Air Temperatures – The following high temperatures (F) were recorded across the state of Hawaii Tuesday…along with the low temperatures Tuesday:
86 – 75 Lihue, Kauai
87 – 75 Honolulu, Oahu
89 – 67 Molokai
91 – 68 Kahului AP, Maui – record high Tuesday was 95…back in 1957
87 – 76 Kailua Kona
85 – 69 Hilo AP, Hawaii
Here are the latest 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands as of Tuesday evening:
1.47 Moloaa Dairy, Kauai
0.42 Nuuanu Upper, Oahu
0.00 Molokai
0.18 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.98 Puu Kukui, Maui
0.92 Mountain View, Big Island
The following numbers represent the strongest wind gusts (mph) as of Tuesday evening:
22 Port Allen, Kauai
29 Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
27 Molokai
23 Lanai
33 Kahoolawe
28 Kahului AP, Maui
24 Kealakomo, Big Island
Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live webcam on the summit of our tallest mountain Mauna Kea (nearly 13,800 feet high) on the Big Island of Hawaii. This webcam is available during the daylight hours here in the islands, and at night whenever there’s a big moon shining down. Also, at night you will be able to see the stars — and the sunrise and sunset too — depending upon weather conditions.
Aloha Paragraphs
Drier weather is arriving from the east…along with the trades
Thunderstorms along a trough…will continue shifting west
Clear to partly cloudy…cloudy areas
Showers mostly offshore west…and along the windward sides
Looping radar image
Small Craft Advisory…all coasts and channels / Gale Warning…Alenuihaha Channel
~~~ Hawaii Weather Narrative ~~~
Broad Brush Overview: Trade winds and drier air will move westward over Oahu and Kauai today, as an upper low and surface trough drift away from the state towards the west. Trade winds will become stronger Wednesday and Thursday, with showers focused generally over windward slopes and coasts. Winds will decrease again by the weekend.
Details: Yesterday’s rainfall producing upper low and surface trough are moving away towards the west. Drier air along with stronger trades are arriving, as strong high pressure builds north of the state. Clouds and showers will become focused mainly along windward and mountain areas…with occasional showers being carried over to the leeward sides.
Looking Ahead: The trades will begin to ease up as a deep low far northeast of the state approaches our area. A shallow band of moisture associated with a weak front will be pushed down over the islands, providing an increase in windward showers. As the deep low advances closer to the state during the weekend…trade winds will diminish in strength.
Here’s a wind profile of the Pacific Ocean – Closer view of the islands / Here’s the vog forecast animation / Here’s the latest weather map
Marine environment details: Moderate trade winds are building today and will continue to strengthen to moderate to strong levels by Wednesday morning. Winds could approach gale force in the typically windy channels and south of the Big Island beginning Wednesday night. Expect the trades to ease Friday as high pressure moves northeast away from the islands.
As a result of the increasing trades, surf along east facing shores will build today, and may reach advisory level by Thursday. A small to moderate northeast swell may also reach our exposed north and east facing shores late Sunday night, from a gale low forecast to form northeast of the islands Thursday.
A passing storm system, far north of the islands, has generated an early season moderate north-northwest swell, that will continue today. This swell will gradually decline through Wednesday. A reinforcing northwest swell will move in Wednesday night and increase surf heights. This swell will diminish through Friday.
Surf along south facing shores will remain small through this week.
World-wide Tropical Cyclone activity
>>> Here’s the latest PDC Weather Wall Presentation, covering the Pacific and Indian Oceans…including a tropical disturbance near Mexico
>>> Here’s the latest PDC Weather Wall Presentation, covering the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean
>>> Atlantic Ocean: No active tropical cyclones
>>> Caribbean Sea: No active tropical cyclones
Showers and thunderstorms associated with an area of low pressure located over the southwestern Caribbean Sea have become better organized since yesterday. This system is expected to become a tropical depression later today while it moves northwestward toward the coast of Nicaragua. The low should move slowly northwestward across or near the eastern portions of Nicaragua and Honduras on Thursday, move into the northwestern Caribbean Sea by Friday, and emerge over the southern Gulf of Mexico by Saturday. Interests in Nicaragua, Honduras, the Yucatan peninsula and western Cuba should monitor the progress of this system as watches or warnings could be issued later today. An Air Force Reserve reconnaissance aircraft is scheduled to investigate the disturbance this afternoon. Regardless of development, this system will produce heavy rains over portions of Central America during the next few days, likely causing flash floods and mudslides.
* Formation chance through 48 hours…high…90 percent
* Formation chance through 5 days…high…90 percent
A trough of low pressure located over west-central Cuba and extending northward into the Straits of Florida is producing a broad area of disorganized showers and thunderstorms across the southern peninsula of Florida, the northwestern Bahamas, and the adjacent Atlantic waters. Although significant tropical development of this system is not expected due to strong upper-level winds, brief squalls will likely produce locally heavy rainfall and strong gusty winds over portions of the Bahamas and the southern Florida peninsula during the next couple of days.
* Formation chance through 48 hours…low…near 0 percent
* Formation chance through 5 days…low…near 0 percent
>>> Gulf of Mexico: 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 Ramon is now active, here’s a graphical track map, a satellite image…and 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: No active tropical cyclones
Here’s a link to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center (CPHC)
>>> Northwest Pacific Ocean: No active tropical cyclones
>>> North and South Indian Oceans / Arabian Sea: No active tropical cyclones
Here’s a link to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC)
Interesting: Elon Musk Wants Giant SpaceX Spaceship to Fly People to Mars by 2024 – SpaceX aims to launch its first cargo mission to Mars in 2022 and send people toward the Red Planet just two years after that.
Those are just two of the highlights of the company’s current Mars-colonization plan, which SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk unveiled at the 68th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Adelaide, Australia.
Musk’s talk — which took place Friday afternoon local Adelaide time — served to update the architecture the billionaire entrepreneur revealed at last year’s IAC, in Guadalajara, Mexico. That previous presentation introduced a huge, reusable rocket-spaceship combo called the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS), which Musk envisioned helping to establish a million-person city on Mars within the next 50 to 100 years.
As Musk described it last year, the roughly 40-foot-wide ITS booster would feature 42 Raptor engines. It would launch the spaceship to Earth orbit, then come back down to its pad for a pinpoint landing — and another flight in quick succession. The spaceship, meanwhile, would be fueled in orbit by a tanker (which would also be launched by an ITS booster).
The ITS spaceships would linger in orbit until the time was right to depart for Mars, when they would do so en masse. (Such windows come along once every 26 months.) Each ship would be capable of carrying about 100 people to the Red Planet; after landing there and offloading their cargo and passengers, the ships would top up their tanks on the Martian surface with locally produced propellant (methane and oxygen) and then launch back to Earth.
The new plan retains this same basic idea, but with some important tweaks. For example, the rocket has been scaled back a bit; it will now be about 30 feet and sport “just” 31 Raptor engines. (For comparison, the first stage of SpaceX’s in-service Falcon 9 rocket has nine Merlin engines.) And the name “ITS” seems to be out: During Friday’s talk, Musk repeatedly referred to the system by the “code name” BFR, which is short for Big F***ing Rocket.
But the most important change has to do with the system’s affordability, Musk said.
“In last year’s presentation, we were really searching for what the right way — how do we pay for this thing?” he said. “We went through various ideas — do a Kickstarter.
The answer, he explained, lies in downsizing the system a bit and using it for everything that SpaceX does, from satellite launches to International Space Station resupply flights to crewed Mars missions. In other words, the company plans to put its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets — the latter of which hasn’t even flown yet — and its Dragon capsule out to pasture relatively soon.
“If we can do that, then all the resources that are used for Falcon 9, Heavy and Dragon can be applied to this system. That’s really fundamental,” Musk said. “We believe that we can do this with the revenue we receive for launching satellites and for servicing the space station.”
SpaceX will, however, “build ahead” and keep a stock of Falcon 9s and Dragons around for a while, in case customers wish to use those vehicles during the early days of BFR operation, Musk added.
Missions to Mars
As currently envisioned, the BFR system (the ship stacked atop the rocket) will stand 348 feet tall — about 50 feet shorter than the ITS concept vehicle.
The BFR booster will be capable of lofting 150 tons to low Earth orbit (LEO), making it more powerful than NASA’s famous Saturn V moon rocket, which could launch 135 tons to LEO, Musk said.
By itself, the BFR spaceship will stand 157.5 feet tall. It will feature 40 passenger cabins, each of which can theoretically fit five or six people but will more likely accommodate two to three, Musk said. So each ship will probably carry about 100 passengers on a typical Mars trip.
The ships sport six Raptor engines, which should allow them to get to Mars after a deep-space journey of three to six months. The vehicles will land via supersonic retropropulsion, slowing their descent through the Martian atmosphere using thrusters, as Falcon 9 first stages do when they come back to Earth during orbital launches.
SpaceX is currently riding a streak of 12 straight successful Falcon 9 landings, and that rocket’s first stage touches down using just a single engine. The BFR spaceship will be able to land with the aid of either of its two central engines, Musk said.
“If you can get to a very high reliability with even a single engine, and then you can land with either of two engines, I think we can get to a landing reliability that is on par with the safest commercial airliners,” he said. “So you can essentially count on the landing.”
The BFR system will also be airliner-like in its reusability; each booster and spaceship will fly again and again and again, helping make Mars colonization economically feasible, Musk said.
“It’s really crazy that we build these sophisticated rockets and then crash them every time we fly. This is mad,” Musk said. “I can’t emphasize [enough] how profound this is, and how important reusability is.”
SpaceX is now beginning “serious development” of the BFR system, he added. The company aims to launch at least two uncrewed ships to Mars in 2022, primarily to confirm the existence of necessary resources and set up infrastructure for future missions — power, mining and life support systems, for example.
If all goes according to plan, two cargo ships and two crew ships will depart for the Red Planet in 2024 to set up the propellant-production plant and begin building a base in earnest. This city will keep growing and growing, as more and more BFR ships come in with settlers and supplies.
The long-term goal is “terraforming Mars and making it really a nice place to be,” Musk said.
The moon and Earth, too
The BFR is not a Mars-specific system; the spaceship will be able to land anywhere in the solar system, Musk said. He envisions such ships helping to set up an outpost on the moon in the relatively near future. (BFR ships could even fly all the way from Earth orbit to the lunar surface and back without having to refuel, Musk said.)
“It’s 2017; we should have a lunar base by now,” he said. “What the hell is going on?”
SpaceX also plans to put the BFR to work closer to home; the rocket-spaceship system can be used to launch satellites, resupply the International Space Station and clean up space junk, Musk said. The BFR could even end up taking passengers from place to place here on Earth.
“Most of what people consider to be long-distance trips would be completed in less than half an hour,” Musk said.
AmandaonMaui Says:
It would be nice of Elon, and others in his position, focused their resources and vision here on Earth. We could fix this place up pretty nice. Just needs a little remodeling.
I just got back from Denmark. I was gone for three weeks. Seems like it must’ve been pretty dry while I was away. The ground is hard, and the grass feels dry.
Should we expect any moisture anytime soon? Any cooling? After being over in the low to mid-60s during the day this is definitely feeling more than warm to me.
~~~ Hi Amanda, good point, we need help here on our planet.
Denmark, I hope to make it there at some point in my life, nice cool weather compared to here in the tropics.
As for rain, well, as the trade winds pick up now, the windward sides should find about the normal amount of moisture arriving…which is a good thing.
Aloha, Glenn
Woody Says:
Elon has some vision, knowledge and means so, this should be interesting although he presents it sans problems, and it concerns me that people will use this to justify trashing Mother Earth, which in reality is our ONLY viable Home, and is suited for habitation by us bipeds….Da Bes to you, Mom, Linda…..Alohas Y’all
~~~ Hi Woody, good to hear from you, thanks for your take on this seemingly far fetched idea of his, although who knows!
Trust you are well and fine down there on the Big Island, hope so.
Aloha, Glenn