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

83 – 68  Lihue, Kauai
82 – 72  Honolulu, Oahu
80 – 69  Molokai
84 – 66  Kahului AP, Maui
84 – 69  Kailua Kona AP
85 – 67  Hilo, Hawaii

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

0.03  Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.30  Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.17  Molokai
0.02  Lanai
0.03  Kahoolawe
0.04  Haiku, Maui
0.11  Waiakea Uka, Big Island

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

21   Mana, Kauai – ENE
27   Kuaokala, Oahu – NE
20   Molokai – NE
20   Lanai – NE
27   Kahoolawe – NE
24   Maalaea Bay, Maui – NNE
24   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

http://weather.unisys.com/satellite/sat_ir_enh_west_loop-12.gif
The Pacific storm track remains well north of our islands…
with a fragmenting cold front falling apart to our north

Here’s a wind profile…of the offshore waters
around the islands – with a closer view

http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/west/cpac/vis.jpg
Active thunderstorms well offshore south and
southeast of Hawaii

http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/west/hi/vis.jpg
Clear to partly cloudy with cloudy areas…and what looks
like a windward shower area heading our way to the east


http://radar.weather.gov/Conus/RadarImg/hawaii.gif
Showers falling locally…mostly windward – looping radar image


High Surf Warning…north and west shores of Kauai, Oahu and
Molokai through Wednesday / north shore of Maui
same time period

Small Craft Advisory…for large northwest swells creating
hazardous seas – Kauai to Maui and the Big Island…with
just a few exceptions


~~~ Hawaii Weather Narrative ~~~



Strengthening trade winds returning for a few days. Here’s the latest weather map, showing the Hawaiian Islands, and the rest of the North Pacific Ocean. We find a moderately strong high pressure systems far to our east-northeast and west-northwest…with associated ridges running west and east to near Kauai. At the same time, we find numerous storm and gale low pressure systems far to our north. The low in the Gulf of Alaska has an associated cold front draping far southward…in the process of falling apart now. The forecast has the trade winds picking up again Wednesday, lasting through Friday. An approaching cold front may tamp down our trade winds again later this coming weekend, potentially becoming southeast…then strengthening trade winds are expected again early next week.

A few showers will fall locally…generally along our windward sides. We see a cold front moving by north of the state, although it won’t reach the Hawaiian Islands…as has been the case with these fronts over the last several weeks. This front has helped to introduce some increased moisture over the state today, with more showers than we’ve seen in some time. These showers weren’t heavy, or particularly numerous, although in contrast to the recent dry weather, they were noticeable. The models are suggesting that our trade wind weather pattern will extend through Friday or Saturday…with some windward showers. A new cold front should approach the islands later this coming weekend, and may bring more showers our way then.

Here on Maui…It’s mostly clear to partly cloudy across the island early this Tuesday morning,  and no vog that I can see. Here in upcountry Kula, it’s calm and clear…with an air temperature of 50.3F degrees at my place. This temperature is in contrast to the warmer 68 degree reading down near sea level in Kahului, with 73 in Hana, 64 at Maalaea Bay…and 70 in Kapalua. / I want to let you know I recently got invited to take a trip to the Hudson River Valley of New York, then on to Germany…ending up in the Swiss Alps for some skiing. I’ll be leaving tomorrow afternoon, and coming back December 22nd, I’ll have more to say about this before I depart. I’ll be taking my laptop computer, so I’ll be able to share a travelogue with you along the way. I want to point out too, that you’ll continue to have the latest weather forecasts for the entire state on this website…updated four times each day in my absence.

– Later afternoon now, with many more clouds around today, than we’ve seen lately. I just got back from having a haircut in Haiku, out on the windward side of east Maui, and there were lots of generally light showers between there and here in Kula. Looking down towards the central valley, I see lots of clouds and a few showers trying to fall down there too. The atmosphere has definitely become more moist, and somewhat less stable too. It’s a cool day as well, with the air temperature at my place reading 68.9 at 425pm, while it was 78 degrees down in Kahului at about the same time, with a pair of 75’s over in Kapalua and out in Hana.

–  It’s getting dark now at 550pm, under cloudy and foggy skies in upcountry Kula. It’s a little difficult to see what’s going on down below, although I could briefly see the sun sinking into the Pacific. The air temperature here at my weather tower was 63.6 degrees, while at about the same time it was 74 down in Kahului, and 73 with light rain in Kapalua. The trade winds are pushing back into our area again now, which will further strengthen over the next couple of days. This in turn will begin to carry off and on showers to our windward sides, a few of which could slip over the mountains into the leeward sides…on the smaller islands. / Now at 820pm in Kula, it had cooled down to 54.6, while at the same time it was 72 down in Kahului, which means that if clouds don’t slide overhead…Kula is heading down into the high 40’s by Wednesday morning.

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


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 if 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 if 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 if conditions warrant.

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: 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 if 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 if 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 / Arabian Sea: There are no active tropical cyclones

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


Interesting:  Greenland Glaciers found to be melting on the fast track – Greenland’s glaciers are retreating quickly, and a new study shows in historical terms just how quickly: over the past century, at least twice as fast as any other time in the past 9,500 years. The study also provides new evidence for just how sensitive glaciers are to temperature, showing that they responded to past abrupt cooling and warming periods, some of which might have lasted only decades.

To track how glaciers grew and shrank over time, the scientists extracted sediment cores from a glacier-fed lake that provided the first continuous observation of glacier change in southeastern Greenland. They then compared the results to similar rare cores from Iceland and Canada’s Baffin Island for a regional view.

“Two things are happening,” said study co-author William D’Andrea, a paleoclimatologist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “One is you have a very gradual decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting high latitudes in the summer. If that were the only thing happening, we would expect these glaciers to very slowly be creeping forward, forward, forward. But then we come along and start burning fossil fuels and adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, and glaciers that would still be growing start to melt back because summer temperatures are warmer.”

Glaciers are dynamic and heavy. As a glacier moves, it grinds the bedrock beneath, creating silt that the glacier’s meltwater washes into the lake below. The larger the glacier, the more bedrock it grinds away. Scientists can take sediment cores from the bottom of glacier-fed lakes to see how much silt and organic material settled over time, along with other indicators of a changing climate. They can then use radiocarbon dating to determine when more or less silt was deposited.

Sediment cores from the glacier-fed Kulusuk Lake allowed the scientists to track changes in two nearby glaciers going back 9,500 years. Before the 20th century, the fastest rate of glacier retreat reflected in the core was about 8,500 years ago, at a time when the Earth’s position relative to the sun resulted in more summer sunlight in the Arctic.

“If we compare the rate that these glaciers have retreated in the last hundred years to the rate that they retreated when they disappeared between 8,000 and 7,000 years ago, we see the rate of retreat in the last 100 years was about twice what it was under this naturally forced disappearance,” D’Andrea said.

The history captured in the Kulusuk Lake cores shows that a warming period started about 8,500 years ago, when the glacier’s erosion rates fell rapidly, suggesting the glacier was getting smaller. Then, about 8,200 years ago, temperatures began to cool rapidly and erosion rates increased again. That cooling period has been well documented by other studies and has been connected with large changes in ocean circulation.

Shortly after that advance, around 8,000 years ago, the glaciers wasted away and may have disappeared entirely – little erosion appears in the sediment core between 7,000 and 4,000 years ago, according to the study, appearing in the latest issue of the journal Climate of the Past. During the warm period, the core also shows a large increase in organic matter from plants growing in and around the lake.

When the glaciers began growing again, about 4,000 years ago, they experienced a series of growth pulses that reveal their sensitivity to change. The glaciers expanded in bursts, advancing quickly, retreating briefly, and then expanding farther – until about 100 years ago, according to the study. “This shows that there are internal responses within the climate system that can make glaciers grow and shrink on very short time scales. They’re really dynamic systems, which we have not had much evidence for prior to this,” D’Andrea said.

The pulses of growth match cooling periods documented in ocean sediment cores and in the continuous cores from Iceland and Baffin Island, suggesting that glaciers have responded in sync across the North Atlantic for at least the past 4,000 years, the authors write.

Understanding how glaciers melt and how ice melted in the past is a critical component to understanding past and future sea level rise and improving risk assessment in the future, said D’Andrea.