Hawaiian Islands Weather details & Aloha Paragraphs / June 7-8, 2015

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

84 – 71  Lihue, Kauai
87 – 73  Honolulu, Oahu
84 – 67  Molokai AP
86 – 65  Kahului, Maui
85 – 70  Kailua Kona
83 – 65  Hilo, Hawaii

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

0.10  Lihue AP, Kauai
0.22  Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.01  Kamalo, Molokai
0.00  Lanai
0.18  Kahoolawe
0.04  Hana AP, Maui
1.60  Kealakekua, Big Island

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

20  Poipu, Kauai – NE
25  Kuaokala, Oahu – ENE
25  Molokai – NE
25  Lanai – NE
30  Kahoolawe – NE
25  Maalaea Bay, Maui – NNW
20  Upolu AP, Big Island – NE

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

Dissipating cold front to the north of the islands / weakening
Tropical Storm Blanca remains active in the eastern Pacific –
more information below

Clear to partly cloudy…some cloudy areas – looping version 

Showers offshore falling locally over the islands…especially
over the windward sides of the eastern islands

Here’s the looping radar image for the Hawaiian Islands

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

~~~ Hawaii Weather Narrative ~~~

The trade winds have picked up…lasting through the next week. 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 high pressure systems to the north and northeast of the state. At the same time, there’s a dissipating cold front extending southwest from a low pressure system to the north-northeast. The forecast has the trade winds continuing well into the future…perhaps through the remainder of this late spring season.

A trade wind weather pattern is now established…with no end in sight. The windward sides will see a few showers…which will get carried our way on the trade wind flow. The atmosphere will remain quite dry and stable however, limiting the amount of these showers in most areas. There will also be a few afternoon showers over the Kona slopes on the Big Island each afternoon. The models are suggesting that we’ll see a modest increase in windward showers starting Tuesday for a day or two. I’ll be back with more updates on all of the above, I hope you have a great Sunday night wherever you’re spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Here on Maui...early Sunday morning near sunrise, skies are mostly clear, with a few minor clouds around the edges. The air temperature here in upcountry Kula at 545am was 50.2 degrees, 67 down at the Kahului airport, 68 in Hana, and 43 degrees atop the Haleakala Crater.

– We’re into the early afternoon hours now, and the trade winds are definitely back. My wind chimes are sounding off, while there was a 31 mph gust of these refreshing winds down at the Kahului AP.

–  It’s now early Sunday evening, with partly cloudy areas in most locations here on Maui. The trades are back, and we won’t see the end of them for a long while. This could be the beginning of a summer full of trades, interrupted occasionally through September. Satellite imagery shows showery clouds heading towards the windward sides of both Maui and the Big Island.

Friday Evening Film – Several friends and I went down to one of the two theaters in Kahului, to see a film that I must admit…I wasn’t terribly excited about. As a matter of fact, I had planned on giving it a pass. It was called Tomorrowland, starring, George Clooney, Hugh Laurie, Raffey Cassidy, Kathryn Hahn, Thomas Robinson, and Brittany Robertson…among many others. The synopsis: this Disney film finds former boy-genius Frank (Clooney), jaded by disillusionment, and Casey (Britt Robertson), a bright, optimistic teen bursting with scientific curiosity, embark on a danger-filled mission to unearth the secrets of an enigmatic place, somewhere in time and space known only as “Tomorrowland.” What they must do there changes the world-and them-forever. / Well, there were five of us that saw this film, and no one was impressed I’m afraid. It had a pro-science message of optimism, and the special effects were great in many cases, I’ll give it that politely. However, the story just wasn’t all that interesting, and the grades coming out of my group of friends…were all in the C category. I was the one outlier, stretching it to a B- rating. Here’s a trailer, which gives a good idea what to expect from this film.

>>> Atlantic Ocean: There are no active tropical cyclones

Here’s a satellite image of the Atlantic Ocean

>>> Caribbean Sea: There are no active tropical cyclones

>>> Gulf of Mexico: There are no active tropical cyclones

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

>>> Eastern Pacific:

Tropical Storm 02E (Blanca) is located about 30 miles northeast of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Here’s the NHC graphical track map

Maximum sustained winds are near 40 mph with higher gusts…weakening through the remainder of Blanca’s life cycle

Here’s a looping satellite image of this system – and what the hurricane models are showing for Tropical Storm Blanca

 

1.)  Shower activity is showing some signs of organization in association with a broad area of low pressure centered several hundred miles south of the Gulf of Tehuantepec. Upper-level winds are expected to be conducive, and a tropical depression is likely to form in a few days while this system moves slowly northwestward or northward.

* Formation chance through 48 hours…low…30 percent

* Formation chance through 5 days…high…80 percent

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: There are no active tropical cyclones

No tropical cyclones are expected through the next two days

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:

Tropical Cyclone 01A (Ashobaa) remains active in the Arabian Sea, here’s the JTWC graphical track map, along with a satellite image – and what the hurricane models are showing

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

Interesting: El Niños and Bunny Booms – At times during the past 10,000 years, cottontails and hares reproduced like rabbits and their numbers surged when the El Niño weather pattern drenched the Pacific Coast with rain, according to a University of Utah analysis of 3,463 bunny bones.

The study of ancient rabbit populations at a Baja California site may help scientists better understand how mammals that range from the coast to the interior will respond to climate change, says anthropology doctoral student Isaac Hart. He is first author of the study to be published in the July issue of the journal Quaternary Research.

During the past 10,000 years, the number of El Niños per century “correlates very strongly with the total rabbit population in Baja California, as well as relative abundance of the moisture-loving species of rabbits,” Hart says.

“There weren’t many El Niños from 10,000 to 5,000 years ago,” perhaps zero to two per century, says the study’s senior author, anthropology professor Jack Broughton. “After 5,000 years ago, there was a relatively dramatic increase in frequency of El Niños in Baja, and the rabbits go through the roof.”

Broughton says the new study “is the first long-term – in thousands of years – record of vertebrates responding to El Niño or any other climate system” and the resulting rainfall-caused increase in plants the rabbits ate. “Our study contributes to the growing understanding of variables that enable threatened species to persist despite the myriad threats they face in an uncertain climatic future. The longer record we’ve provided here should ultimately allow us to better predict how El Niño will vary in the future, and how animal populations will vary as a result.”

Compared with earlier studies of lagomorphs – rabbits, hares and pikas – in Utah and elsewhere in the Great Basin during the last 10,000 years, the new study shows lagomorphs “are harmed less by temperature changes on the coast than in the interior,” Broughton says. “Threatened species will be more vulnerable as distance increases from both the temperature-ameliorating effect of the Pacific Ocean and the reach of El Niño-based precipitation.”

The study involved analysis of 3,463 cottontail rabbit and hare bones separated from more than 1 million small bird and animal bones deposited over the past 10,000 years at Abrigo de los Escorpiones – Shelter of the Scorpions – a rock cliff shelter near the ocean 95 miles south of Tijuana, Mexico.

Hart and Broughton conducted the study with University of Alberta archaeologist Ruth Gruhn. She excavated the site a decade ago with Alan Bryan, her late husband. Funding was from the Ruth Eleanor Bamberger and John Ernest Bamberger Memorial Foundation via the University of Utah Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (Hart began the study as an undergraduate) and the Natural History Museum of Utah.

Bankers boxes of bones

Fifteen bankers boxes containing 1 million bones of various animals from Shelter of the Scorpions were shipped to Utah in 2008. The rabbit study is the first published on any of the bones. All the bones ultimately will be sent to a Baja museum.

The 3,463 rabbit and hare bones averaged about 2 inches in size, and ranged from one-thirteenth of an inch up to jackrabbit leg bones 4 or 5 inches long.

Hart spent 2010-2014 identifying each bunny bone as one of three Baja species, using 13 skull and jaw measurements, then comparing their proportions to 80 museum specimens of the same species.

“This study shows you can ask really detailed questions about prehistory given the right set of bones,” Hart says.

The study involved bones from two species of cottontail rabbits – Sylvilagus bachmani, the brush rabbit, and Sylvilagus audubonii, the desert cottontail – and one species of hare, Lepus californicus, the black-tailed jackrabbit.

The brush rabbit eats grasses and forbs in or near dense brush, and thrives when there is more moisture. The desert cottontail has a similar diet but can tolerate drier, more open conditions. The jackrabbit thrives in sparse vegetation.

Those three species accounted for all the bunny bones found at the Shelter of the Scorpions, which is not a cave, but a volcanic rock outcrop that forms a cliff on which eagles, hawks, falcons, owls, other raptors and ravens sat and ate their prey. For millennia, the bones fell to the bottom of the cliff and accumulated in deposits called middens. (Gruhn named the shelter for scorpions there when excavation began.)

Ancient humans also used the shelter and left stone tools and ash from fires. The rabbit and hare bones lack burns or cut marks, so they were dumped by birds, not people.

There is no direct record of ancient El Niños at the Baja site. So Hart and Broughton used a detailed, 10,000-year history of the climate phenomenon recorded in lake deposits in Ecuador as a proxy for the Baja site. Hart says El Niño is a global phenomenon, and its characteristic warming of the eastern Pacific results in heavier rains along the Pacific coast of North, Central and South America.

The findings: El Niños controlled Baja bunny populations

The study used four indices of bunny abundance to analyze how the animals responded to El Niños. All four had statistically significant correlations with the number of El Niños per century and higher eastern Pacific sea-surface temperatures.

During centuries with warmer seas and more El Niños, there were (1) more total rabbit and hare bones, meaning higher populations, (2) more abundant moisture-loving brush rabbits relative to the cottontails and jackrabbits, (3) more abundant brush rabbits and desert cottontails together relative to dry-loving jackrabbits, and (4) more unfused, juvenile bunny bones relative to fused, adult bones. That reflects soaring rabbit and hare populations – and a resulting high proportion of juveniles – when El Niños were frequent.

“There’s been much work on the long-term trends in small mammals in western North America,” Broughton says. “Almost all that work has been within interior sites, not the coast. For those interior sites – many are in Utah – temperature change was documented as the most critical factor in influencing small mammal populations over the last 10,000 years. This study is the most detailed of a coastal site over such a long period of time, and it shows precipitation is the dominant factor.”