April 15-16, 2009
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Wednesday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 75
Honolulu, Oahu – 81
Kaneohe, Oahu – 76
Kahului, Maui – 79
Hilo, Hawaii – 71
Kailua-kona – 80
Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountains…at 4 p.m. Wednesday afternoon:
Barking Sands, Kauai – 81F
Hilo, Hawaii – 70
Haleakala Crater – 59 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 41 (near 14,000 feet on the Big Island)
Precipitation Totals – The following numbers represent the largest precipitation totals (inches) during the last 24 hours on each of the major islands, as of Wednesday afternoon:
0.44 Mount Waialaele, Kauai
0.16 Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
0.00 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.21 West Wailuaiki, Maui
0.71 Glenwood, Big Island
Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a 1031 millibar high pressure system located far to the east-northeast of the islands. This far away high pressure cell will send us winds from the ESE or even SE through Friday. Winds coming in from this direction first hit the Big Island, which then spreads, putting the smaller islands is a semi-wind shadow…which will be lighter now.
Satellite and Radar Images: To view the cloud conditions we have here in Hawaii, please use the following satellite links, starting off with the Infrared Satellite Image of the islands to see all the clouds around the state during the day and night. This next image is one that gives close images of the islands only during the daytime hours, and is referred to as a Close-up visible image. This next image shows a larger view of the Pacific…giving perspective to the wider ranging cloud patterns in the Pacific Ocean. Finally, here’s a looping IR satellite image, making viewable the clouds around the islands 24 hours a day. To help you keep track of where any showers may be around the islands, here’s the latest animated radar image.
Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live webcam on the summit of near 14,000 foot Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. The tallest peak on the island of Maui is the Haleakala Crater, which is near 10,000 feet in elevation. These two webcams are available during the daylight hours here in the islands…and when there’s a big moon rising just after sunset for an hour or two! Plus, during the nights and early mornings you will be able to see stars, and the sunrise too…depending upon weather conditions.
Aloha Paragraphs
Hula dancer on the beach
The trade winds will give way to lighter winds starting Thursday…favoring a southeast direction Friday into the weekend. The winds Wednesday afternoon started dropping in strength already, which allowed the NWS to drop the small craft wind advisories everywhere in the state
The high and middle level clouds, that we saw earlier in the day, are now gone…leaving clear to partly cloudy skies in their wake.
Meanwhile, as the trade winds are blowing still, we’ll see the usual few windward showers. As the winds get lighter Thursday through Saturday, we’ll begin to see some afternoon showers in the interior upcountry areas. The returning trade winds by Monday, will allow showers to return again to the windward coasts and slopes then. We may see an old cold front, or what would be more accurately called a shear line, bring a day or three of showers to the windward sides then.
This will be the last full day of trade winds for several days, as low pressure areas going by to our north erode and weaken our trade wind generating ridge of high pressure. The weakest aspect of this looming lighter wind regime will occur Friday and Saturday. As the winds may veer around to the southeast, we could see hazy conditions develop then. As the trade winds return early next week, they will be able to ventilate our local atmosphere, and of course bring back windward showers.
It’s early Wednesday evening as I begin writing this last section of today’s weather narrative. Ok, here we go, into what will be several days of lighter than normal winds…at least compared to what we’ve seen in quite some time. The trade winds will be replaced with what we call sea breezes, or breezes that blow in from the ocean. These will keep the immediate coastline cool, but further inland, it will feel rather muggy. During the nights, we’ll find land breezes, which blow in the opposite direction…from the islands out to sea. None of these will be particularly strong, likely ranging between 5-20 mph for the most part. We will see the very tail-end of the trade winds tonight, and perhaps even into Thursday. As we move into Friday and Saturday, the trade winds will be completely gone. ~~~ Looking out the window here in Kihei, before I drive back upcountry to Kula, it’s partly cloudy. One more thing I want to point out, before leaving, is this looping radar image, which shows the distinct lack of showers just about everywhere in the state at this time. I anticipate that Thursday will dawn mostly clear, with partly cloudy areas along the windward sides. Now I’m really leaving, I hope you have a great Wednesday night, and that you will meet me here again on Thursday. Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting: The crust of neutron stars is 10 billion times stronger than steel, according to new simulations. That makes the surface of these ultra-dense stars tough enough to support long-lived bulges that could produce gravitational waves detectable by experiments on Earth. Neutron stars are the cores left behind when relatively massive stars explode in supernovae.
They are incredibly dense, packing about as much mass as the sun into a sphere just 20 kilometres or so across, and some rotate hundreds of times per second.
Because of their extreme gravity and rotational speed, neutron stars could potentially make large ripples in the fabric of space – but only if their surfaces contain bumps or other imperfections that would make them asymmetrical. A number of mechanisms have been proposed to create these bumps.
The stars could, for example, gobble up material from a companion star. Bulges could also bubble up over hotter areas of the stars. In theory, these bulges could be stable on the outer surface of the star. Neutron stars are thought to be made up of a soup of neutrons covered with a solid crust.
The crust is composed of crystals of neutron-rich atoms. "But one of the big unknowns for all that work is the strength of the crust. Can you really support a mountain, or will the crust just collapse under the weight?" says Charles Horowitz of Indiana University in Bloomington.
Interesting2: The 62 trillion spam emails sent in 2008 created carbon emissions equivalent to that of 2 billion gallons of petrol burnt in a car engine, according to a report by computer security firm McAfee. The report looked at the energy expended to create, store, view and filter spam on personal computers and servers across 11 countries, including Australia, China, France, the US and the UK.
It found that the level of spam-related emissions generated in these countries is proportionate to its number of email users and the percentage of email that is spam, making it possible to estimate the total energy used by spam worldwide. Nearly 80 per cent of the energy used by spam comes from end-users deleting it from their inboxes and hunting for legitimate email.
While spam filtering software takes up a further 16 per cent, it also reduces the overall energy impact of unsolicited email. The annual energy used to transmit, process and filter spam totals 33 billion kilowatt-hours, the report concludes, which is equivalent to driving around the Earth 1.6 million times or the energy usage of more than 2 million typical homes.
"Stopping spam at its source, as well investing in filtering technology, will save time and money, and will pay dividends to the planet by reducing carbon emissions as well," said Jeff Green, senior vice president of product development at McAfee.
As computer use continues to grow, scrutiny on the energy use of the servers that power everything from the internet to banking services is increasing. Last year, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and chipmaker Intel showed that delaying the flow of network data by just a few milliseconds can cut power consumption of some hardware by 50 per cent.
Interesting3: Many Americans fail to check their homes for recalled food products. Only about 60 percent of the studied sample reported ever having looked for recalled food in their homes, and only 10 percent said they had ever found a recalled food product, according to a new study by Rutgers’ Food Policy Institute. The study was based on a survey of 1,101 Americans interviewed by telephone from Aug. 4 to Sept. 24, 2008.
Most respondents said they pay a great deal of attention to food recalls and, when they learn about them, tell many other people. But 40 percent of these consumers think that the foods they purchase are less likely to be recalled than those purchased by others, appearing to believe that food recalls just don’t apply to them.
Despite widespread awareness of recent food borne illness outbreaks and a sense that the number of food recalls is increasing, about half of Americans say that food recalls have had no impact on their lives, said psychologist William K. Hallman, a professor of human ecology at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, School of Environmental and Biological Sciences.
"Getting consumers to pay attention to news about recalls isn’t the hard part," he said. "It’s getting them to take the step of actually looking for recalled food products in their homes." Hallman is also the director of FPI and lead author of the study report.
Interesting4: Unusual atmospheric phenomena were recorded worldwide in 1761, unexplained at the time. Now independent astronomer Kevin D. Pang of La Cañada Flintridge, California, says he’s figured out the cause — and he credits Benjamin Franklin with a conceptual assist.
While serving as American ambassador in Paris, Franklin first made the connection between a "dry fog" that had obscured the Sun for months in 1784, the extremely cold weather in Europe and North America that same year, and the 1783 eruption of Iceland’s Laki volcano.
The fog was, we now know, droplets of sulfuric acid, called vog (volcanic fog). Pang learned that on May 18, 1761, astronomers could not see the fully eclipsed Moon, which usually glows faintly with refracted Earthlight.
Suspecting vog, he checked other sources, which corroborated his hunch. Chinese history books and weather logs documented bitter cold over subtropical parts of the country the following winter.
In the Sierra Nevada of the United States, tree-ring studies of bristlecone pines revealed frost damage and stunted growth in 1761. Ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica showed abnormally high concentrations of sulfuric acid that year and the next.
A massive volcanic eruption at low latitude in late 1760 or early 1761 must have caused the worldwide cooling, Pang asserts. A likely culprit is Indonesia’s Makian volcano, which blew its top in 1761, he says, but some other, unidentified eruption could be to blame.
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