Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / July 2-3, 2011

Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Saturday:  

Lihue, Kauai –                    85                  
Honolulu airport, Oahu –      86 
Kaneohe, Oahu –                80
Molokai airport –                 83
Kahului airport, Maui –             87   (record for Saturday – 91 in 1951)
Kona airport                       83  
Hilo airport, Hawaii –           82

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops…as of 5pm Saturday evening:

Barking Sands, Kauai – 84
Hilo, Hawaii – 76

Haleakala Crater –     54 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea Summit – 45 (over 13,500 feet on the Big Island)

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

0.72     Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.66     Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.22     Molokai
0.02     Lanai
0.03     Kahoolawe
0.88     Puu Kukui, Maui
1.26     Kawainui Stream, Big Island

Marine Winds – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing high pressure systems to the northwest and northeast of our islands. Our local trade winds will remain active…blowing generally in the light to moderately strong category Sunday and Monday.

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. 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 shining down during the night at times. Plus, during the nights you will be able to see stars, and the sunrise and sunset 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. A satellite image, which shows the entire ocean area between Hawaii and the Mexican coast…can be found here.  Here's a tropical cyclone tracking map for the eastern and central Pacific.

 Aloha Paragraphs

Good weather through July 4th

The trade winds will continue blowing, generally in the light to moderately strong category.  Glancing at this weather map, we find our primary high pressure systems located to our northwest through northeast Saturday night. The location of these areas of high pressure, and their associated ridges, will keep our trade winds blowing. The NWS has a wind advisory active atop the summits on the Big Island, for winds gusting to near 35 mph.

Our trade winds will remain active…the following numbers represent the strongest gusts (mph), along with directions Saturday evening: 

24                 Port Allen, Kauai – ENE  
24                 Honolulu, Oahu – NE 
27                 Molokai – NE 
27                 Kahoolawe – ESE   
32                    Kahului, Maui – ENE
05                 Lanai  
23                 Upolu Point, Big Island – NE  

We can use the following links to see what’s going on in our area of the north central Pacific Ocean Saturday night. Looking at this NOAA satellite picture we find patches of lower level cumulus clouds…coming into the windward sides locally. We can use this looping satellite image to see low clouds being carried towards our windward sides by the trade winds. We find those high cirrus clouds now mostly to our west and southwest, which aren't all that far away, and may come flying over our islands again soon. Checking out this looping radar image we see just a few showers being carried along in the trade wind flow, approaching the windward side of the Big Island at the time of this writing.

Sunset Commentary:  The expectation is for the trade winds to downshift a gear Sunday through this coming Tuesday, before increasing up into the stronger and gusty realms around the middle of the new work week ahead. This will likely require the issuance of more small craft wind advisories again then…for several days at least. We also have strong enough winds atop the summits on the Big Island, that there is an active wind advisory up there for the time being.

We find the high cirrus clouds not far off to the west, as shown by this latest satellite image. Looking to the east we see a minor counter-clockwise spinning feature, an area of low pressure. Actually, this area has been mildly spinning out to our east for the last couple of days. As is gets closer to the state, we may see it increasing our showers at times. We may see showers arriving at times through Monday.  In general though, more or less dry weather will prevail through this long holiday weekend.

I went to see a new film Friday evening in Kahului, called Midnight in Paris, starring Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams…as the primary actors. This film was directed by Woody Allen, which made me curious. I haven't seen one of his films in a long time. The critics are giving this film a B+ grade, while the viewers are giving an even better A-. This film showed up a couple of weeks ago here on Maui, and then left right away. I thought I'd missed being able to see it, so I was glad to see that it came back again this week.

The synopsis: this is a romantic comedy set in Paris about a family that goes there because of business, and two young people who are engaged to be married in the fall, have experiences there that change their lives. It's about a young man's great love for a city, Paris, and the illusion people have that a life different from theirs would be much better. It stars Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Kathy Bates, Carla Bruni, among others. The website rotten tomatoes, which is usually pretty tough on rating films,gave it a 92 grade, out of a possible 100.

I was thoroughly delighted with this film, being an adult film, rather than all the action flicks that so often play here on Maui. The theater was nearly full, and rather than folks jumping up out of their seats at the end of the film, everyone just stayed seated. I didn't think I was going to like Owen Wilson, although he, under Woody Allen's direction, played a really nice part. He took on Mr. Allen's characteristics so well, which were rather endearing. I loved seeing Paris, and it made me want to go there too, which I've never visited.

Something unusual happened at the end, I began to talk to the lady that sat next to me, and she said she had driven all the way over from Napili, on the far west side of Maui, just to see this film. We both liked it very much, and we walked outside together telling each other our impressions. As for a grade, I'll go along with an A-, and I'm not quite sure why I'm holding back from an A? At any rate, it was a rare film, at least in terms of what I usually have the opportunity to see, and could easily recommend it to most of you…that is if you like the quirky type of film that Woody Allen is famous for making. Here's a trailer, just in case you are curious.

Here in Kula, Maui at 530pm HST Saturday evening, skies were clear to partly cloudy, with an air temperature of 74.7F degrees. I had a nice day, first walking this morning, then coming back and having organic vanilla yogurt, with organic blueberries and blackberries, and a banana mixed in. Oh yeah, I had a Kihei mango sliced into that bowl of fruit as well. I ate a couple of pieces of multi-grain toast, with organic peanut butter too. I had a physical therapy session after that, and drove down to Paia after that. When I came home my neighbors invited me over for a big bowl of fresh made ice cream, which was yummy. I've gotten invited out to dinner tonight in Makawao, which I've decided to accept. As it turns out, both of these folks are high level astrophysicists, so I'm sure the conversions will take many interesting twists and turns. This is a three day holiday weekend, which is great. I'll get to pull way back from my job in Kihei, and likely just hang around Kula for the most part. I'll be back Sunday morning with your next new weather narrative, I hope you have a great Saturday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting:  The first scientific results from an ambitious voyage led by a group of graduate students from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego offer a stark view of human pollution and its infiltration of an area of the ocean that has been labeled as the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch." Two graduate students with the Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition, or SEAPLEX, found evidence of plastic waste in more than nine percent of the stomachs of fish collected during their voyage to the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre.

Based on their evidence, authors Peter Davison and Rebecca Asch estimate that fish in the intermediate ocean depths of the North Pacific ingest plastic at a rate of roughly 12,000- to 24,000 tons per year. Their results were published June 27 in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series.

During the SEAPLEX voyage in August 2009, a team of Scripps graduate students traveled more than 1,000 miles west of California to the eastern sector of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre aboard the Scripps research vessel New Horizon. Over 20 days the students, New Horizon crew and expedition volunteers conducted comprehensive and rigorous scientific sampling at numerous locations.

They collected fish specimens, water samples and marine debris at depths ranging from the sea surface to thousands of feet depth. Of the 141 fishes spanning 27 species dissected in the study, Davison and Asch found that 9.2 percent of the stomach contents of mid-water fishes contained plastic debris, primarily broken-down bits smaller than a human fingernail.

The researchers say the majority of the stomach plastic pieces were so small their origin could not be determined. "About nine percent of examined fishes contained plastic in their stomach. That is an underestimate of the true ingestion rate because a fish may regurgitate or pass a plastic item, or even die from eating it.

We didn't measure those rates, so our nine percent figure is too low by an unknown amount," said Davison. The authors say previous studies on fish and plastic ingestion may have included so-called "net-feeding" biases. Net feeding can lead to artificially high cases of plastic ingestion by fishes while they are confined in a net with a high concentration of plastic debris.

The Scripps study's results were designed to avoid such bias. The highest concentrations of plastic were retrieved by a surface collecting device called a "manta net," which sampled for only 15 minutes at a time. The short sampling time minimizes the risk of net feeding by preventing large concentrations of plastic from building up, and also by reducing the amount of time that a captured fish spends in the net.

In addition to the manta net, the fishes were also collected with other nets that sample deeper in the water column where there is less plastic to be ingested through net feeding. The new study focused on the prevalence of plastic ingestion, but effects such as toxicological impacts on fish and composition of the plastic were outside of the study's goals.

The majority of fish examined in the study were myctophids, commonly called lanternfish because of their luminescent tissue. Lanternfishes are hypothesized to use luminescence for several purposes, including counter-illumination (thwarts predators attempting to silhouette the lanternfish against sunlight), mate attraction and identification and illumination of prey.

Such fish generally inhabit the 200- to 1,000-meter (650- to 3,280-foot) depth during the day and swim to the surface at night. "These fish have an important role in the food chain because they connect plankton at the base of the food chain with higher levels. We have estimated the incidence at which plastic is entering the food chain and I think there are potential impacts, but what those impacts are will take more research," said Asch.

Rather than a visible "patch" or "island" of trash, marine debris is highly dispersed across thousands of miles of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. The debris area cannot be mapped from air or space, so SEAPLEX researchers collected samples in 132 net tows (130 of which contained plastic) across a distance of more than 1,700 miles in an attempt to find the boundaries of the patch.

The region, a "convergence zone" where floating debris in water congregates, is generally avoided by mariners due to its calm winds and mild currents. The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre has been understudied by scientists, leaving many open questions about marine debris in the area and its long-term effects on the marine environment.

"This study clearly emphasizes the importance of directly sampling in the environment where the impacts may be occurring," said James Leichter, a Scripps associate professor of biological oceanography who participated in the SEAPLEX expedition but was not an author of the new paper.

"We are seeing that most of our prior predictions and expectations about potential impacts have been based on speculation rather than evidence and in many cases we have in fact underestimated the magnitude of effects. SEAPLEX also clearly illustrates how relatively small amounts of funding directed for novel field sampling and work in remote places can vastly increase our knowledge and understanding of environmental problems."