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

85 – 77  Lihue, Kauai
90 – 76  Honolulu, Oahu – the record for Saturday was 94…set back in 1987
86 – 69  Molokai
89 – 70  Kahului AP, Maui
88 – 78  Kailua Kona
89 – 72  Hilo, Hawaii

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

6.99  Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.39  Poamoho, Oahu
0.01  Kamalo, Molokai
0.00  Lanai
0.00  Kahoolawe
0.24  Kula 1, Maui
1.70  Honaunau, Big Island

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

13  Poipu, Kauai – NE
16  Kii, Oahu – E
12  Molokai – ENE
09  Lanai – ENE
20  Kahoolawe – E
16  Maalaea Bay, Maui – NNE
27  Kealakomo, Big Island – ESE

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://weather.unisys.com/satellite/sat_ir_enh_west_loop-12.gif
 Tropical Storm Jimena to the east-northeast of the islands

http://www.prh.noaa.gov/cphc/tc_graphics/2015/graphics/EP132015W.gif

Here’s a wind profile…so we can keep an eye on Jemina

http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/TROP/floaters/13E/imagery/vis0-lalo.gif
Tropical Storm Jimena is getting sheared by upper level winds

http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/west/cpac/vis.jpg
Still quite a few thunderstorms in our area…
mostly offshore from Kauai 


http://radar.weather.gov/Conus/RadarImg/hawaii.gif
There are showers around…heavy over the ocean…
southwest of the islands – looping radar image

 

High Surf Warning…east shores of all the islands – until
6pm Monday / High Surf Advisory all south shores
through Monday evening

Small Craft Advisory…all Hawaiian Islands except
Maalaea Bay, Maui

Flash Flood Watch…for Kauai and Oahu –
through 6pm this evening

 

~~~ Hawaii Weather Narrative ~~~



Light easterly breezes through Sunday…into the first part of the new week. Here’s the latest weather map, showing the Hawaiian Islands, and the rest of the North Pacific Ocean, along with a wind profiler of the central Pacific. We find a large, moderately strong high pressure system far to the northeast of the state. At the same time we see tropical storm Jimena offshore to the east-northeast of the state. Our winds have now gone back to a light easterly flow…perhaps even giving us a little relief from the hot and humid conditions. As we move into the new week however, we’ll see the trade winds faltering again, as Jimena’s presence over the ocean to the northeast interrupts this brief trade wind episode. This in turn will bring back very muggy conditions for several days.

The atmosphere is stabilizing…with fewer and more far between downpours. Tropical moisture and As the winds remain quite light, there will continue to be heavy downpours over the interior sections of the western islands…triggered by daytime heating of the islands. This long lasting unsettled weather pattern, will finally lose its grip on us, as we move through Sunday into the Labor Day holiday Monday. As the trade winds resume, we may see the return of a few windward showers…and some signs of a more normal late summer weather pattern, at least over the eastern islands. As the trades falter again early in the new week ahead, thanks to tropical storm Jimena moving by to our northeast and then north, we’ll get right back into a convective weather pattern…with locally heavy afternoon showers in the upcountry areas.

Tropical Storm 13E (Jimena) remains active well to our east-northeast…although poses no threat to our islands at this time. This tropical storm is maintaining sustained winds of near 65 mph as of the latest advisory. Here’s a satellite image, and the CPHC graphical track map, and what the computer models are showing. There continues to be a good chance that Jemina will stay away from our area, well to the east-northeast and then northeast and north of the state. Looking at the latest track map, it looks like this system will take a turn west-southwestward, and track by offshore to the north and northwest of Kauai as a much weaker tropical depression later in the new week. It would be wise however, to keep an eye on this system…just in case it decides to drop down closer to the state.

A large east swell from Jimena will keep surf at warning levels for the next several days along east facing shores. The current advisory level south swell will linger through Monday before diminishing Tuesday and Wednesday.

Here on Maui…It’s 615am Saturday morning, and it’s mostly clear, a totally beautiful start to our long holiday weekend!

– We’re into the early afternoon now, about 2pm, and I’ve been on the telephone for the better part of the last hour. Before that my computer was giving me trouble for some reason, I had to reboot it, and it seems to be acting normally now. Glancing outside, I see partly cloudy skies, although its cloudy up here on the mountain. The beaches look like they are in good shape, and overall, it’s finally more like a normal summer day! It looks like there may still be a little vog in the air, although not too bad at the time of this writing.

I’ll be back with many more updates on all of the above and below, I hope you have a great Saturday night wherever you’re spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Friday Evening Film: There are lots of films, although few that really were pulling me. My friend Jeff and I couldn’t decide on which to see, so we just took a flying leap into one called American Ultra, starring Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Topher Grace, Connie Britton, and Monique Ganderton…among many others. The synopsis, American Ultra is a fast-paced action comedy about Mike (Eisenberg), a seemingly hapless and unmotivated stoner whose small-town life with his live-in girlfriend, Phoebe (Stewart), is suddenly turned upside down. Unbeknownst to him, Mike is actually a highly trained, lethal sleeper agent. In the blink of an eye, as his secret past comes back to haunt him, Mike is thrust into the middle of a deadly government operation and is forced to summon his inner action-hero in order to survive.

Hmmm, is what both Jeff and I were saying, although we were willing to give it a shot. Well once again, we were surprised, and more than that delighted. One of the things that Jeff said was “This was a film that took after the old Pulp Fiction film.” American Ultra was another of those bloody works, although with enough of a comic slant…that it took the edge off all the violence. It was a fast paced, action comedy…and the word bizarre seems to be fitting descriptor throughout. In the end, I’m very happy to have taken a chance on this one, although I was nervous that Jeff wasn’t going to like it, as it was on my recommendation that we saw it. One of the first things he said after leaving the theater, was A-. That was encouraging, as that was just the grade that I was thinking of giving it too. Fortunately the trailer isn’t too much like the film itself…at least in the gritty level of violence.

Saturday Evening Film: Jeff has invited me and couple of other folks over to his place to see a film. This one stars the same actor as last night, and is called The Double, starring Jesse Eisenberg, Mia Wasikowska, Noah Taylor, Wallace Shawn, James Fox, and Yasmin Paige…among many others. The synopsis: Eisenberg plays Simon, a timid, isolated man who’s overlooked at work, scorned by his mother, and ignored by the woman of his dreams (Wasikowska). The arrival of a new co-worker, James (also played by Eisenberg), serves to upset the balance. James is both Simon’s exact physical double and his opposite – confident, charismatic and good with women. To Simon’s horror, James slowly starts taking over his life. / I’ll let you know what we all thought later this evening, or Sunday morning, until then…here’s the trailer.


World-wide tropical cyclone activity:

>>> Atlantic Ocean:

Tropical Depression 06L (Fred) remains active over the Atlantic Ocean, with sustained winds of 35 mph…and is located about 1270 miles southwest of the Azores. Here’s the NHC graphical track map, and a satellite image…and what the computer models are showing

Tropical Storm 07L (Grace) remains now active over the Atlantic Ocean, with sustained winds of 45 mph…and is located about 450 miles west-southwest of the Cape Verde Islands. Here’s the NHC graphical track map, and a satellite image…and what the computer models are showing

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

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

>>> Eastern Pacific:

Tropical Storm 15E (Linda) remains active in the northeast Pacific, with sustained winds of 45 mph…and is located about 610 miles south of the southern tip of Baja California. Here’s the NHC graphical track map, and a satellite image…along with what the computer models are showing.

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:

Tropical Storm 13E (Jimena) remains active now in the central Pacific, with sustained winds of 60 mph…and is located about 650 miles east-northeast of Honolulu, Hawaii. Here’s the NHC graphical track map, and a satellite image. Here’s what the computer models are showing.

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

>>> Northwest Pacific Ocean:

Typhoon 03C (Kilo) remains active now in the western Pacific, with sustained winds of 92 mph, and is located about 305 miles north-northeast of Wake Island. Here’s the JTWC graphical track map, and a satellite image. Here’s what the computer models are showing.

>>> 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:  The Fingerprints of Sea Level Rise – When you fill a sink, the water rises at the same rate to the same height in every corner. That’s not the way it works with our rising seas.

According to the 23-year record of satellite data from NASA and its partners, the sea level is rising a few millimeters a year — a fraction of an inch. If you live on the U.S. East Coast, though, your sea level is rising two or three times faster than average. If you live in Scandinavia, it’s falling. Residents of China’s Yellow River delta are swamped by sea level rise of more than nine inches a year.

These regional differences in sea level change will become even more apparent in the future, as ice sheets melt. For instance, when the Amundsen Sea sector of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is totally gone, the average global sea level will rise four feet. But the East Coast of the United States will see an additional 14 to 15 inches above that average.

Tides, winds and ocean currents play a role in these regional differences, but an increasingly important mover and shaker is the solid Earth itself. Global warming is not just affecting the surface of our world; it’s making the Earth move under our feet.

Unless a volcano or earthquake is in the news, we tend to think of our home planet as solid rock. But 50 miles below our feet, there’s a layer thousands of miles thick that can flow like a liquid over thousands of years. The tectonic plates of Earth’s crust float on this viscous layer, called the mantle, like a vanilla wafer on a very thick pudding.

If you were to put a strawberry on top of that vanilla wafer, the added weight would make the cookie sink into the pudding. In the same way, heavy weights on Earth’s crust push it down into the mantle, which flows away and bulges out elsewhere. The miles-thick ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica have been depressing the crust beneath them for millennia. That weight has a second effect that you won’t see in your dessert: its gravitational pull on the surrounding ocean makes seawater pile up around the coastlines.

These weight-filled dents in the mantle don’t make a permanent scar. When the extra weight lifts, the mantle rebounds. This doesn’t just happen at the majestic pace of mountain ranges crumbling. It happens every day.

“The solid earth can respond very quickly — nearly instantaneously,” said Mark Tamisiea, a scientist at the National Oceanography Center, Liverpool, England, who studies the connection between sea levels and Earth processes. Tamisiea cited the example of solid-Earth tides, which pull the crust outward as much as a foot (30 centimeters) toward the moon as it passes overhead. Similarly, Earth has an instant initial response to glaciers and ice sheets melting, called the elastic response.

Since NASA launched the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) twin satellites in 2002, scientists have had an extremely precise measurement of the contribution that ice sheets’ loss of mass contributes to changes in gravity and what it is adding to sea level rise. “Because of GRACE, we’ve had a pretty good idea of what’s happening since 2002,” said Steve Nerem of the University of Colorado, head of NASA’s Sea Level Change Team. “We know how much [of sea level rise] is from Greenland, how much is from Antarctica, how much is from glaciers.”

Because every ice sheet and glacier has a unique location and size, each one creates a pattern of response in the ocean as individual as a fingerprint. “The physics behind understanding these fingerprints is very well understood,” Tamisiea said. “It’s like the tides.” He and Jerry Mitrovica of Harvard University have calculated the fingerprints of East and West Antarctica and Greenland around the globe. “We do each ice sheet individually so we can use the latest GRACE analysis,” Tamisiea explained. “You can sort of add the effects up and see what the result is for any given location.”

As any ice sheet melts, sea levels along coastlines as much as 1,500 miles away will fall as seawater escapes from the reduced gravitational pull and the crust lifts. The escaping seawater flows clear across the equator: the melting of Antarctica affects the U.S. East and West coasts, and Greenland’s disappearance impacts the coastline of Brazil. These regional differences are significant — such as in the case of the East Coast of the United States.

The East Coast is also on the losing end of another important solid-Earth process that affects regional sea levels: post-glacial rebound. After the elastic response to a crustal weight loss, uplift continues more slowly for many millennia. North America is still responding to the massive melt-off at the end of the last ice age 6,000 years ago. The North American tectonic plate wasn’t evenly loaded during that ice age: ice sheets were sitting on what is now Canada and Greenland, while most of today’s United States remained ice free. This ice load pushed the mantle out from under Canada and buoyed up the United States. Today, the U.S. side of the North American plate is sinking like the downhill end of a seesaw as the northern side continues to lift.

Greenland’s uplift from postglacial rebound means the island is gaining mass from below and its bedrock is continuously rising. At the same time, it is losing mass from above as its ice melts. GRACE measures the net result of these opposing processes, not just the result of melting ice alone. A National Science Foundation- and NASA-funded program called the Greenland GPS Network is working to overcome this problem. Led by Michael Bevis of Ohio State University, Columbus, the program is using more than 50 GPS stations in Greenland to measure Greenland’s rise and fall. The network is dense enough, and the instruments record elevation precisely enough, to distinguish the steady, long-term rise caused by postglacial rebound from shorter-term changes in elevation caused by the weight of the winter snows and loss of weight in summer. The goal of the project is to provide a “correction factor” for postglacial rebound that can be applied to measurements by GRACE and succeeding missions so the remainder is an accurate measurement of the loss of mass from melting.

Scientists currently believe ice sheet fingerprints will be the major driver of future regional variations in sea levels. They are working on questions of how these solid-Earth processes interact with other global and local drivers of sea level rise. “We have to understand global and larger-scale regional changes to do localized impact studies,” Tamisiea explained. “In some places, it may very well be that regional processes will be the most important signal. There has to be a continuum of understanding of the global average, regional changes and more localized processes. We’ll need all of those layers to make viable predictions.”