Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Thursday:
Lihue, Kauai – 82
Honolulu airport, Oahu – 82
Kaneohe, Oahu – 83
Molokai airport – 82
Kahului airport, Maui – 82
Kona airport – 83
Hilo airport, Hawaii – 81
Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops…as of 5pm Thursday evening:
Port Allen, Kauai – 82
Hilo, Hawaii – 76
Haleakala Crater – 50 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 39 (over 13,500 feet on the Big Island)
Precipitation Totals – The following numbers represent the largest precipitation totals Thursday evening:
0.93 Waiakoali, Kauai
0.37 Wilson Tunnel, Oahu
1.60 Molokai
0.26 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.24 Kaupo Gap, Maui
0.66 Kapapala Ranch, Big Island
Marine Winds – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a 1033 millibar high pressure systems far to the northeast of Hawaii…with its associated ridge running southwest over the central islands. Our winds will blow from the south to southeast Friday and Saturday…generally light in strength.
Satellite and Radar Images: To view the cloud conditions we have here in Hawaii, please use the following satellite links, starting off with this Infrared Satellite Image of the islands to see all the clouds around during the day and night. This next image is one that gives close images of the islands only during the daytime hours, and is referred to as a Close-up visible image. This next image shows a larger view of the Pacific…giving perspective to the wider ranging cloud patterns in the Pacific Ocean. Finally, here's a Looping IR satellite image, making viewable the clouds around the islands 24 hours a day. To help you keep track of where any showers may be around the islands, here’s the latest animated radar image.
Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live web cam on the summit of near 13,500 foot Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The tallest peak on the island of Maui is the Haleakala Crater, which is near 10,000 feet in elevation. These two web cams are available during the daylight hours here in the islands…and when there’s a big moon rising just after sunset for an hour or two! Plus, during the nights and early mornings you will be able to see stars, and the sunrise too…depending upon weather conditions.
Tropical Cyclone activity in the eastern and central Pacific – Here’s the latest weather information coming out of the National Hurricane Center, covering the eastern north Pacific. You can find the latest tropical cyclone information for the central north Pacific (where Hawaii is located) by clicking on this link to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center. Here’s a tracking map covering both the eastern and central Pacific Ocean. A satellite image, which shows the entire ocean area between Hawaii and the Mexican coast…can be found here. Of course, as we know, our hurricane season ended November 30th here in the central Pacific…and begins again June 1st.
Aloha Paragraphs
Generally clear to partly cloudy mornings, locally cloudy
afternoons, especially over the leeward interior slopes.
There will be showers…a few of which will be generous,
especially around Kauai and Oahu for the time being.
The winds will be light from the south to southeast.
South to southeast breezes will blow…lasting into next week. Glancing at this weather map, we find a 1033 millibar high pressure system far to the northeast of our islands…with its associated ridge of high pressure extending southwest over the central islands. Looking at the low level wind flow around our islands, we find our winds blowing from the south-southwest to southeast. A trough of low pressure to our west has pushed our trade winds away, which aren’t expected to return, at least in any significant way…until about the middle of next week.
Light breezes now…the following numbers represent the strongest gusts, along with directions Thursday evening:
18 mph Barking Sands, Kauai – S
13 Waianae, Oahu – SE
10 Molokai – NNE
07 Kahoolawe – NNE
14 Hana, Maui – E
07 Lanai Airport – WNW
20 Hilo, Big Island – NE
We can use the following links to see what’s going on in our area of the north central Pacific Ocean Thursday evening. This large University of Washington satellite image shows clouds from a cloud band/trough are located just to the north of our Hawaiian Islands. At the same time there are a few thunderstorms over the offshore waters to the northwest of the state. Looking at this NOAA satellite picture we see patches of lower level clouds around the islands…with cirrus clouds to the south and southeast. We can use this looping satellite image to see the the associated withe cloud band and trough of low pressure moving by slowly eastward…just to our north. Checking out this looping radar image shows just a few showers in our vicinity, mostly over the ocean offshore from the islands.
As the winds are coming up from the south through southeast now, we find ourselves in a convective weather pattern, which should last through the rest of this work week…into early next week. We’ll find daytime onshore sea breezes, followed by cooler air draining back down to the coast as a land breeze at night. As the sea breezes blow moisture from the ocean upslope during the days, clouds will form over the mountain slopes late morning through the evening hours. These clouds will lead to localized showers along our leeward upcountry sections. Some of these showers may turn out to be rather generous on Kauai and Oahu. As the trough of low pressure, with its associated cloud band remains closer to Kauai and Oahu…we’ll see more potentially more clouds with heavier showers there.
Here in Kihei, Maui, at 530pm Thursday evening, we find clear to cloudy conditions…depending upon whether you're at the beach or in the higher elevations. those cloudy areas are upcountry, while the beaches had a great day. The afternoon clouds got very dark, and I know there were a few showers falling up there. I suspect that our clouds will clear quite a bit overnight, with generally fine weather on tap Friday morning. Friday afternoon will find cloudy weather in the upslope areas, with those showers falling locally. It was interesting to see the capping clouds over each of the islands this afternoon during lunch, which looked like big heads of cauliflower to me…surrounding by clear skies all around. This kind of sunny morning, cloudy afternoon affair will accompany us through the next 4-5 days. It will take until next Tuesday or Wednesday before the trade winds return, ushering in fair weather conditions. By the way, now that I'm home in Kula, I can see that there is moderately thick volcanic haze in our local skies. I'll be back early Friday morning with your next new weather narrative from paradise. I hope you have a great Thursday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting: Cuba is facing its worst drought in half a century, with tens of thousands of families almost entirely reliant on water trucks for essential supplies. The drought started two years ago, and reservoirs are now down to a fifth of their normal levels. The government is providing road deliveries of water to more than 100,000 people in the worst affected areas of the capital, Havana.
The situation in Havana is compounded by a pipe network in poor condition. The state-run newspaper Granma says up to 70% of water pipes supplying the capital are leaking and in urgent need of repair, the BBC's Michael Voss in Havana says. Residents are having to use buckets and bottles to fill up with water from the road deliveries. "It's completely out of control," one resident, Ana Gomez, said.
"Just imagine that you can't wash when you want to, you have to wash when you are able to." Another, Enrique Olivera Gonzalez, said: "As there is no water, you can't wash your clothes, cook, or clean your house." Cubans are hoping the rainy season in May and June will bring some respite. But even a normal rainfall will not be enough to fill up the reservoirs, our correspondent says.
Interesting2: The World Bank has warned that rising food prices, driven partly by rising fuel costs, are pushing millions of people into extreme poverty. World food prices are 36% above levels of a year ago, driven by problems in the Middle East and North Africa, and remain volatile, the bank said. That has pushed 44 million people into poverty since last June.
A further 10% rise would push 10m more below the extreme poverty line of $1.25 (76p) a day, the bank said. And it warned that a 30% cost hike in the price of staples could lead to 34 million more poor. 'Protect the poor' The World Bank estimates there are about 1.2 billion people living on less than $1.25 a day.
"More poor people are suffering and more people could become poor because of high and volatile food prices," said World Bank president Robert Zoellick. "We have to put food first and protect the poor and vulnerable, who spend most of their money on food." Mr Zoellick was speaking before IMF and World Bank spring meetings later this week.
The gatherings will be attended by finance ministers and central bankers including Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, and Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King. Nutrition The World Bank says prices of basic commodities remain close to their 2008 peak, with the prices of wheat, maize and soya all rocketing.
The only exception is rice, which has fallen slightly in price in the past year. The bank suggests a number of measures to help alleviate the impact of high food prices on the poor. They include encouraging food-producing countries to ease export controls, and to divert production away from biofuels production when food prices exceed certain limits.
Other recommendations include targeting social assistance and nutritional programs to the poorest, better weather forecasting, more investments in agriculture, the adoption of new technologies – such as rice fortification to make it more nutritious, and efforts to address climate change. It also said financial measures were needed to prevent poor countries being subject to food price volatility.
Interesting3: Suicides in the United States ebb and flow with the economy, rising in bad times and falling in good, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday. Their study, published online in the American Journal of Public Health, is the first to look at suicide trends by age and business cycles, and it found that working Americans — people aged 25 to 64 — are significantly more prone to suicide in tough economic times.
Researchers looked at the impact of business cycles on U.S. suicide rates from 1928 through 2007. They found a general correlation among suicide rates and major shifts in the U.S. economy. For example, suicides famously spiked during the Great Depression, surging to a record high of 22 suicides per 100,000 people in 1932, up from 18 per 100,000 in 1928.
But other slowdowns also saw an increase in suicides, including the end of the New Deal (1937-1938), the Oil Crisis (1973-1975), and the Double-Dip Recession (1980-1982.) And suicide rates tended to fall during periods of plenty, such as during World War Two and the decade-long expansion from 1991 to 2001, in which the economy flourished and there were low rates of unemployment.
"Knowing suicides increased during economic recessions and fell during expansions underscores the need for additional suicide prevention measures when the economy weakens," James Mercy, acting director of CDC's Injury Center's Division of Violence Prevention, said in a statement. "It is an important finding for policy makers and those working to prevent suicide."
Interesting4: For the first time ever, the US Congress has removed an animal from the Endangered Species List, a process typically done by a federal, non-political, science-based agency. The action by the US Congress sets a new precedent for altering the Endangered Species List based on political influence, enraging environmental groups. The removal would take effect in two western states that have known issues with wolves: Montana and Idaho.
Wolves would now be managed by each state’s wildlife agency, inevitably leading to commercial hunting. The gray wolves of the northern Rocky Mountains had been nearly hunted to extinction. Safeguards were put in place due to their inclusion in the Endangered Species List, and their numbers rebounded.
Now, they have grown to a level that is apparently unacceptable to certain residents of these Northern Rockies states. Ranchers complain that wolves prey on their livestock, and hunters complain that they are thinning out elk and moose herds too much. The congressional action was backed by Representative Mike Simpson, Republican of Idaho, and Senator Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana, who is up for re-election in 2012.
The action was included into a rider to the Congressional budget measure. Isn’t it interesting that a bill that is being ferociously debated for balancing the US budget and decreasing the national debt should contain a new provision about wolves. Environmental groups have taken notice, and have criticized the Interior Department for having approved this action.
Michael T. Leahy, Rocky Mountain regional director of the advocacy group, Defenders of Wildlife, said "Now, anytime anybody has an issue with an endangered species, they are going to run to Congress and try to get the same treatment the anti-wolf people have gotten." The Interior Department had no comment.
State officials in the two affected states have a different view. They believe that the wolf population has to be culled due to the threats they pose to elk, moose, and deer. The issue was recently taken to court in a federal lawsuit brought by environmental groups against state officials.
The two sides reached a proposed settlement, but it was rejected by Judge Donald W. Molloy. Since the courts were unable to produce a positive outcome for the state officials, they brought their issue to the US Congress where it passed. As part of the budget bill, many federal agencies had to take big cuts, including the Department of Agriculture, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Passing off protection of the wolf population to state agencies in two states probably saved the federal government some money. But it also set a worrying precedent for how the Endangered Species List can be changed.
Interesting5: Humpback whales have their own version of the hit single, according to a study reported online on April 14th in Current Biology. At any given time within a population, male humpbacks all sing the same mating tune. But the pattern of the song changes over time, with the new and apparently catchy versions of the song spreading repeatedly across the ocean, almost always traveling from west to east.
"Our findings reveal cultural change on a vast scale," said Ellen Garland, a graduate student at The University of Queensland. Multiple songs moved like "cultural ripples from one population to another, causing all males to change their song to a new version."
This is the first time that such broad-scale and population-wide cultural exchange has been documented in any species other than humans, she added. Researchers from The University of Queensland in collaboration with members of the South Pacific Whale Research Consortium made the discovery by searching for patterns in whale songs recorded from six neighboring populations in the Pacific Ocean over a decade.
This revealed a striking pattern of cultural transmission as whale songs spread from Australia to French Polynesia over the course of about two years. "The songs started in the population that migrates along the eastern coast of Australia and then moved — just the songs, and probably not the whales — all the way to French Polynesia in the east," Garland said.
"Songs were first learnt from males in the west and then subsequently learned in a stepwise fashion repeatedly across the vast region." In fact, only one song ever moved to the west over the period of the study. Garland explained that the almost exclusive movement of songs to the east may be due to population size differences, because the population on the east coast of Australia is very large compared to all others in the area.
The researchers suspect that either a small number of males move to other populations, taking their songs with them, or whales in nearby populations hear the new songs while they swim together on migration. Most of the time, songs contain some material from the previous year blended with something new.
"It would be like splicing an old Beatles song with U2," Garland said. "Occasionally they completely throw the current song out the window and start singing a brand new song." Once a new song emerges, all the males seem to rapidly change their tune. Those songs generally rise to the "top of the chart" in the course of one breeding season and typically take over by the end of it.
Garland said it is not yet known why the humpbacks' songs spread in this way. In fact, why whales sing in the first place isn't fully known. Song is likely a mating display, but it is unclear whether the main effect is to attract females or to repel rival males. Still, Garland suspects that the whales may want to stand out like a new pop song.
"We think this male quest for song novelty is in the hope of being that little bit different and perhaps more attractive to the opposite sex," she said. "This is then countered by the urge to sing the same tune, by the need to conform."
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