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

80 – 73  Lihue, Kauai
82 – 73  Honolulu, Oahu
77 – 71  Molokai
82 – 70  Kahului AP, Maui
81 – 67  Hilo, Hawaii

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

3.36  Kilohana, Kauai
2.10  Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
1.35  Puu Alii, Molokai
0.02  Lanai
0.00  Kahoolawe
1.26  Puu Kukui, Maui
1.73  Kawainui Stream, Big Island

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

30  Lihue, Kauai – NE
31  Kuaokala, Oahu – NE
35  Molokai – ENE
40  Lanai – NE
39  Kahoolawe – NE
50  Kaupo Gap, Maui – N 
49  Kohala Ranch, Big Island – NE

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://weather.unisys.com/satellite/sat_ir_enh_west_loop-12.gif
We see a fragmenting cold front offshore to the north
and northeast…with a second front far northwest

Here’s a wind profile…of the offshore waters
around the islands – with a closer view

http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/west/cpac/vis.jpg
Active thunderstorms well offshore southwest of Hawaii…
with that east-northeast to west-southwest elongated
band of clouds, although scattered at best

http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/west/hi/vis.jpg
Numberless cumulus and stratocumulus clouds over us…
not to mention the offshore waters!


http://radar.weather.gov/Conus/RadarImg/hawaii.gif
Showers falling locally…especially over parts of the central islands
looping radar image

Small Craft Wind Advisory…all coastal and channel waters

High surf Advisory…east shores of the islands / rising surf
along north shores of Kauai, Oahu, Molokai and Maui

Wind Advisory…Kohala area on the Big Island – very strong
and gusty trade winds


~~~ Hawaii Weather Narrative ~~~



Trade winds continuing, blustery this weekend…then backing off during the new week ahead. Here’s the latest weather map, showing the Hawaiian Islands, and the rest of the North Pacific Ocean. We find a moderately strong high pressure system far to our northeast, with another high pressure cell to our north…moving quickly eastward. At the same time, we find several gale and storm low pressure systems far to our north and northwest. One of these systems has an associated cold front draping south and southwest. The fragmenting tail-end of this front is moving by just to our north. The trade winds will remain strong and gusty through this weekend, at least in those exposed locations. We have small craft wind advisories over all of the coasts and channels around the state, along with other wind and high surf advisories and warnings. We’ll find another approaching cold front will cause our trade wind speeds to relax during the middle of next week for several days. It appears that we’ll see chilly northerly winds arriving New Year’s Day, behind a shower bearing cold front, which will bring a cold snap to the islands in its wake…tropically speaking that is.

Showers will fall generally along our windward sides…quite actively this weekend. We see a cold front moving by north of the state, remaining a relatively short distance offshore. As the strong and gusty trade winds continue, they’ll carry lots of moisture our way. The windward sides will see considerable passing shower activity through this period, with some being carried over into the leeward sides…on the smaller islands. An upper level low pressure system is sliding over the state now as well, which will destabilize our overlying atmosphere. This cold air aloft, associated with the low, may cause ice over the Big Island summits. In sum, a wet trade wind weather pattern will prevail into Monday. Drier than normal conditions should prevail thereafter, which of course is good news for visitors and locals alike! Looking towards the very end of 2015…there’s a chance we may see a cold front bringing showers around New Years Eve into January 1, 2016.

Here on Maui…It’s mostly clear across the island this morning before sunrise, although with clouds and showers passing along our windward sides. Here in upcountry Kula, it’s calm and clear…with an air temperature of 53.2F degrees at my place. The temperature in contrast was a warmer 72 degrees down near sea level in Kahului, with 73 out in Hana…and 39 atop the Haleakala Crater at the same time.

– We’re into the early afternoon now, with lots of clouds still rolling by along the windward sides, and packed up over the slopes of the mountains. The trade wind speeds, and the passing showers being carried by them, are the main story of today’s weather headlines. I was over in Paia this morning, and there were lots of showers falling at times between Kula and that small coast town. Here in Kula at the time of this writing, there are light little sprinkles falling at times.

– Winter weather here on Maui, although nothing like the more northern climes…at least in some countries. The primary weather features this evening are the gusty trades coupled with the numerous showers passing along the windward sides. Here in upcountry Kula, I was just out on my weather deck playing a little ping pong, and noticing the gusty winds playing my wind chimes in turn. The temperature at 545pm here at my weather tower, was 63.3 degrees, which feels very nice to my skin. Now at 555pm, the temperature has plummeted to 61.7 / Now at ~9pm it’s partly cloudy, with light showers falling here in Kula, with a temperature of 60 degrees…along with my wind chimes being played by the trade wind breezes.

I’ll be back with many more updates on all of the above and below, I hope you have a great Saturday night wherever you’re spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn


World-wide tropical cyclone activity:

>>> Atlantic Ocean: The last regularly scheduled Tropical Weather Outlook of the 2015 Atlantic hurricane season…has occurred. Routine issuance of the Tropical Weather Outlook will resume on June 1, 2016. During the off-season, Special Tropical Weather Outlooks will be issued if conditions warrant.

Here’s a satellite image of the Atlantic Ocean

>>> Caribbean Sea: The last regularly scheduled Tropical Weather Outlook of the 2015 Atlantic hurricane season…has occurred. Routine issuance of the Tropical Weather Outlook will resume on June 1, 2016. During the off-season, Special Tropical Weather Outlooks will be issued if conditions warrant.

>>> Gulf of Mexico: The last regularly scheduled Tropical Weather Outlook of the 2015 Atlantic hurricane season…has occurred. Routine issuance of the Tropical Weather Outlook will resume on June 1, 2016. During the off-season, Special Tropical Weather Outlooks will be issued if conditions warrant.

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

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

>>> Eastern Pacific: The last regularly scheduled Tropical Weather Outlook of the 2015 North Pacific hurricane season…has occurred. Routine issuance of the Tropical Weather Outlook will resume on May 15, 2016. During the off-season, Special Tropical Weather Outlooks will be issued if 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, 2016. During the off-season, special tropical weather outlooks will be issued if 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 / Arabian Sea: There are no active tropical cyclones

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


Interesting: How many trees are on planet Earth? 

Here’s a pop quiz: How many trees are on the planet?

Most people have no idea.

A new study says the answer is more than 3 trillion trees — that’s trillion with a T, and that number is about eight times more than a previous estimate.

Thomas Crowther was inspired to do this tree census a couple of years ago, when he was working at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He had a friend who was working with a group with an ambitious goal: trying to fight global warming by planting a billion trees. A billion trees sounded like a lot. But was it really?

“They didn’t know if planting a billion trees was going to add 1 percent of the world’s trees, add 50 percent of the world’s trees,” recalls Crowther. “They didn’t even know if it was even possible to fit a billion trees on Earth.”

So his pal asked him a simple question: How many trees are growing on our planet? “I assumed that this was somewhere out there, it’s information that someone will know,” says Crowther.

That turned out to be wrong, he says. “Having spoken to a lot of forestry experts, it doesn’t seem like anyone had any idea.”

There was one estimate based on satellite images: about 400 billion trees worldwide, or 61 trees for every person.

But there were doubts about that number because another recent estimate, based on ground-truthed measurements, found 390 billion trees in the Amazon basin alone.

Crowther knew there was a way to get much better numbers.

“We used ground-sourced information,” says Crowther. “All of the information that went into our models was generated from people standing on the ground counting numbers of trees in a given area. And so we could relate this information to what the satellites are telling us.”

To get a better estimate, his team took advantage of the fact that countries produce detailed forest inventories. “It definitely couldn’t have been done without all of those huge national forest inventories and thousands of people going out, collecting tree information around the world,” says Crowther.

Using information from around 400,000 forest plots, the researchers painstakingly crunched a ton of numbers. And then it was time for the computer to spit out the final total.

“We all gathered in a room, it was a very exciting time,” remembers Crowther. “We’d been working toward it for two years.”

He says the huge number astonished them. And then he got a little worried.

“My fear is that a lot of people might think, ‘OK, well, there’s loads of trees, so who cares about the environment, there’s plenty left! No worries!’ What I’d highlight is that it’s not like we’ve discovered new trees,” he says. “We’ve just generated a new number that will help us to understand the global forest.”

The results are being published by the journal Nature.

“It’s quite rigorous. It’s using all of the best available data that we have at a global scale, so I think it’s a nice advance,” says Matthew Hansen, a geographer at the University of Maryland who maps land cover.

Hansen says in the future, he’d like to see new instruments in space that could do increasingly detailed observations of forests. That would let scientists do a more direct census of trees over and over, to track how the total number changes.

Crowther says their work suggests that, compared with the days before human civilization, the world has lost roughly half its trees. And the gross number of trees lost each year because of humans is now about 15 billion.

So did all of this news discourage that group that wanted to plant a billion trees?

“Based on this, they really want to upscale their efforts hugely,” says Crowther, who explains that the new analysis has spurred them on. “Their goal is now to plant a trillion trees.”