Hawaiian Islands Weather Details & Aloha Paragraphs / April 18-19, 2018

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

81 – 73  Lihue, Kauai
85 – 74  Honolulu, Oahu
81 – 72  Molokai AP
84 – 71  Kahului AP, Maui
84 – 70  Kailua Kona
80 – 68  Hilo AP, Hawaii

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

0.53  Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.51  Nuuanu Upper, Oahu
0.17  Molokai
0.00  Lanai
0.00  Kahoolawe
1.63  Puu Kukui, Maui
1.09  Glenwood, Big Island

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

23  Port Allen, Kauai
29  Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
29  Molokai
29  Lanai
37  Kahoolawe
24  Maalaea Bay, Maui
21  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. Here’s the webcam for the Haleakala Crater on Maui. These webcams are 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

A trough west…high pressure northeast of the state

Towering cumulus to the west

Partly to mostly cloudy…lots of high cirrus clouds

Showers…locally over the islands and offshore
Looping image

 

~~~ Hawaii Weather Narrative ~~~

 

Small Craft Advisory…Most coasts and channels Maui County and the Big Island

Flash Flood Watch…all islands

Winter Storm Watch…Big Island summits

 

Broad Brush Overview: High pressure north of the state will maintain moderate to strong trades through early next week. A typical trade wind shower pattern is expected for the time being, with windward and mountain areas seeing the most showers. Deep moisture will increase as an old front moves southward into the islands tonight through Friday, while an upper level trough passes overhead.

Shower activity will increase, particularly from Oahu eastward to the Big Island, with locally heavy rainfall and thunderstorms possible late tonight through Friday morning. Drier and more stable weather is expected this weekend through early next week…with a more typical windward shower regime.

Details: A series of high pressure systems will pass by to the north of the islands, keeping a moderate to strong trade wind flow in place through the period. Meanwhile, the upper level trough to the west of the state will shift eastward toward the island chain tonight, then slide from west to east across the state Thursday and Thursday night…before exiting to the southeast of the Big Island Friday.

This fairly typical trade wind shower pattern will give way to increasing showers, as the leading edge of an old front begins to push into the islands. Shower coverage and intensity will increase tonight as the airmass becomes less stable with the approaching upper level trough…and with the old front aligning over the islands. The interaction of the upper trough and the frontal remnants will peak Thursday and Thursday night, and this is when we expect the greatest potential for heavier rainfall.

The deepest moisture will be over the eastern islands Friday morning, before moving southeast of the Big Island Friday afternoon. As a result, we should see shower coverage and intensity trend down from west to east across the state late Thursday night across the western islands…continuing down through the rest of state Friday. Considerable high cloud cover will continue across the state through Thursday, before slowly thinning out Thursday night into Friday.

The highest potential for heavy rainfall appears to be from Oahu eastward to the Big Island, with Maui County and the Big Island having the greatest threat for potential flash flooding. Given the recent heavy rains that have occurred over Kauai and Oahu however, any additional rainfall could result in problems.

Given the upper trough moving overhead, thunderstorms will become possible over the western islands late tonight, the entire island chain Thursday, from Oahu to the Big Island Thursday night…and over Maui County and the Big Island Friday morning.

Looking Ahead: A ridge of high pressure will remain in place to the north of the islands, keeping the gusty trade wind flow in place. The deepest moisture will have exited to the southeast of the state by Friday night, with upper level ridging then building over the islands this weekend into early next week…helping to further stabilize the atmosphere.

As a result, we should see a return to more typical trade wind weather, with bands of clouds and showers pushing through the islands from time to time. Showers will favor windward areas, with a few showers occasionally spilling leeward due to the strength of the trades.

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 to strong trades associated with high pressure will hold through the week. A combination of these winds and rough seas will continue to support Small Craft Advisory conditions across the typically windier waters around Maui County and the Big Island through Friday.

Rough surf will continue through the week along east facing shores due to the persistent trades locally and upstream of the state. Surf heights should remain just under the advisory level each day.

The small south swell currently in place will hold through Thursday, then become reinforced by another small south-southwest swell Friday into the weekend.

A small to moderate northwest swell is forecast to arrive late Thursday, hold through Friday, then lower into the weekend. Surf along north and west facing shores should remain below advisory levels through its peak Thursday night through Friday.

A slightly larger reinforcement out of the northwest will be possible Sunday into early next week.

 

World-wide Tropical Cyclone activity

Here’s the latest Pacific Disaster Center (PDC) Weather Wall Presentation

>>> Atlantic Ocean:

>>> Caribbean Sea:

>>> Gulf of Mexico:

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:

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:

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: How Would We Know If Intelligent Life Existed on Earth Before Humans? – Reptilian menaces called Silurians evolved on Earth before humankind — at least in the “Doctor Who” rendition of the universe. But science fiction aside, how would we know if some advanced civilization existed on our home planet millions of years before brainy humans showed up?

This is a serious question, and serious scientists are speculating about what traces these potential predecessors might have left behind. And they’re calling this possibility the Silurian hypothesis.

When it comes to the hunt for advanced extraterrestrial civilizations that might exist across the cosmos, one must reckon with the knowledge that the universe is about 13.8 billion years old. In contrast, complex life has existed on Earth’s surface for only about 400 million years, and humans have only developed industrial civilizations in the last 300 years. This raises the possibility that industrial civilizations might have been around long before human ones ever existed — not just around other stars, but even on Earth itself.

“Now, I don’t believe an industrial civilization existed on Earth before our own — I don’t think there was a dinosaur civilization or a giant tree sloth civilization,” said study co-author Adam Frank, an astrophysicist at the University of Rochester in New York. “But the question of what one would look like if it did [exist] is important. How do you know there hasn’t been one? The whole point of science is to ask a question and see where it leads. That’s the essence of what makes science so exciting.”

Artifacts of human or other industrial civilizations are unlikely to be found on a planet’s surface after about 4 million years, said Frank and study co-author Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. For instance, they noted that urban areas currently take up less than 1 percent of Earth’s surface, and that complex items, even from early human technology, are very rarely found.  A machine as complex as the Antikythera mechanism — which is considered to be the world’s first computer from ancient Greece — remained unknown until the development of elaborate clocks in RenaissanceEurope.

One may also find it difficult to unearth fossils of any beings who might have lived in industrial civilizations, the scientists added. The fraction of life that gets fossilized is always extremely small: Of all the many dinosaurs that ever lived, for example, only a few thousand nearly complete fossil specimens of the “terrible lizards” have been discovered. Given that the oldest known fossils of Homo sapiens are only about 300,000 years old, there is no certainty that our species might even appear in the fossil record in the long run, they added.

Instead, the researchers suggested looking for more subtle evidence of industrial civilizations in the geological records of Earth or other planets. The scientists focused on looking at the signs of civilization that humans might create during the Anthropocene, the geological age characterized by humans’ influence on the planet.

“After a few million years, any physical reminder of your civilization may be gone, so you have to look for sedimentary anomalies, things like different chemical balances that just look wacky,” Frank said.

One sign of industrial civilization may have to do with isotopes of elements such as carbon. (Isotopes of an element vary in how many neutrons they possess in their atomic nuclei — for example, carbon-12 has six neutrons, while carbon-13 has seven.)

For instance, humans living in industrial civilizations have burned an extraordinary amount of fossil fuels, releasing more than 500 billion tons of carbon from coal, oil and natural gas into the atmosphere. Fossil fuels ultimately derive from plant life, which preferentially absorb more of the lighter isotope carbon-12 than the heavier isotope carbon-13. When fossil fuels get burned, they alter the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-13 normally found in the atmosphere, ocean and soils — an effect that could later be detected in sediments as hints of an industrial civilization.

In addition, human industrial civilizations have also discovered ways to artificially “fix nitrogen” — that is, to break the powerful chemical bonds that hold nitrogen atoms together in pairs in the atmosphere, using the resulting single nitrogen atoms to create biologically useful molecules. The large-scale application of nitrogenous fertilizers generated via nitrogen fixing is already detectable in sediments remote from civilization, the scientists noted.

The Anthropocene is also triggering a mass extinction of a wide variety of species that’s likely visible in the fossil record. Human industrial activity may also prove to be visible in the geological record in the form of long-lived synthetic molecules from plastics and other products, or radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons.

One wild idea the Silurian hypothesis raises is that the end of one civilization could sow the seeds for another. Industrial civilizations may trigger dead zones in oceans, causing organic material (from the corpses of organisms in the zones) to get buried that could, down the line, become fossil fuels that could support a new industrial civilization. “You could end up seeing these cycles in the geological record,” Frank said.

All in all, thinking about the impact that a previous civilization has on Earth “could help us think about what effects one might see on other planets, or about what is happening now on Earth,” Frank said.

Schmidt and Frank detailed their findings online April 10 in a study to be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal International Journal of Astrobiology.