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

Lihue, Kauai –                   79
Honolulu airport, Oahu –    83  
Kaneohe, Oahu –               79
Molokai airport –                78
Kahului airport, Maui –        81  
Kona airport –                    79
Hilo airport, Hawaii –          78

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
Hilo, Hawaii – 71

Haleakala Crater – 43 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea –         M (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

http://www.taboragallery.com/diamondinthenight.gif
Gusty trade winds, just a few passing windward showers
Small craft wind advisories eastern islands –
High surf advisory north and west
shores…Kauai down through Maui –
Wind advisory Haleakala Crater on Maui…
and the summits on the Big Island
Artist Credit: Roy Gonzalez Tabora



 

As this weather map shows…we have a near 1033 millibar high pressure system far to the east-northeast of the Hawaiian Islands Wednesday evening.  This high pressure cell is well offshore from San Diego, California, with a very long ridge of high pressure extending west-southwest from its center. This ridge runs by the Hawaiian Islands, up around 27 degrees north latitude, and then further west across the International Dateline…into the western Pacific. The location of this high pressure ridge is keeping our very long lasting strong and gusty trade winds blowing across Hawaii. There's forecast to be a gradual reduction in our wind speeds as we move through this last week of the year, becoming generally lighter into early next week.

The following numbers represent the strongest wind gusts (mph), along with directions Wednesday evening:

29                 Waimea Heights, Kauai – E
28                 Kahuku, Oahu – NE
32                 Molokai – NE
31                 Kahoolawe – ENE
32                 Kahului, Maui – NE
28                 Lanai – NE
35                    Puu Mali, 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 see areas of  low level clouds coming into our windward sides at the time of this writing…generally light however. We can use this looping satellite image to see towering cumulus and thunderstorms developing over the ocean far east of the Big Island. High cirrus clouds are evident to our northeast through northwest…as well as to our southwest and south. Checking out this looping radar image we see showers over the ocean, most of which are generally light, coming into our windward sides, most notably on the Big Island and Maui through Molokai at the moment.

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

0.16               Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.20               Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.00               Molokai
0.00               Lanai
0.00               Kahoolawe
0.08               Puu Kukui, Maui
0.66                 Kawainui Stream, Big Island

Sunset Commentary:  The trade winds are getting towards the end of their long lasting windy regime. The winds were still up into the 30+ mph range today, with the Kaupo Gap on Maui…just topping the 40 mph mark Wednesday afternoon. These winds are still rather gusty, although not as strong as what we’ve seen the last couple of weeks or so. We’ll see a stepping down of our trade wind speeds over the next several days, as they mellow-out into the light to almost moderately strong range during the upcoming New Year’s holiday weekend. The forecast models suggest that they may become even lighter than that as we move into the first day or two of 2012.

The overlying atmosphere is pretty dry and stable at this time, which is limiting our shower activity. As this satellite image shows, there are quite a number of clouds upstream of the windward sides. As noted above however, the winds will gradually be letting up, and with the dry air mass over us, showers will be limited. These north and east facing coasts and slopes have definitely been wet, or at least have been lately from Oahu down through Maui and the Big Island. There’s no indication of any major changes back towards the wet side of things through the rest of 2011.

Here in Kihei, Maui at around 530pm HST, it was clear to partly cloudy. As noted above, our trade winds continued to be on the strong and gusty side of the wind spectrum…and will remain so into Thursday. As we push into Friday, our winds will finally start to back off, becoming even lighter by the upcoming New Year's holiday weekend…into the first couple of days of 2012. Showers will fall along our windward sides, especially the Big Island, Maui and Molokai. These showers will then ease up through the rest of the work week, with our leeward sides continuing their generally dry and sunny stance during the days. This weekend the winds will become light enough, that a convective weather pattern will slide into place, with clear cool mornings giving way to afternoon clouds, and perhaps a few showers over the mountain slopes, especially on the leeward sides. ~~~ All of this sounds pretty good, with nothing untoward coming up through the end of the year. I'll be back early Thursday morning with your next new weather narrative from paradise, I hope you have a great Wednesday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn. 

Interesting:  Given the incredible amounts of energy in a supernova explosion — as much as the sun creates during its entire lifetime — another erroneous doomsday theory is that such an explosion could happen in 2012 and harm life on Earth. However, given the vastness of space and the long times between supernovae, astronomers can say with certainty that there is no threatening star close enough to hurt Earth. Astronomers estimate that, on average, about one or two supernovae explode each century in our galaxy.

But for Earth's ozone layer to experience damage from a supernova, the blast must occur less than 50 light-years away. All of the nearby stars capable of going supernova are much farther than this. Any planet with life on it near a star that goes supernova would indeed experience problems.

X- and gamma-ray radiation from the supernova could damage the ozone layer, which protects us from harmful ultraviolet light in the sun's rays. The less ozone there is, the more UV light reaches the surface. At some wavelengths, just a 10 percent increase in ground-level UV can be lethal to some organisms, including phytoplankton near the ocean surface.

Because these organisms form the basis of oxygen production on Earth and the marine food chain, any significant disruption to them could cascade into a planet-wide problem. Another explosive event, called a gamma-ray burst (GRB), is often associated with supernovae.

When a massive star collapses on itself — or, less frequently, when two compact neutron stars collide — the result is the birth of a black hole. As matter falls toward a nascent black hole, some of it becomes accelerated into a particle jet so powerful that it can drill its way completely through the star before the star's outermost layers even have begun to collapse.

If one of the jets happens to be directed toward Earth, orbiting satellites detect a burst of highly energetic gamma rays somewhere in the sky. These bursts occur almost daily and are so powerful that they can be seen across billions of light-years.

A gamma-ray burst could affect Earth in much the same way as a supernova — and at much greater distance — but only if its jet is directly pointed our way. Astronomers estimate that a gamma-ray burst could affect Earth from up to 10,000 light-years away with each separated by about 15 million years, on average.

So far, the closest burst on record, known as GRB 031203, was 1.3 billion light-years away. As with impacts, our planet likely has already experienced such events over its long history, but there's no reason to expect a gamma-ray burst in our galaxy to occur in the near future, much less in December 2012.