Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures (F) were recorded across the state of Hawaii Thursday…along with the minimum temperatures Thursday:

84 – 64  Lihue, Kauai
83 – 69  Honolulu, Oahu
77 – 66  Molokai AP
84 – 70  Kahului, Maui
82 – 71  Kailua Kona
84 – 64  Hilo, Hawaii

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

0.38  Kilohana, Kauai
0.16  Kahuku Trng, Oahu
0.23  Molokai
0.04  Lanai
0.14  Kahoolawe
0.64  Puu Kukui, Maui
0.86  Kawainui Stream, Big Island


The following numbers represent the strongest wind gusts (mph)…as of Thursday evening:


32  Port Allen, Kauai – NW
31  Kalaeloa, Oahu – WNW
21  Molokai – NW
31  Lanai – WNW
27  Kahoolawe – WSW
17  Hana, Maui – NW
31  Nene Cabin, Big Island – NW


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.



Aloha Paragraphs

http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/west/cpac/ir4.jpg
Northeast to southwest fragmented cloud bands stretched
across the eastern islands to Oahu…with another approaching
Kauai early Friday morning


http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/west/hi/ir4.jpg
Most areas are partly cloudy…with clear and cloudy areas locally


http://radar.weather.gov/Conus/RadarImg/hawaii.gif
Light to moderate showers associated with minor
bands of clouds



~~~ Hawaii Weather Narrative ~~~



Small Craft Advisory…for strong winds and rough seas across most
coastal and channel waters statewide

High Wind Warning…Big Island Summits – west winds 50-75 mph…
with gusts over 90 mph

High Surf Advisory…north and west shores of Kauai, Oahu, Molokai,
and for north shores of Maui


Winds from the west through northwest…continuing through Friday. Here’s the latest weather map, showing the Hawaiian Islands, and the rest of the North Pacific Ocean, along with a real-time wind profiler of the central Pacific. We find high pressure systems far to the east-northeast and west of the state, with a ridge of high pressure between these cells…positioned well to the south of the Big Island. At the same time, we have several low pressure systems to the northeast through northwest. Winds will be locally gusty at times from west through northwest. These winds will prevail through Friday…carrying a few ragged cloud bands across our area. The latest forecast calls for lighter northerly winds arriving Saturday, although then another cold front is expected early next week, prompting strengthening gusty southwest kona winds Sunday into Monday. The winds will come in from the west to northwest in the wake of the early week cold front…lasting into mid-week.

Clear to cloudy conditions with some showers continuing in an off and on manner through Friday. Here’s the looping radar image showing showers falling mostly over the nearby ocean, although over the islands in places too…being carried in our direction by the westerly wind flow. These long lasting westerly winds, which are typically located well north of the Hawaiian Islands, will remain over our tropical latitudes awhile longer. This will keep the southern edge of the mid-latitude storm track over our island chain into Friday. Therefore, we’ll find off and on light shower bands passing through at times, a few of which may be a touch heavier. Showers will back off temporarily during the weekend, before another cold front arrives early next week. This front will likely be more of a shower producer, than the weak and fragmented fronts that have passed over our area this week. I’ll be back with more information on all of the above, I hope you have a great Thursday night wherever you’re spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Here in Kula, Maui: It’s partly cloudy early this Thursday morning, with occasional light showers having fallen through the night. The latest light shower just arrived here at 555am. The winds are still gusty at times, enough to get my wind chimes sounding off between lighter periods. The air temperature near its minimal reading was near 58 degrees.

~~~ It’s not almost 10am, under mostly clear skies for a change! We haven’t seen such clear skies in quite a while, and its nice. The relatively cool west to northwest breezes are still blowing, but not overly strong in most areas…with a few exceptions. The air temperature is 63.3 degrees, and may rise up to near 70 this afternoon. At the same time down below, near sea level in Kahului, the temperature was 76 degrees at the same time. Interestingly enough, it was very chilly atop the Haleakala Crater…where the thermometer was showing only 37 degrees!

~~~ We’ve pushed into the early afternoon now at 105pm, under clear to partly cloudy skies. Winds are up and down, ranging from light to quite gusty. The air temperature was 66 degrees, while quite a bit warmer at 82 degrees at the Kahului airport at the same time. It’s now 210pm, and I can see some showery looking clouds offshore to the north, which may be trying to push in over Maui a little later this afternoon.

~~~ It’s now 820pm in the evening, and I can see from all the stars, that the clouds have cleared nicely. The wind’s coming in more from a northwesterly direction now, bringing cooler air in on us. Looking at my trusty thermometer, it’s reading a chilly 54.3 degrees. As the winds are still blowing, it may keep our temperature from dropping into the 40’s, although if this breeze calms down…that might be another story.


World-wide tropical cyclone activity:


>>> Atlantic Ocean: The last regularly scheduled Tropical Weather Outlook of the 2014 Atlantic hurricane season…has occurred. Routine issuance of the Tropical Weather Outlook will resume on June 1, 2015. During the off-season, Special Tropical Weather Outlooks will be issued as conditions warrant.


Here’s a satellite image of the Atlantic Ocean

>>> Caribbean Sea: The last regularly scheduled Tropical Weather Outlook of the 2014 Atlantic hurricane season…has occurred. Routine issuance of the Tropical Weather Outlook will resume on June 1, 2015. During the off-season, Special Tropical Weather Outlooks will be issued as conditions warrant.


>>> Gulf of Mexico: The last regularly scheduled Tropical Weather Outlook of the 2014 Atlantic hurricane season…has occurred. Routine issuance of the Tropical Weather Outlook will resume on June 1, 2015. During the off-season, Special Tropical Weather Outlooks will be issued as conditions warrant.


Here’s a satellite image of the Caribbean Sea…and the Gulf of Mexico.

>>> Eastern Pacific: The last regularly scheduled Tropical Weather Outlook of the 2014 North Pacific hurricane season…has occurred. Routine issuance of the Tropical Weather Outlook will resume on May 15, 2015. During the off-season, Special Tropical Weather Outlooks will be issued as conditions warrant.


Here’s a wide satellite image that covers the entire area between Mexico, out through the central Pacific…to the International Dateline.


Here’s the link to the National Hurricane Center (NHC)


>>> Central Pacific: The central north Pacific hurricane season has officially ended. Routine issuance of the tropical weather outlook will resume on June 1, 2015. During the off-season, special tropical weather outlooks will be issued as conditions warrant.


Here’s a link to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center (CPHC)


>>> Northwest Pacific Ocean: There are no active tropical cyclones


 >>> South Pacific Ocean: There are no active tropical cyclones

>>> North and South Indian Oceans: There are no active tropical cyclones

Here’s a link to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC)

 

Interesting: Pigeons are smarter than you think! – The more scientists study pigeons, the more they learn how their brains–no bigger than the tip of an index finger–operate in ways not so different from our own.


In a new study from the University of Iowa, researchers found that pigeons can categorize and name both natural and manmade objects–and not just a few objects. These birds categorized 128 photographs into 16 categories, and they did so simultaneously.


Ed Wasserman, UI professor of psychology and corresponding author of the study, says the finding suggests a similarity between how pigeons learn the equivalent of words and the way children do.


“Unlike prior attempts to teach words to primates, dogs, and parrots, we used neither elaborate shaping methods nor social cues,” Wasserman says of the study, published online in the journal Cognition. “And our pigeons were trained on all 16 categories simultaneously, a much closer analog of how children learn words and categories.”


For researchers like Wasserman, who has been studying animal intelligence for decades, this latest experiment is further proof that animals–whether primates, birds, or dogs–are smarter than once presumed and have more to teach scientists.


“It is certainly no simple task to investigate animal cognition; But, as our methods have improved, so too have our understanding and appreciation of animal intelligence,” he says. “Differences between humans and animals must indeed exist: many are already known. But, they may be outnumbered by similarities. Our research on categorization in pigeons suggests that those similarities may even extend to how children learn words.”


Wasserman says the pigeon experiment comes from a project published in 1988 and featured in The New York Times in which UI researchers discovered pigeons could distinguish among four categories of objects.


This time, the UI researchers used a computerized version of the “name game” in which three pigeons were shown 128 black-and-white photos of objects from 16 basic categories: baby, bottle, cake, car, cracker, dog, duck, fish, flower, hat, key, pen, phone, plan, shoe, tree. They then had to peck on one of two different symbols: the correct one for that photo and an incorrect one that was randomly chosen from one of the remaining 15 categories. The pigeons not only succeeded in learning the task, but they reliably transferred the learning to four new photos from each of the 16 categories.


Pigeons have long been known to be smarter than your average bird–or many other animals, for that matter. Among their many talents, pigeons have a “homing instinct” that helps them find their way home from hundreds of miles away, even when blindfolded. They have better eyesight than humans and have been trained by the U. S. Coast Guard to spot orange life jackets of people lost at sea. They carried messages for the U.S. Army during World Wars I and II, saving lives and providing vital strategic information.


UI researchers say their expanded experiment represents the first purely associative animal model that captures an essential ingredient of word learning–the many-to-many mapping between stimuli and responses.


“Ours is a computerized task that can be provided to any animal, it doesn’t have to be pigeons,” says UI psychologist Bob McMurray, another author of the study. “These methods can be used with any type of animal that can interact with a computer screen.”


McMurray says the research shows the mechanisms by which children learn words might not be unique to humans.


“Children are confronted with an immense task of learning thousands of words without a lot of background knowledge to go on,” he says. “For a long time, people thought that such learning is special to humans. What this research shows is that the mechanisms by which children solve this huge problem may be mechanisms that are shared with many species.”


Wasserman acknowledges the recent pigeon study is not a direct analogue of word learning in children and more work needs to be done. Nonetheless, the model used in the study could lead to a better understanding of the associative principles involved in children’s word learning.


“That’s the parallel that we’re pursuing,” he says, “but a single project–however innovative it may be–will not suffice to answer such a provocative question.”