Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / July 22-23, 2008

Aloha Paragraphs



Breezy trade winds into Wednesday
Photo Credit: Flickr.com

We’ll find increasingly strong trade winds blowing across the Hawaiian Islands into Wednesday. Strengthening, trade wind producing high pressure centers to the north of Hawaii, will be the source of our temporary surge in trade winds. At the same time, a former eastern Pacific tropical cyclone (named Elida), is passing by to the south of our islands. The combination of high pressure to our north, and the low pressure vortex moving by to our south…will enhance our local trade winds noticeably. The NWS has issued a small craft wind advisory for most of our marine waters, with a wind advisory now in effect for the summit of the Haleakala Crater on Maui, and the summits on the Big Island as well. These blustery winds will calm down already starting Thursday, and remain at the more normal moderately strong realms through the rest of the week…into next week.

Note: Winds were gusting to just below 50 mph at Maalaea Bay, Maui at 3pm Tuesday afternoon.

This surge of trade winds will carry increasing showers to the islands, especially to the windward sides. The leading edge of the tropical moisture associated with, what was Elida, arrived over the Big Island Tuesday morning, which will move up the island chain to Maui during the evening…with a chance of bring showers to the other islands Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. The most generous showers will fall along the windward sides of the Big Island. There are some isolated thunderstorms embedded in this rich tropical moisture, which could bring localized flooding to parts of the Big Island.  Here’s a looping radar image, so we can monitor the incoming showers. Drier weather will follow in the wake of this temporary surge in shower activity by Thursday, remaining nice through the rest of the week.

~~~ It’s early Tuesday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin writing this last section of today’s narrative. We’re experiencing locally windy and wet trade wind weather in places. Almost everywhere has experienced, or will see stronger than normal trade winds, although its still not clear exactly how far north, up the island chain, the showery weather will extend. The Big Island will see lots of showers, some heavy. The islands of Maui County may see some of this action too, although not as much as the Big Island. Oahu and Kauai are less likely to see this moisture, although will find fairly ordinary trade wind showers arriving at times too. If you click on this satellite image, you will see what’s left of Elida, to the south of the Hawaiian Islands…as it spins westward. Here’s a looping picture showing the tropical disturbance in motion.

~~~ Elida was a hurricane earlier in her life while in the eastern Pacific, but is now simply a low level swirl of clouds, with towering cumulus clouds and thunderstorms popping-up around the center of this tropical disturbance. As this vortex (area of low pressure) moves away to the west later Wednesday into Thursday, our trade winds will slow down, and our shower activity will diminish. All this wind has kicked up high surf along our east facing showers. As we get into Thursday, the winds will calm down, the showers will decrease, and we’ll push back into a normal summery trade wind weather pattern through the rest of the week. I’ll be back very early Wednesday morning with your next new weather narrative from paradise. I hope you have a great Tuesday night wherever you happen to be spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting:

Based on the projected path of Tropical Storm Dolly, the U.S. Census Bureau today calculated that about 1.5 million people could feel the storm’s effects as it makes landfall along the Texas coast. The National Hurricane Center predicts that Dolly could arrive near the southern most part of Texas by late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning. A hurricane warning is in effect for the Texas coast from Brownsville to Corpus Christi. A hurricane warning means that hurricane conditions are expected within the warning area within the next 24 hours.

The storm, currently in the Gulf of Mexico, is about 230 miles southeast of Brownsville, with a population of more than 172,000. According to the Census Bureau’s 2006 American Community Survey, the median housing value in Brownsville (the county seat of CameronCounty) is $68,500. Nearly 60 percent of the homes were built before 1990. The median household income is about $26,000, and nearly 41 percent of the population live in poverty. Additionally, about 12 percent of the 50,000 occupied homes are without access to a vehicle.

Interesting2:

After 30 years of waiting, the most famous tortoise on the Galapagos Islands, Lonesome George, may finally become a father and promote his robust genes for another generation. Six healthy-looking eggs were found in the compound where the 80- year-old tortoise lives with females of his species, national media in Ecuador reported Tuesday, citing national park officials. George, said by scientists at the Charles Darwin Research Station to be one of the last known of his tortoise subspecies, was found in 1972 on the islands, but has not fathered any hatchlings. To ensure some female offspring, scientists have taken some of the eggs and put them in a brooder set at 29.5 degrees Celsius known to favor females. The others are being kept at 28 degrees, to favor male offspring.

But scientists must wait 120 to 130 days, the normal gestation period, to even find out whether fertilization took place, officials at the Charles Darwin Station on Santa Cruz Island said. The search for tortoises like George, which can reach 270 kilograms, has taken scientists to Pinta. They have searched in vain for ones that have the characteristic long neck like George, but the 90-kilogram creature apparently took a shine to the females of the subspecies Geochelone Beckl, officials said. The Galapagos Islands are located in the Pacific Ocean about 1,000 kilometers off the coast of Ecuador, to which they belong. Charles Darwin, the19th Century father of the theory of evolution, took inspiration for his study from the exotic and singular wildlife found on the isolated island group.









Interesting3:

Welcome to the German garbage crisis: the country doesn’t have too much, but too little to feed its furnaces. Since legislation went into force in 2005 banning untreated household garbage from landfills, incineration plants have been built all over the country. Many use the heat to produce steam or hot water and some turn turbines to produce electricity. "In effect, the flow of garbage has been diverted into incineration," explained economist Christoph Partisch of Dresdner Bank in Frankfurt. What is more, solid waste can be a cheap fuel alternative to gas and oil, which are soaring in price. On its own, the refuse is still worthless and a nuisance, but it can be a desirable material for owners of a waste-to-energy plant, since they not only receive money to incinerate it but also a small amount of income from the heat it gives off.

Under German government legislation, such energy plants also gain a valuable exemption from carbon-emissions rules. They are free to release carbon dioxide gas because they do not use up fossil fuel. The result is likely to be a shortage of solid waste to feed the furnaces of Germany. German households eject about 14 million tons of solid waste a year, not counting their paper, glass, old packaging and compost which are collected separately to be recycled. The Environment Ministry in Berlin says there are so far 68 incineration plants with an annual capacity of nearly 18 million tons to burn household garbage as well as factory and office waste

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Interesting4: Disease spread to wild bees from commercially bred bees used for pollination in agriculture greenhouses may be playing a role in the mysterious decline in North American bee populations, researchers said on Tuesday. Bees pollinate numerous crops, and scientists have been expressing alarm over their falling numbers in recent years in North America. Experts warn the bee disappearance eventually could harm agriculture and the food supply. Scientists have been struggling to understand the recent decline in various bee populations in North America. For example, a virus brought from Australia has been implicated in massive honeybee deaths last year.

Canadian researchers studied another type of bee, the bumblebee, near two large greenhouse operations in southern Ontario where commercially reared pollination bees are used in the growing of crops such as tomatoes, bell peppers and cucumbers. The researchers first observed that the commercial bumblebees regularly flew in and out of vents in the sides of the greenhouses, escaping from the facilities. The researchers then devised a mathematical model to predict how disease might spread from this "spillover" of runaway commercial bees to their wild cousins. The model predicted a relatively slow build-up of infection in nearby wild bumblebee populations over weeks or months culminating in a burst of transmission generating an epidemic wave that could affect nearly all of wild bees exposed.