Central Pacific: Hurricane 10E (Julio) remains active as a category 1 system, here in the central Pacific Ocean, located about 625 miles north of Honolulu, Oahu. Here’s the CPHC graphical track map…along with a satellite image

1.)  Showers and thunderstorms continued around an elongated area of low pressure centered about 1300 miles east-southeast of Hilo, Hawaii. This system may develop slowly as it moves west-northwest at 10 to 15 mph. If it does develop, this system may enter the central Pacific basin as early as tonight.

* Formation chance through 48 hours…medium…30 percent
* Formation chance through 5 days…high…70 percent

2.)  A disorganized area of showers and thunderstorms is located along a trough about 950 miles southeast of Hilo, Hawaii. This system is expected to develop slowly, or not at all, as it moves west-northwest at 10 to 15 mph

* Formation chance through 48 hours, low, 10 percent.

Here’s a link to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center (CPHC)

Northwest Pacific Ocean: There are no active tropical cyclones

South Pacific Ocean: There are no active tropical cyclones

North and South Indian Oceans: There are no active tropical cyclones

Here’s a link to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC)


Interesting: Icequakes triggered by earthquakes – In 2010, a powerful magnitude-8.8 earthquake struck off the coast of central Chile, rocking much of the country and producing tremor as far away as Argentina and Peru. But a new study suggests its effects were felt even farther away – in Antarctica. In the wake of the Maule temblor, the scientists found, several seismic stations on the frozen continent registered “ice quakes,” probably due to fracturing of the ice as the planet’s crust shook.

Earthquakes are already known to affect Antarctica’s ice shelves, thanks to the tsunamis they can spawn. Tsunami waves can propagate for great distances across the ocean; if the waves reach Antarctica’s ice shelves – the floating platforms of ice surrounding the continent – they can push and pull on the ice, promoting fractures and ultimately helping large chunks of ice break off, or calve.

But whether earthquake seismic waves, traveling through the ground, can chip away at Antarctica’s ice sheet – the ice piled on top of the continent – remained an unanswered question. Zhigang Peng, a geophysicist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, found the answer by accident while studying effects of the Chile quake in South America. His team was looking for surface waves – shallow seismic waves that travel along the planet’s crust rather than going deeper into the mantle. Surface waves come in two basic types: Love waves, which shake the ground from side to side; and Rayleigh waves, which move in a rolling motion, compressing and expanding the ground as they travel. Both types of surface waves can in turn trigger numerous micro-earthquakes, called tremor.

Peng didn’t initially intend to look at signals from Antarctic seismic stations, but data from a few somehow sneaked onto their research list. And when his team looked for the surface wave signals at those stations, “we found something very interesting,” Peng says. “We started to find tiny seismic signals that we believe are associated with ice cracking.”