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

82 – 73  Lihue, Kauai
83 – 73  Honolulu, Oahu
8373  Molokai AP
86 – 72  Kahului AP, Maui
83 – 69  Kailua Kona, Hawaii
82 – 67  Hilo, Hawaii

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

1.40  Mount Waialeale, Kauai
1.24  Manoa Lyon Arboretum, Oahu
0.54  Molokai
0.00  Lanai
0.03  Kahoolawe
0.91  Puu Kukui, Maui
0.68  Hilo AP, Big Island

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

29  Port Allen, Kauai
31  Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
29  Molokai
27  Lanai
42  Kahoolawe
35  Kahului AP, Maui

36  South Point, Big Island

Hawaii’s MountainsHere’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 10,000+ feet high 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

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The next shower band will be moving through the state tonight
(click on the images to enlarge them)

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Lots of  high clouds approaching from the west


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Increasing windward clouds

 

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Showers locally…mostly windward
Looping image

 

Small Craft Advisory…pink color below

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~~~ Hawaii Weather Narrative ~~~

 

Broad Brush Overview: A high pressure system moving by north of the islands will support gusty trade winds, with winds gradually weakening on Thanksgiving, then becoming light and variable Friday. An area of showery low clouds has cleared the smaller islands, with fewer showers in its wake. Another shower area will arrive on the trade winds tonight and Thursday, bringing increasing windward showers. Light winds over the weekend will bring fewer showers…while periods of high clouds are expected Thursday through Saturday.

Details: Although this incoming shower band is forecast to bring another increase in windward showers tonight, the rapid movement of the high will cause winds to veer to the southeast, with the latest GFS model showing some of this moisture lingering just offshore to the east as this occurs. By the Thanksgiving afternoon, the large scale flow is expected to be from the southeast, as a front approaches from the northwest. This will place the smaller islands in the lee of the Big Island, leading to much lighter winds…with fewer showers moving ashore.

Winds will be light and variable Friday as the front dissipates to our northwest, and moisture over the area is expected to gradually diminish. Light winds are still expected into the weekend. The upper trough supporting the front approaching from the northwest, is expected to carve out a low aloft southwest of the islands. This upper low isn’t expected to bring much instability…as it moves away to the southwest. However, the development of this feature is expected to bring periods of high clouds, mainly Thursday through Saturday.

Confidence is a bit low as to the specifics of the forecast for the weekend, the most likely outcome is that light trade winds will supply a few showers to windward areas that favor nights and mornings, with afternoon sea breezes allowing clouds and a few showers to develop over leeward and interior areas. The longer range forecast anticipates a fairly dry pattern over the first half of next week along with light winds, as a strong polar jet stream suppresses the subtropical high pressure ridge southward to the latitude of our island chain.

Here’s a near real-time Wind Profile of the Pacific Ocean – along with a Closer View of the islands / Here’s the latest Weather Map / Here’s the latest Vog Forecast Animation / Here’s the Vog Information website

Marine Environmental Conditions: Strong trades are expected to continue across the Hawaiian waters, due to high pressure positioned north of the state. Winds and seas will quickly trend back down through the second half of the week into the weekend, as the area of high pressure weakens and shifts eastward in response to cold fronts passing by to the north Friday and Saturday. The ridge will shift southward into the area through this time, which should translate to more of a light and variable pattern for winds locally into early next week.

Rough surf will continue along east facing shores through Thanksgiving due to moderate to strong trades locally and just upstream of the state. A gradual downward trend is expected Friday into the weekend as the trades weaken.

The small to moderate northwest swell will steadily lower through tonight…with the surf along exposed coasts gradually lowering.

For the extended, the models show a long-duration high surf event beginning Sunday and continuing into next Wednesday before lowering. Surf could exceed warning levels along exposed north and west facing shores Sunday night through Tuesday. A combination of the large surf and peak monthly tides could lead to additional beach erosion and increase the overwash potential for the typically vulnerable low- lying coastal areas.

Small surf will continue along south facing shores.

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World-wide Tropical Cyclone Activity

 

Here’s the latest Pacific Disaster Center (PDC) Weather Wall Presentation covering the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea…and the Atlantic Ocean

Here’s the latest Pacific Disaster Center (PDC) Weather Wall Presentation covering the Pacific and Indian Oceans, including  Tropical Cyclone 33W, Tropical Cyclone 34W (Min-yi)


>>> Atlantic Ocean: No active tropical cyclones

Here’s a satellite image of the Atlantic

>>> Gulf of Mexico: No active tropical cyclones

>>> Caribbean Sea: No active tropical cyclones

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

>>> Eastern Pacific: No active tropical cyclones

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

>>> Central Pacific: No active tropical cyclones

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

>>> Northwest Pacific Ocean:

Tropical Cyclone 33W

JTWC textual advisory
JTWC graphical track map

Tropical Cyclone 34W (Min-yi)

JTWC textual advisory
JTWC graphical track map

Here’s what the computer models show

>>> South 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: The Strange History of the Turkey Tail – Intensive livestock farming is a huge global industry that serves up millions of tons of beef, pork and poultry every year. When I asked one producer recently to name something his industry thinks about that consumers don’t, he replied, “Beaks and butts.” This was his shorthand for animal parts that consumers — especially in wealthy nations — don’t choose to eat.

On Thanksgiving, turkeys will adorn close to 90 percent of U.S. dinner tables. But one part of the bird never makes it to the groaning board, or even to the giblet bag: the tail. The fate of this fatty chunk of meat shows us the bizarre inner workings of our global food system, where eating more of one food produces less-desirable cuts and parts. This then creates demand elsewhere — so successfully in some instances that the foreign part becomes, over time, a national delicacy.

Industrial-scale livestock production evolved after Word War II, supported by scientific advances such as antibiotics, growth hormones and, in the case of the turkey, artificial insemination. (The bigger the tom, the harder it is for him to do what he’s supposed to do: procreate.)

U.S. commercial turkey production increased from 16 million pounds in January 1960 to 500 million pounds in January 2017. Total production this year is projected at 245 million birds.

That includes a quarter-billion turkey tails, also known as the parson’s nose, pope’s nose or sultan’s nose. The tail is actually a gland that attaches the turkey’s feathers to its body. It is filled with oil that the bird uses to preen itself, so about 75 percent of its calories come from fat.

It’s not clear why turkeys arrive at U.S. stores tailless. Industry insiders have suggested to me that it may simply have been an economic decision. Turkey consumption was a novelty for most consumers before World War II, so few developed a taste for the tail, although the curious can find recipes online. Turkeys have become larger, averaging around 30 pounds today compared to 13 pounds in the 1930s. We’ve also been breeding for breast size, due to the American love affair with white meat: One prized early big-breasted variety was called Bronze Mae West. Yet the tail remains.

Rather than letting turkey tails go to waste, the poultry industry saw a business opportunity. The target: Pacific Island communities, where animal protein was scarce. In the 1950s U.S. poultry firms began dumping turkey tails, along with chicken backs, into markets in Samoa. (Not to be outdone, New Zealand and Australia exported “mutton flaps,” also known as sheep bellies, to the Pacific Islands.) With this strategy, the turkey industry turned waste into gold.

By 2007 the average Samoan was consuming more than 44 pounds of turkey tails every year — a food that had been unknown there less than a century earlier. That’s nearly triple Americans’ annual per capita turkey consumption.

When I interviewed Samoans recently for my book “No One Eats Alone: Food as a Social Enterprise,” it was immediately clear that some considered this once-foreign food part of their island’s national cuisine. When I asked them to list popular “Samoan foods,” multiple people mentioned turkey tails — frequently washed down with a cold Budweiser.

How did imported turkey tails become a favorite among Samoa’s working class? Here lies a lesson for health educators: The tastes of iconic foods cannot be separated from the environments in which they are eaten. The more convivial the atmosphere, the more likely people will be to have positive associations with the food.

Food companies have known this for generations. It’s why Coca-Cola has been ubiquitous in baseball parks for more than a century, and why many McDonald’s have PlayPlaces. It also explains our attachment to turkey and other classics at Thanksgiving. The holidays can be stressful, but they also are a lot of fun.

As Julia, a 20-something Samoan, explained to me, “You have to understand that we eat turkey tails at home with family. It’s a social food, not something you’ll eat when you’re alone.”

Turkey tails also come up in discussions of the health epidemic gripping these islands. American Samoa has an obesity rate of 75 percent. Samoan officials grew so concerned that they banned turkey tail imports in 2007.

But asking Samoans to abandon this cherished food overlooked its deep social attachments. Moreover, under World Trade Organization rules, countries and territories generally cannot unilaterally ban the import of commodities unless there are proven public health reasons for doing so. Samoa was forced to lift its ban in 2013 as a condition of joining the WTO, notwithstanding its health worries.

If Americans were more interested in eating turkey tails, some of our supply might stay at home. Can we bring back so called nose-to-tail animal consumption? This trend has gaining some ground in the United States, but mainly in a narrow foodie niche.

Beyond Americans’ general squeamishness toward offal and tails, we have a knowledge problem. Who even knows how to carve a turkey anymore? Challenging diners to select, prepare and eat whole animals is a pretty big ask.

Google’s digitization of old cookbooks shows us that it wasn’t always so. “The American Home Cook Book,” published in 1864, instructs readers when choosing lamb to “observe the neck vein in the fore quarter, which should be of an azure-blue to denote quality and sweetness.” Or when selecting venison, “pass a knife along the bones of the haunches of the shoulders; if it smell [sic] sweet, the meat is new and good; if tainted, the fleshy parts of the side will look discolored, and the darker in proportion to its staleness.” Clearly, our ancestors knew food very differently than we do today.

It is not that we don’t know how to judge quality anymore. But the yardstick we use is calibrated — intentionally, as I’ve learned – against a different standard. The modern industrial food system has trained consumers to prioritize quantity and convenience, and to judge freshness based on sell-by-date stickers. Food that is processed and sold in convenient portions takes a lot of the thinking process out of eating.

If this picture is bothersome, think about taking steps to recalibrate that yardstick. Maybe add a few heirloom ingredients to beloved holiday dishes and talk about what makes them special, perhaps while showing the kids how to judge a fruit or vegetable’s ripeness. Or even roast some turkey tails.