Hawaiian Islands Weather details & Aloha Paragraphs / June 5-6, 2015

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

83 – 72  Lihue, Kauai
86 – 73  Honolulu, Oahu
86 – 63  Molokai AP
88 – 65  Kahului, Maui
87 – 75  Kailua Kona
85 – 69  Hilo, Hawaii

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

0.04  N Wailua Ditch, Kauai
0.07  Mililani, Oahu
0.01  Puu Alii, Molokai
0.00  Lanai
0.00  Kahoolawe
0.02  Hana AP, Maui
0.27  Saddle Quarry, Big Island

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

04  Mana, Kauai – NW
13  Kii, Oahu – SE
17  Molokai – ESE
13  Lanai – NE
18  Kahoolawe – NE
08  Kaupo Gap, Maui – NW
15  Kealakomo, Big Island – ESE

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

A very late season cold front to the northwest of the islands is
approaching / Category 4 Hurricane Blanca remains active in
the eastern Pacific…there is no threat to the Hawaiian Islands –
more information below

Clear to partly cloudy, clouds approaching from the east,
mostly over the Big Island and eventually Maui –
looping version of this image

Showers are offshore of the Big Island…falling
locally over the islands

Here’s the looping radar image for the Hawaiian Islands

~~~ Hawaii Weather Narrative ~~~

The trade winds will become lighter through this weekend…then pick up again early next week. 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 a large high pressure system well to the northeast of the state…with a ridge of high pressure running west-southwest, ending up not far to the north of Hawaii. At the same time, there’s a low pressure system, with its associated trough in the deeper tropics…well to the south-southeast of the islands. Finally, there’s a very late season cold front approaching the state from the northwest, which is pushing the ridge of high pressure closer to our area. This in turn will further weaken our trade winds into the weekend, with daytime sea breezes. The weather models show the trade winds rebounding early next week.

We’re moving into a convective weather pattern…with localized upcountry afternoon showers. The windward sides will see a few showers too…which will get carried our way on the weakening trade wind flow. A very late season cold front will stall northwest of the state over the next couple of days. This front will help to turn the trade winds off, or at least diminish them considerably during the weekend. This will prompt a convective weather pattern, with cloud buildups over and around the mountains during the late mornings through early evening hours, along with a few localized showers. The early morning hours will be somewhat cooler than normal, although temperatures will become slightly warmer than normal during the days. The atmosphere will remain quite dry and stable, limiting the amount of showers through Sunday. As the trade winds return Monday onwards, they’ll bring back windward showers and more typical late spring weather conditions. I’ll be back with more updates on all of the above, I hope you have a great Friday night wherever you’re spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Here on Maui...early Friday morning near sunrise, skies are almost totally clear everywhere on Maui. The air temperature here in Kula at 535am was 51.9 degrees, 66 down at the Kahului airport, and 45 degrees atop the Haleakala Crater. 

– I drove down to Kihei this morning, to the PDC office, as I attended a meeting. There were a couple of members of the NWS office in Honolulu on the island, and I talked to them about the making of my PDC weather walls below. These products are getting really good use across the world, which I’m very happy about! It was pretty hot down there, at least compared to the nice cool weather up here in Kula.

Friday Evening Film – A couple of friends and I are heading down to one of the two theaters in Kahului, to see a film that I must admit…I’m not terribly excited about. I may change my mind, although left to my own devices, I probably would have given a pass to. It’s called Tomorrowland, starring, George Clooney, Hugh Laurie, Raffey Cassidy, Kathryn Hahn, Thomas Robinson, and Brittany Robertson…among many others. The synopsis: From Disney comes two-time Oscar (R) winner Brad Bird’s riveting, mystery adventure “Tomorrowland”. Bound by a shared destiny, former boy-genius Frank (Clooney), jaded by disillusionment, and Casey (Britt Robertson), a bright, optimistic teen bursting with scientific curiosity, embark on a danger-filled mission to unearth the secrets of an enigmatic place somewhere in time and space known only as “Tomorrowland.” What they must do there changes the world-and them-forever.  Here’s a trailer, and tomorrow morning I’ll let you know what we thought.

>>> Atlantic Ocean: There are no active tropical cyclones

Here’s a satellite image of the Atlantic Ocean

>>> Caribbean Sea: There are no active tropical cyclones

>>> Gulf of Mexico: There are no active tropical cyclones

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

>>> Eastern Pacific:

The National Hurricane Center continues issuing advisories on 
Hurricane 02E (Blanca), located about 360 miles south of
of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Here's the NHC graphical track map.

Maximum sustained winds are near 130 mph with higher gusts...maintaining

this strength, and then gradual weakening through the remainder

of Blanca's life cycle

Here's a looping satellite image of this system - and what the

hurricane models are showing for category 4 Hurricane Blanca

 

1.) A low pressure area is expected to form early next week a few
hundred miles south or south-southeast of the Gulf of Tehuantepec.
Subsequent gradual development of this system is possible as it
moves slowly northwestward or northward.

* Formation chance through 48 hours...low...near 0 percent

* Formation chance through 5 days...low...20 percent

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: There are no active tropical cyclones

No tropical cyclones are expected through the next 48 hours

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: El Niños and Bunny Booms – At times during the past 10,000 years, cottontails and hares reproduced like rabbits and their numbers surged when the El Niño weather pattern drenched the Pacific Coast with rain, according to a University of Utah analysis of 3,463 bunny bones.

The study of ancient rabbit populations at a Baja California site may help scientists better understand how mammals that range from the coast to the interior will respond to climate change, says anthropology doctoral student Isaac Hart. He is first author of the study to be published in the July issue of the journal Quaternary Research.

During the past 10,000 years, the number of El Niños per century “correlates very strongly with the total rabbit population in Baja California, as well as relative abundance of the moisture-loving species of rabbits,” Hart says.

“There weren’t many El Niños from 10,000 to 5,000 years ago,” perhaps zero to two per century, says the study’s senior author, anthropology professor Jack Broughton. “After 5,000 years ago, there was a relatively dramatic increase in frequency of El Niños in Baja, and the rabbits go through the roof.”

Broughton says the new study “is the first long-term – in thousands of years – record of vertebrates responding to El Niño or any other climate system” and the resulting rainfall-caused increase in plants the rabbits ate. “Our study contributes to the growing understanding of variables that enable threatened species to persist despite the myriad threats they face in an uncertain climatic future. The longer record we’ve provided here should ultimately allow us to better predict how El Niño will vary in the future, and how animal populations will vary as a result.”

Compared with earlier studies of lagomorphs – rabbits, hares and pikas – in Utah and elsewhere in the Great Basin during the last 10,000 years, the new study shows lagomorphs “are harmed less by temperature changes on the coast than in the interior,” Broughton says. “Threatened species will be more vulnerable as distance increases from both the temperature-ameliorating effect of the Pacific Ocean and the reach of El Niño-based precipitation.”

The study involved analysis of 3,463 cottontail rabbit and hare bones separated from more than 1 million small bird and animal bones deposited over the past 10,000 years at Abrigo de los Escorpiones – Shelter of the Scorpions – a rock cliff shelter near the ocean 95 miles south of Tijuana, Mexico.

Hart and Broughton conducted the study with University of Alberta archaeologist Ruth Gruhn. She excavated the site a decade ago with Alan Bryan, her late husband. Funding was from the Ruth Eleanor Bamberger and John Ernest Bamberger Memorial Foundation via the University of Utah Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (Hart began the study as an undergraduate) and the Natural History Museum of Utah.

Bankers boxes of bones

Fifteen bankers boxes containing 1 million bones of various animals from Shelter of the Scorpions were shipped to Utah in 2008. The rabbit study is the first published on any of the bones. All the bones ultimately will be sent to a Baja museum.

The 3,463 rabbit and hare bones averaged about 2 inches in size, and ranged from one-thirteenth of an inch up to jackrabbit leg bones 4 or 5 inches long.

Hart spent 2010-2014 identifying each bunny bone as one of three Baja species, using 13 skull and jaw measurements, then comparing their proportions to 80 museum specimens of the same species.

“This study shows you can ask really detailed questions about prehistory given the right set of bones,” Hart says.

The study involved bones from two species of cottontail rabbits – Sylvilagus bachmani, the brush rabbit, and Sylvilagus audubonii, the desert cottontail – and one species of hare, Lepus californicus, the black-tailed jackrabbit.

The brush rabbit eats grasses and forbs in or near dense brush, and thrives when there is more moisture. The desert cottontail has a similar diet but can tolerate drier, more open conditions. The jackrabbit thrives in sparse vegetation.

Those three species accounted for all the bunny bones found at the Shelter of the Scorpions, which is not a cave, but a volcanic rock outcrop that forms a cliff on which eagles, hawks, falcons, owls, other raptors and ravens sat and ate their prey. For millennia, the bones fell to the bottom of the cliff and accumulated in deposits called middens. (Gruhn named the shelter for scorpions there when excavation began.)

Ancient humans also used the shelter and left stone tools and ash from fires. The rabbit and hare bones lack burns or cut marks, so they were dumped by birds, not people.

There is no direct record of ancient El Niños at the Baja site. So Hart and Broughton used a detailed, 10,000-year history of the climate phenomenon recorded in lake deposits in Ecuador as a proxy for the Baja site. Hart says El Niño is a global phenomenon, and its characteristic warming of the eastern Pacific results in heavier rains along the Pacific coast of North, Central and South America.

The findings: El Niños controlled Baja bunny populations

The study used four indices of bunny abundance to analyze how the animals responded to El Niños. All four had statistically significant correlations with the number of El Niños per century and higher eastern Pacific sea-surface temperatures.

During centuries with warmer seas and more El Niños, there were (1) more total rabbit and hare bones, meaning higher populations, (2) more abundant moisture-loving brush rabbits relative to the cottontails and jackrabbits, (3) more abundant brush rabbits and desert cottontails together relative to dry-loving jackrabbits, and (4) more unfused, juvenile bunny bones relative to fused, adult bones. That reflects soaring rabbit and hare populations – and a resulting high proportion of juveniles – when El Niños were frequent.

“There’s been much work on the long-term trends in small mammals in western North America,” Broughton says. “Almost all that work has been within interior sites, not the coast. For those interior sites – many are in Utah – temperature change was documented as the most critical factor in influencing small mammal populations over the last 10,000 years. This study is the most detailed of a coastal site over such a long period of time, and it shows precipitation is the dominant factor.”