Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures (F) were recorded across the state of Hawaii Wednesday…along with the minimum temperatures Wednesday:

84 – 71  Lihue, Kauai
83 – 71  Honolulu, Oahu
81 – 70  Molokai AP
82 – 74  Kahului, Maui
84 – 74  Kailua Kona
86 – 68  Hilo, Hawaii

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

0.26  Puu Opae, Kauai
0.02  Kamehame, Oahu
0.54  Molokai
0.29  Lanai
0.13  Kahoolawe
0.94  Puu Kukui, Maui
0.84  Kawainui Stream, Big Island


The following numbers represent the strongest wind gusts (mph)…as of Wednesday evening:


35  Lihue, Kauai – SW
28  Kii, Oahu – SW
29  Molokai – SW
27  Lanai – SW
22  Kahoolawe – SW
35  Kahului AP, Maui – SW
39  Nene Cabin, Big Island – WSW


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.



Aloha Paragraphs

http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/west/cpac/ir4.jpg
A dissipating frontal cloud band continues to effect parts of the
Big Island…with another weak cold front arriving
into Thursday – first on Kauai and Oahu


http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/west/hi/ir4.jpg
Partly cloudy skies over parts of Kauai, Maui County and the
Big Island…with clearer skies over  Oahu


http://radar.weather.gov/Conus/RadarImg/hawaii.gif
Light to moderate showers, mostly over the nearby ocean…
and moving towards Kauai and Oahu



~~~ Hawaii Weather Narrative ~~~



Small Craft Advisory…for strong winds and rough seas across most
coastal and channel waters statewide

High Wind Warning…Big Island Summits – west winds 55-80 mph
with gusts over 95 mph

High Surf Advisory…north and west shores of Kauai, Oahu, Molokai,
and for north shores of Maui


Winds from the southwest and west…will continue through Friday. Here’s the latest weather map, showing the Hawaiian Islands, and the rest of the North Pacific Ocean, along with a real-time wind profiler of the central Pacific. We find a high pressure system far to the east-northeast of the state, with an associated ridge of high pressure extending west-southwest…well to the south of the Big Island. At the same time, we have lots of low pressure systems to the northeast through northwest. Winds will be locally gusty at times from southwest and west. Unusual northwest through southwesterly winds will prevail through the next couple of days…carrying a weak cold front or two our way through Friday. The latest model runs show drier weather arriving by the weekend, although then yet another cold front is expected early next week…followed by more southwest to westerly kona winds.

Clouds and some showers will be brought into the state on a weak and ragged frontal boundary. Here’s the looping radar image showing showers falling mostly over the nearby ocean, although headed for the islands in places…being carried in on the southwest to westerly wind flow. The prevailing westerly winds, which are typically located well north of the Hawaiian Islands, will remain over our tropical latitudes for awhile longer. This will keep the mid-latitude storm track over our island chain. Therefore, we’ll find off and on unsettled weather remaining in place through Friday, with showers passing through at times. Showers will back off temporarily during the weekend, before another cold front arrives early next week. I’ll be back with more information on all of the above, I hope you have a great Wednesday night wherever you’re spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Here in Kula, Maui: It’s mostly cloudy and foggy early this Wednesday morning. The air temperature near its minimal reading was a relatively warm 61.3 degrees…as the winds continue to come up out of the deeper tropics, It was off and on wet most of the night, with gusty winds blowing, although at the moment, at 550am, the rain and wind activity has slowed down some…although was still happening in an off and on manner. We’re not out of the woods yet, as we have another 2-3 weak cold fronts still destined to pass down through the state between now and Saturday morning!

~~~ It’s 740am, and its still cloudy, with intermittent passing showers, some of which are moderately heavy. At the same time, the sun is trying to peek out of the overcast…although without much success at the time of this writing. However, just a few minutes later, skies have finally begun to clear, with big patches of blue now visible.

~~~ We’ve moved into the early afternoon hours now, with mostly clear skies, although with clouds around the edges. These cloud occasionally move through, bringing a few showers…which has happened 3-4 times during the recent morning hours. The winds have turned gusty again, although with an air temperature of 67.5 degrees at 1230pm..they feel pleasant.

~~~ We’ve pushed into the early evening hours now at 545pm, with breezy conditions, and clouds coming up from the southwest and west. The clouds aren’t bringing any showers into Kula just yet, although I can see a few showers now trying to fall down in the central valley.


World-wide tropical cyclone activity:


>>> Atlantic Ocean: The last regularly scheduled Tropical Weather Outlook of the 2014 Atlantic hurricane season…has occurred. Routine issuance of the Tropical Weather Outlook will resume on June 1, 2015. During the off-season, Special Tropical Weather Outlooks will be issued as conditions warrant.


Here’s a satellite image of the Atlantic Ocean

>>> Caribbean Sea: The last regularly scheduled Tropical Weather Outlook of the 2014 Atlantic hurricane season…has occurred. Routine issuance of the Tropical Weather Outlook will resume on June 1, 2015. During the off-season, Special Tropical Weather Outlooks will be issued as conditions warrant.


>>> Gulf of Mexico: The last regularly scheduled Tropical Weather Outlook of the 2014 Atlantic hurricane season…has occurred. Routine issuance of the Tropical Weather Outlook will resume on June 1, 2015. During the off-season, Special Tropical Weather Outlooks will be issued as conditions warrant.


Here’s a satellite image of the Caribbean Sea…and the Gulf of Mexico.

>>> Eastern Pacific: The last regularly scheduled Tropical Weather Outlook of the 2014 North Pacific hurricane season…has occurred. Routine issuance of the Tropical Weather Outlook will resume on May 15, 2015. During the off-season, Special Tropical Weather Outlooks will be issued as conditions warrant.


Here’s a wide satellite image that covers the entire area between Mexico, out through the central Pacific…to the International Dateline.


Here’s the link to the National Hurricane Center (NHC)


>>> Central Pacific: The central north Pacific hurricane season has officially ended. Routine issuance of the tropical weather outlook will resume on June 1, 2015. During the off-season, special tropical weather outlooks will be issued as conditions warrant.


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:  Pigeons are smarter than you think! – The more scientists study pigeons, the more they learn how their brains–no bigger than the tip of an index finger–operate in ways not so different from our own.


In a new study from the University of Iowa, researchers found that pigeons can categorize and name both natural and manmade objects–and not just a few objects. These birds categorized 128 photographs into 16 categories, and they did so simultaneously.


Ed Wasserman, UI professor of psychology and corresponding author of the study, says the finding suggests a similarity between how pigeons learn the equivalent of words and the way children do.


“Unlike prior attempts to teach words to primates, dogs, and parrots, we used neither elaborate shaping methods nor social cues,” Wasserman says of the study, published online in the journal Cognition. “And our pigeons were trained on all 16 categories simultaneously, a much closer analog of how children learn words and categories.”


For researchers like Wasserman, who has been studying animal intelligence for decades, this latest experiment is further proof that animals–whether primates, birds, or dogs–are smarter than once presumed and have more to teach scientists.


“It is certainly no simple task to investigate animal cognition; But, as our methods have improved, so too have our understanding and appreciation of animal intelligence,” he says. “Differences between humans and animals must indeed exist: many are already known. But, they may be outnumbered by similarities. Our research on categorization in pigeons suggests that those similarities may even extend to how children learn words.”


Wasserman says the pigeon experiment comes from a project published in 1988 and featured in The New York Times in which UI researchers discovered pigeons could distinguish among four categories of objects.


This time, the UI researchers used a computerized version of the “name game” in which three pigeons were shown 128 black-and-white photos of objects from 16 basic categories: baby, bottle, cake, car, cracker, dog, duck, fish, flower, hat, key, pen, phone, plan, shoe, tree. They then had to peck on one of two different symbols: the correct one for that photo and an incorrect one that was randomly chosen from one of the remaining 15 categories. The pigeons not only succeeded in learning the task, but they reliably transferred the learning to four new photos from each of the 16 categories.


Pigeons have long been known to be smarter than your average bird–or many other animals, for that matter. Among their many talents, pigeons have a “homing instinct” that helps them find their way home from hundreds of miles away, even when blindfolded. They have better eyesight than humans and have been trained by the U. S. Coast Guard to spot orange life jackets of people lost at sea. They carried messages for the U.S. Army during World Wars I and II, saving lives and providing vital strategic information.


UI researchers say their expanded experiment represents the first purely associative animal model that captures an essential ingredient of word learning–the many-to-many mapping between stimuli and responses.


“Ours is a computerized task that can be provided to any animal, it doesn’t have to be pigeons,” says UI psychologist Bob McMurray, another author of the study. “These methods can be used with any type of animal that can interact with a computer screen.”


McMurray says the research shows the mechanisms by which children learn words might not be unique to humans.


“Children are confronted with an immense task of learning thousands of words without a lot of background knowledge to go on,” he says. “For a long time, people thought that such learning is special to humans. What this research shows is that the mechanisms by which children solve this huge problem may be mechanisms that are shared with many species.”


Wasserman acknowledges the recent pigeon study is not a direct analogue of word learning in children and more work needs to be done. Nonetheless, the model used in the study could lead to a better understanding of the associative principles involved in children’s word learning.


“That’s the parallel that we’re pursuing,” he says, “but a single project–however innovative it may be–will not suffice to answer such a provocative question.”