Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Wednesday:
Lihue, Kauai – 80
Honolulu airport, Oahu – 84 (record high for the date – 88 in 1983)
Kaneohe, Oahu – 81
Molokai airport – 83
Kahului airport, Maui 84 (record high for the date – 91 in 1957)
Kona airport 82
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 Wednesday evening:
Honolulu, Oahu – 80
Princeville, Kauai – 75
Haleakala Crater – 43 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea Summit – 32 (over 13,500 feet on the Big Island)
Here are the 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands as of Wednesday evening:
0.09 Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.01 Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.00 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.02 Kihei, Maui
0.12 Mountain View, Big Island
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 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. This web cam is 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. The Haleakala Crater webcam on Maui just came back online, after being on the blink for several weeks.
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
Partly to mostly cloudy, strengthening trade winds –
increasing showers locally…some generous
As this weather map shows, we find a 1029 millibar high pressure system located far to the northeast of the Hawaiian Islands Wednesday evening. At the same time, there’s two low pressure systems parked to the north-northwest and west of Hawaii. There’s a cold front that is associated with these low pressure centers. Our trade winds will build in strength into Friday, which will remain stronger and gusty into next week.
The following numbers represent the strongest wind gusts (mph), along with directions Wednesday evening:
22 Port Allen, Kauai – E
21 Kahuku, Oahu – NE
28 Molokai – NE
27 Kahoolawe – ESE
24 Kahului, Maui- NE
16 Lanai – NE
28 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 Wednesday night. Looking at this NOAA satellite picture we can’t see any lower level clouds, due to the vast amount of cloudiness being carried overhead from the west and southwest. We can use this looping satellite image to see a counterclockwise rotating low pressure system well west of Kauai. This low is pumping considerable amounts of high and middle level clouds over our island chain. Checking out this looping radar image we see showers falling locally over the ocean, some of which are approaching Oahu and Kauai from the south and southwest. It looks like there are some moderately heavy, or even heavy showers in this mix, although they hadn’t reached the islands at the time of this writing.
Sunset Commentary: The computer forecast models have been right on with their forecasts of an upper level low pressure system…moving into the area west of Kauai. As this satellite image shows, there are lots and lots of clouds in this trough, and its associated upper level low pressure cell. By the looks of things, we won’t be out from under this rather impressive canopy of multi-layered clouds…any time soon. Despite the presence of this upper and middle level moisture in the atmosphere, not many showers were falling yet, although it looks like it won't be long. The current thought is that showers will increase along with the expected strengthening of trade wind speeds soon, and perhaps remain a bit more than normally active into the weekend as well.
The big question is just how much influence this upper low pressure will have on enhancing showers that are around through the next several days. The closer that the upper low gets, along with its destabilizing cold air, will ultimately determine just how wet our weather becomes. As this looping radar image shows, there are moderately heavy showers over the ocean to the south and southwest of central islands. The bulk of these seem to be headed towards Oahu and Kauai at the time of this writing. The period with the best dynamics for heavier showers, or even a thunderstorm cell to form near or to the west of Kauai, would be through tonight into Thursday. Maui County and the Big Island should be out of range for the most generous shower activity.
Looking ahead, it appears that the trade winds will continue, and increase in strength going into the weekend. We may see small craft wind advisories go up over those windiest coasts and channels by Friday through Sunday. There may be a brief slow down in the wind speeds Monday into early Tuesday of next week, before a new high pressure system takes over duty, and our trade wind speeds accelerate again for several days, probably into the Thanksgiving holiday. Speaking of which, after consulting with the latest computer forecast models, there aren’t any rain bearing cold fronts on the horizon until after that major holiday…at least. It is the time of year however, when weather begins to change more quickly, so we’ll have to keep an eye out for any unscheduled changes in the current game plan.
Here in Kihei, Maui at around 530pm Wednesday evening, there were lots of clouds that were blanketing all of the islands. This looping satellite image shows these clouds covering the Aloha state. The looping radar image above shows locally heavy showers out over the ocean, which will bring increasing precipitation…some quite generous. The Kauai and Oahu end of the state will likely receive the most showers, as they are closest to the low pressure system west of the state. If you're out and about driving, please be careful as roads will become slippery as the rains arrive in places. I'll be back early Thursday morning with more information about this inclement weather pattern. I hope you have a great Wednesday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting: A new mouthwash developed by a microbiologist at the UCLA School of Dentistry is highly successful in targeting the harmful Streptococcus mutans bacteria that is the principal cause tooth decay and cavities. In a recent clinical study, 12 subjects who rinsed just one time with the experimental mouthwash experienced a nearly complete elimination of the S. mutans bacteria over the entire four-day testing period.
The findings from the small-scale study are published in the current edition of the international dental journal Caries Research. Dental caries, commonly known as tooth decay or cavities, is one of the most common and costly infectious diseases in the United States, affecting more than 50 percent of children and the vast majority of adults aged 18 and older.
Americans spend more than $70 billion each year on dental services, with the majority of that amount going toward the treatment of dental caries. This new mouthwash is the product of nearly a decade of research conducted by Wenyuan Shi, chair of the oral biology section at the UCLA School of Dentistry.
Shi developed a new antimicrobial technology called STAMP (specifically targeted anti-microbial peptides) with support from Colgate-Palmolive and from C3-Jian Inc., a company he founded around patent rights he developed at UCLA; the patents were exclusively licensed by UCLA to C3-Jian.
The mouthwash uses a STAMP known as C16G2. The human body is home to millions of different bacteria, some of which cause diseases such as dental caries but many of which are vital for optimum health. Most common broad-spectrum antibiotics, like conventional mouthwash, indiscriminately kill both benign and harmful pathogenic organisms and only do so for a 12-hour time period.
The overuse of broad-spectrum antibiotics can seriously disrupt the body's normal ecological balance, rendering humans more susceptible to bacterial, yeast and parasitic infections. Shi's Sm STAMP C16G2 investigational drug, tested in the clinical study, acts as a sort of "smart bomb," eliminating only the harmful bacteria and remaining effective for an extended period.
Based on the success of this limited clinical trial, C3-Jian Inc. has filed a New Investigational Drug application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which is expected to begin more extensive clinical trials in March 2012. If the FDA ultimately approves Sm STAMP C16G2 for general use, it will be the first such anti-dental caries drug since fluoride was licensed nearly 60 years ago.
"With this new antimicrobial technology, we have the prospect of actually wiping out tooth decay in our lifetime," said Shi, who noted that this work may lay the foundation for developing additional target-specific "smart bomb" antimicrobials to combat other diseases. "The work conducted by Dr. Shi's laboratory will help transform the concept of targeted antimicrobial therapy into a reality," said Dr. No-Hee Park, dean of the UCLA School of Dentistry. "We are proud that UCLA will become known as the birthplace of this significant treatment innovation."
Interesting2: The geological record holds clues that throughout Earth's 4.5-billion-year lifetime massive supervolcanoes, far larger than Mount St. Helens or Mount Pinatubo, have erupted. However, despite the claims of those who fear 2012, there's no evidence that such a supereruption is imminent.
What exactly is a "supervolcano" or a "supereruption?" Both terms are fairly new and favored by the media more than scientists, but geologists have begun to use them in recent years to refer to explosive volcanic eruptions that eject about ten thousand times the quantity of magma and ash that Mount St. Helens, one of the most explosive eruptions in recent years, expelled.
It's hard to comprehend an eruption of that scope, but Earth's surface has preserved distinctive clues of many massive supereruptions. Expansive layers of ash blanket large portions of many continents. And huge hollowed-out calderas — craters that can be as big as 60 miles (100 km) across left when a volcano collapses after emptying its entire magma chamber at once — serve as visceral reminders of past supereruptions in Indonesia, New Zealand, the United States, and Chile.
The eruption of these prehistoric supervolcanoes has affected massive areas. The magma flow of Mount Toba in Sumutra, which erupted some 74,000 years ago in what was likely the largest eruption that has ever occurred, released a staggering 700 cubic miles of magma and left a thick layer of ash over all of South Asia. For comparison, the quantity of magma erupted from Indonesia's Mount Krakatau in 1883, one of the largest eruptions in recorded history, was about 3 cubic miles.
Volcanologists continue to seek answers to many unanswered questions about supervolcanoes. For example, what triggers their eruptions, and why do they fail to erupt until their magma chambers achieve such enormous proportions? How does the composition compare to more familiar eruptions? And how can we predict when the next supervolcano will erupt?
But there's one thing that all experts agree on: supereruptions, though they occur, are exceedingly rare and the odds that one will occur in the lifetime of anybody reading this article are vanishingly small.
The most recent supereruption occurred in New Zealand about 26,000 years ago. The next most recent: the cataclysmic eruption of Mount Toba happened about 50,000 years earlier. In all, geologists have identified the remnant of about 50 supereruptions, though teams are in the process of evaluating a number of other possibilities.
That may sound like a large number. However, when one group of scientists used the count of all the known supervolcanoes to calculate the approximate frequency of eruptions, they found that only 1.4 supereruptions occur every one million years.
That's not to say that a supervolcano will occur every million years at regular intervals. Many millions of years could pass without a supereruption or many supervolcanoes could erupt in just a short period. The geological record does suggest supervolcanoes occur in clusters, but the clusters are not regular enough to serve as the basis for predictions of future eruptions.
Scientists have no way of predicting with perfect accuracy whether a supervolcano will occur in a given century, decade, or year — and that includes 2012. But they do keep close tabs on volcanically active areas around the world, and so far there's absolutely no sign of a supereruption looming anytime soon.
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