May 12-13 2008

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

Lihue, Kauai – 81
Honolulu, Oahu – 86
Kaneohe, Oahu – 80
Kahului, Maui – 87
Hilo, Hawaii – 79
Kailua-Kona, Hawaii – 83

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level at 4 p.m. Monday afternoon:

Honolulu, Oahu – 84F
Kahului, Maui – 78   

Precipitation Totals – The following numbers represent the largest precipitation totals (inches) during the last 24 hours on each of the major islands, as of Monday afternoon: 

0.37  MOUNT WAIALEALE, KAUAI
0.06 KOOLAU RAIN GAUGE, OAHU
0.00 MOLOKAI
0.01 LANAI
0.05 KAHOOLAWE
0.08 OHEO GULCH, MAUI
0.56 GLENWOOD, BIG ISLAND

Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a rapidly deepening low pressure system to the north, with its associated cold front to the NW. These weather features are forcing our trade wind producing high pressure ridge southward closer to the islands…weakening our local winds in the process.

Satellite and Radar Images: To view the cloud conditions we have here in Hawaii, please use the following satellite links, starting off with the Infrared Satellite Image of the islands to see all the clouds around the state 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…out from the islands. 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 webcam on the summit of near 14,000 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 webcams 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 cloud conditions.

Aloha Paragraphs

The image “http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2406/2117914490_f2a672afbd.jpg?v=0” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
Common bird of Hawaii…Japanese white-eye
Photo Credit: flickr.com

The trade winds will be breaking down, with light and variable winds taking over through the remainder of the work week. The long lasting small craft wind advisory, across all or parts of Hawaiian waters, has now been cancelled altogether…due to the diminishing wind speeds. During the Tuesday through Friday period, they will be in the very light and variable realms. The weather models show them picking up again by the weekend…then continuing into the following week.

Whatever showers that are around through the rest of this work week, will be switching over to the interior sections during the afternoons soon. The leeward beaches will be generally quite dry, although showers could fall along the Kona slopes of the Big Island, and perhaps Maui during the late afternoons beginning Tuesday. The atmosphere will remain quite dry and stable, limiting those convective showers quite a bit in most cases. As the trade winds return by the weekend, showers will return to the windward sides then.

It’s Monday evening as I begin writing this last section of today’s narrative. As noted in the two paragraphs above, we will be slipping out of our normal trade wind weather pattern soon. A late season cold front approaching the state from the NW, will prompt this change in our weather conditions. This rather vigorous frontal boundary, at least for this time of year, will stall around the island of Kauai by Thursday. It may get close enough to that northernmost island, that they may receive a few showers.

This cold front will push our trade wind producing high pressure ridge down over the islands Wednesday. The arrival of this ridge will prompt light and variable wind conditions.  As we get into the heart of this light wind episode, our days will start off with clear skies, along with slightly cooler than normal early morning air temperatures…giving way to rather warm and sultry conditions as the sun gets higher in the sky during the days. The daytime heating will cause clouds to build up over and around the mountains during the afternoons, with precipitation falling in the upcountry areas. Clouds typically evaporate again after dark, with the process beginning again the next day.

The problem that we’re going to run into during this convective weather episode, will be the rather muggy conditions during the days. Adding to this sultry environment may be the addition of volcanic haze, carried up from the volcanic vents on the Big Island…up over the other islands. It’s still too early to know for sure just how thick this vog will become, although it seems quite likely that there will be some. The wind direction, even though it will be light, will make all the difference on where these volcanic emissions end up. We will have to wait and see exactly which way the wind is drifting, to know where the vog will be most concentrated. The returning trade winds by the weekend, will help to carry most of this haze away, thank goodness!

~~~ The trade winds held on Monday, and have been quite breezy in those windiest areas around the state. We will soon be saying goodbye to those cooling and refreshing breezes however, as they go on vacation until the weekend. Late Monday afternoon, the strongest wind gust around the state was noted at Kahoolawe, where the winds were topping-out at just above 30 mph. Clouds have been rather sparse during the day, even in those usually cloudiest spots around the state. Whatever showers that fell from those generally fair weather clouds, were quite light however…with the largest rainfall figure during the last 24 hours falling along the windward side of the Big Island, where Glenwood registered .56".

~~~ I will be back very early Tuesday morning with your next new weather narrative. I hope you have a great Monday night wherever you happen to be spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Funny cat treadmill video

Interesting: The Korean village Donggwang gets 100% of its power from the sun. The village is located on the semi-tropical island of Jeju-do. Near the village, HallaMountain, a volcano and the tallest mountain in South Korea, rises from the island’s center amidst a patchwork of small farms. The village’s forty houses and the school all have large solar panels covering their roofs. A typical roof will have a two kilowatt solar installation. In 2004, the government subsidized the solar systems in Donggwang, paying 70% of the installation fees. Jeju-du island also has a large wind farm. Last year, the local government announced its plan to raise the island’s wind power generation capacity to 500 megawatts (MW) by 2020, in order to replace 20 percent of conventionally generated electricity. It also had said it will replace 26 percent of existing fuel used in transportation to environmentally friendly fuel.

Interesting2: Arctic ice is melting fast and the area covered by ice sheets in ocean could shrink this summer to the smallest since 1978 when satellite observation first started, Japanese scientists warned in a report. Ice sheets in the Arctic Ocean shrank to the smallest area on record in late summer in 2007, researchers at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said in a report on the website. "The sea ice in the Arctic Ocean has continued to shrink since the beginning of April in such momentum to approach last year’s levels," they said in the report based on an analysis of satellite images. The area covered with perennial ice in the Arctic Ocean has receded "drastically" in recent years, falling to nearly half the area observed in 2005, they said. "The reduction of areas covered with perennial ice means the overall ice in the Arctic Ocean is thinner and thinner year after year," the report added. The researchers made no mention of human-fueled climate change that could be blamed for thinner Arctic ice. The conservation group WWF said last month that Arctic ice may be melting faster than most climate change science has concluded. WWF said that climate change has already affected all aspects of ecology in the Arctic, including the region’s oceans, sea ice, ice sheets, snow and permafrost.

Interesting3: The pesticide DDT, banned decades ago in much of the world, still shows up in penguins in Antarctica, probably due to the chemical’s accumulation in melting glaciers. Adelie penguins, known for their waddling gait and a habit of nesting on stones, have long shown evidence of DDT in their fatty tissues, although not in enough concentration to hurt the birds, according to Heidi Geisz of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. But researchers were surprised to see that the level of the pesticide in Adelies’ fat had not declined, even after DDT was banned for exterior use in the 1970s in the United States and elsewhere. First noted in 1964, while the chemical was still widely used, the amount of DDT found in Adelie penguins rose in the 1970s and has stayed stable since then, Geisz said in a telephone interview. In findings published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, Geisz and her colleagues noted that persistent organic pollutants like DDT accumulate and become concentrated in the Antarctic ecosystem. "DDT, along with a lot of other of these organic contaminants, actually travel through the atmosphere … toward the polar regions by a process of evaporation and then condensation in cooler climates," Geisz said, explaining this is how the pesticide got deposited in Antarctic glaciers.

Interesting4: The wealthier a country is and the more greenhouse gases it spews into the atmosphere, the less worried its citizens are about the effects of global warming. Residents of the low-lying Netherlands, ironically, are the least worried of all. The findings are the result of a study that started when Hanno Sandvik, a biology postdoctoral researcher at the NorwegianUniversity of Science and Technology, came across on online survey conducted by ACNielsen that polled people in 46 countries asking about their attitudes toward global warming. Sandvik had been "a little depressed" about what he perceived as the poor state of understanding of climate change and the lack of public concern over its effects in Norway, he said. When he saw the survey results, his suspicions were confirmed: Norway was in the top 10 of the least concerned countries. More surprisingly, The Netherlands, which stands to be one of the first nations to feel the effects of climate change through sea level rise, topped the list. The flood-prone country with a lot of coastline was followed by Russia and the United States (in a tie), with Latvia, Estonia, Denmark, Belgium, New Zealand, and Finland rounding out the top 10.