Weather Details & Aloha Paragraphs

Weather maps of the north central Pacific, where Hawaii is, look more like winter than they do almost summer. A very late season gale low pressure system is located to the NW of the islands. This gale has a cold front wrapped around its center, which has pushed to within 400 miles of here. This cold front won’t get any closer, and certainly won’t bring any rain to our area.

The ridge is moving northward now, which is allowing the trade winds to fill back into the state. As we move deeper into this holiday weekend, especially by Sunday and the actual holiday on Monday…the low pressure system to our NW will be long gone. This in turn has allowed the high pressure ridge to shift northward, which has brought back the trade winds. These cooling and refreshing breezes will whisk away whatever haze that has accumulated, and the rather muggy weather that we had been dealing with too. The windward sides will see the return of a few passing showers, most of which will be light, falling during the nights. The leeward sides will continue to be sunny during the days, as they have been this past week.

It’s early Saturday evening here in Kula, Maui. It’s about half an hour before sunset, with lots of warm sunshine flooding into my weather tower at the moment. The air temperature inside the tower is a warm 78F degrees, while outside in the shade, the true temperature is a cooler 67F. At the same time, the Kahului airport (3,000 feet down the mountain) was reporting an even warmer 79F…which tied the other warmest spots of Lihue on Kauai, and Kona on the Big Island. We are entering into what looks like a rather prolonged period of trade winds. This is good news, that is if you like warm weather with little in the way of showery weather. The few showers that we find falling will focus their efforts best along the windward coasts and slopes. I have a friend coming over to visit, and she has been kind enough to make fresh Vietnamese spring rolls, and is bringing a bit of fresh Ahi tuna too, called Sashimi. We may take a quick walk around the area before we sit down for a bite to eat. I’m definitely in the mood to play some ping pong on my table out on the weather deck, but alas, no one to play with at the moment. It’s been a nice day here in the islands, and with two full days still ahead, I’m certainly enjoying this long holiday weekend! I trust you are groovin’ along in your life as well, and that you will have a great Saturday night. Aloha for now…Glenn.

Weather maps of the north central Pacific, where Hawaii is, look more like winter than they do almost summer. A very late season gale low pressure system is located to the NW of the islands. This gale has a cold front wrapped around its center, which has pushed to within 400 miles of here. This cold front won’t get any closer, and certainly won’t bring any rain to our area. These unusual weather features have forced our trade wind producing high pressure ridge down to within 60 miles of Kauai. This has put the Aloha state in a field of light winds, which is uncommon during the end of May.

The close proximity of the ridge is keeping our winds much lighter than would normally be expected. If we look at the air flow over the offshore waters, we see the winds coming up from the SE direction. When these SE breezes encounter the Big Island, they wrap around the edges. This splits the wind flow, putting the rest of the state in a wind shadow. During the days we see onshore sea breezes, while at night there are offshore flowing land breezes. Again, typically we would be having moderately strong trade winds blowing.

These light winds are responsible for our convective weather pattern, which has been around for most of this week. This simply means that the winds are light enough, that we don’t see the usual showers falling along the windward coasts and slopes. Rather, the daytime heating of the islands, cause afternoon cumulus cloud buildups. The overlying atmospherics are what we call stable, which greatly limits the vertical extent of cloud growth. These clouds then dissipate when the sun goes down, leaving clear skies into the early morning hours.

This light wind, convective pattern will continue today into Saturday. As we move into the weekend, especially by Sunday and the holiday on Monday…the low pressure system to our NW will move away. This in turn will allow the high pressure ridge to shift northward, which will bring back the trade winds. These cooling and refreshing breezes will whisk away whatever haze that my have accumulated, and the rather muggy weather that we been dealing with too. The windward sides will see the return of some passing showers, most of which will be light, falling during the nights. The leeward sides will continue to be very sunny, as they have been this week.

It’s early Friday evening here in Kula, Maui. Oh boy, it was a classic convective day, with clear mornings giving way to cloudier skies during the afternoon, into sunset. I started feeling things letting down a bit at work, given the impending three day holiday weekend. It’s often quite mellow around the Pacific Disaster Center (although people are always working diligently)…however it became even more relaxed after the lunch break. There’s currently no tropical cyclones spinning in the Atlantic, the Gulf, the east, central, or western Pacific…nor the north or south Indian Ocean. Conditions are inactive at the moment, with only a large area of thunderstorms offshore from southern Mexico, which has a chance of strengthening into the first tropical depression of the 2006 hurricane season. I have two friends coming over for a glass of wine and dinner, people I’ve known here on Maui forever. They have six kids, which makes it a real treat when they can break away for an evening of laughing and talking together. The only problem is that this is a spur of the moment thing, and I have really nothing to eat. I stopped at the Pukalani Superette on the way home, but they were out of fresh sashimi (raw tuna). He is from Italy, and she is a surfer girl turned Mom from the south bay of southern California. I’ll just whip up a little red sauce pasta, or that can be a pesto base, as I have the makings for both of those dishes. It’s very hazy this evening, a consequence of SE breezes bringing vog up from the Big Island. I would imagine that the folks in Kona are very voggy too. I hope you have a great Friday night wherever you happen to be spending it. Aloha for now…Glenn.