Hawaiian Islands Weather details & Aloha paragraphs / December 21-22, 2011

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

Lihue, Kauai –                   78
Honolulu airport, Oahu –    82  (record high temperature for the date…87F degrees – 1995)
Kaneohe, Oahu –               78
Molokai airport –                76
Kahului airport, Maui –        80  
Kona airport –                    81
Hilo airport, Hawaii –          77

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

Barking Sands, Kauai – 80
Princeville, Kauai – 70

Haleakala Crater – 43 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea –        32 (near 13,800 feet on the Big Island)

Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live web cam on the summit of near 13,800 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. Here's the Haleakala Crater webcam on Maui…which is working only sometimes lately.

 Aloha Paragraphs

Strong and gusty trade winds, passing showers…
most frequent and heavy on the Big Island
Gale Warnings over the major channels between
Molokai and Maui…and between Maui and the Big Island –
Wind Advisory over the summit area of the Haleakala Crater on Maui
Today is the Winter Solstice – the first day of winter

As this weather map shows…we have a new high pressure system located to the north of the Hawaiian Islands Wednesday evening.  At the same time, we have other high pressure systems far to the northeast. The southern most of these high pressure systems has a ridge that runs southwest from its center, into the area north and northwest of the state…actually all the way into the western Pacific Ocean. At the same time, we find a surface trough of low pressure to the south of the islands, which is helping to enhance the strength of our local trade wind speeds. These trade winds are expected to continue through the rest of this week…into the first part of next week.

33                 Port Allen, Kauai – NE
43                    Waianae Valley, Oahu – SE
42                    Molokai – NE
40                    Kahoolawe – E
39                 Kaupo Gap, Maui – NE
47                    Lanai – NE
43                    Kawaihae, 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 evening.  Looking at this NOAA satellite picture we find that the high and middle level clouds are located to the southwest through southeast and east to the northeast of the islands at this hour. We can use this looping satellite image to see lots of towering cumulus and thunderstorms developing to the southwest and east over the ocean, associated with a counter-clockwise rotating upper level low pressure system…well south of the islands. Checking out this looping radar image we see showers over the ocean, most of which are light to moderately heavy, although some are heavier to the southeast of the Big Island.

1.75               Kilohana, Kauai
1.87               Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.50               Molokai
0.00               Lanai
0.00               Kahoolawe
3.81               Puu Kukui, Maui
3.86                 Waiakea Uka, Big Island

Sunset Commentary:  The extra strong and gusty trade winds continue to buffet the Hawaiian Islands on this night of late winter 2011. High pressure to the northeast, and a low pressure trough to the south and southeast of the Big Island are teaming up to keep this blustery reality over us. There’s a chance that these winds will diminish a little Thursday and Friday, although not so much that most folks will even notice however. The computer models show the trade winds continuing on through the weekend, and right on into early next week.

Meanwhile, we have small craft wind advisory flags up across our entire marine environment, keeping very choppy and rough ocean conditions in place from the north shore of Kauai…right down to South Point on the Big Island. All this wind has triggered a high surf advisory too, with larger than normal waves breaking along our eastern beaches. At the same time, we have unusual gale warnings in force across the channels between Molokai and Maui, and the Alenuihaha Channel between Maui and the Big Island. This very strong trade wind episode isn’t just active near sea level, but is deep enough to be causing strong winds atop the Haleakala Crater on Maui…where a wind advisory is now in effect too.

As all this wind is happening, we have also had localized heavy rains here and there, mostly over Maui and the Big Island…closest to the atmospheric destabilizing upper level low pressure system near the Big Island.The largest rainfall figure at the time of this writing was an impressive 6.67″ atop the West Maui Mountains on Maui. The mountains on Oahu, and in places on the Big Island have been wet too, with the other islands finding showers along their windward sides for the most part.

Looking ahead a few days towards the Christmas holiday weekend, there’s still a bit of a question about which way it will go. The models the last several days have called for drier weather Saturday and Sunday, although the most recent ones aren’t quite as positive about that drying out, with the chance of the showers keeping the windward sides soggy through the weekend. It might be wise to give those models another couple of runs, before we try and be too confident about what the Christmas Eve and Christmas Day weather outlook might be just yet.

~~~ I'm just about ready to head back upcountry to Kula, back out into the windy weather. Today was considerably less cloudy than expected, although I must admit, I didn't hear anyone complaining very much about the sunshine! There is still the chance that we'll continue to see passing showers along our windward coasts and slopes, a good chance through the next couple of days. At the moment, the heaviest showers in our area of the north central Pacific are located to the south and southwest, and east of the Big Island of Hawaii. The other islands will have a few showers spraying their way along the windward sides, but its hard to see what will be carried our way on the stiff trade winds…due to the thick high clouds to our east. This satellite image shows you what I mean. I'll be back early Thursday morning with your next new weather narrative, to let you know where any showers are, and more about the windy weather too. I hope you have a great Wednesday night, the first winter night of late 2011! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting:   A punishing drought in Texas has not only damaged crops, killed cattle, and led to widespread fires, but has also killed off a significant portion of the state's trees: between 100 and 500 million trees have perished to drought stress according to preliminary analysis. The estimate does not include tree mortality caused by fires. The drought has been linked to La Niña conditions, which causes drying in the Southern U.S., and has likely been exacerbated by global climate change.

In all around 10 percent of Texas' forests may have been lost to the drought—so far. Trees are expected to continue suffering and dying in Texas even if rain comes, however forecasters predict dry conditions will remain in Texas for another six months at least. This is a generational event," Barry Ward, executive director of Trees for Houston told Reuters. "Mature trees take 20 or 30 years to re-grow. This will make an aesthetic difference for decades to come."

Interesting2: As the Philippines begins to bury more than a 1,000 disaster victims in mass graves, Philippine President Benigno Aquino has ordered an investigation into last weekend's flash flood and landslide, including looking at the role of illegal logging. Officials have pointed to both climate change and vast deforestation as likely exacerbating the disaster. "We have no desire to engage in finger-pointing or to assign blame at a time like this.

Yet, we have an obligation to find out exactly what has happened," Aquino said, according to the Christian Science Monitor. On Friday, Typhoon Sendong brought 12 hours of continuous rain to Mindanao Island; reports say rivers flooded and villagers were crushed by logs or drowned.

The Philippines has declared a national disaster with the storm affecting 338,000 people in 13 provinces. The storm is now the deadliest of 2011. President Aquino stated that he was concerned a logging ban was violated, worsening the disaster. In February, following flooding that killed around 40 people, Aquino banned logging across the Philippines arguing that deforestation had made much of the country dangerously prone to landslide and flooding.

However, a priest who worked in the area, Sean McDonagh, told The Universe Catholic Weekly that decades of deforestation was to blame for the scale of the disaster. Much of the region was converted from rainforest into pineapple plantations. "The deforestation was literally criminal," he said.

"If the rainforest in the area had been left intact, even 12 hours of continuous rain would not cause this devastation. The rainforest canopy would stop the torrential rain from hitting the ground directly. Trees would also absorb the water. While you might have local floods, you would not have the disaster which happened the other night."