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

80 – 72  Lihue, Kauai
82 – 73  Honolulu, Oahu
80 – 73  Molokai AP
81 – 71  Kahului AP, Maui
80 – 69  Kona AP, Hawaii
79 – 69  Hilo, Hawaii

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

0.27  Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.11  Poamoho RG 1, Oahu
0.16  Molokai
0.00  Lanai
0.00  Kahoolawe
0.56  Puu Kukui, Maui
2.44  Kawainui Stream, Big Island

The following numbers represent the strongest wind gusts (mph) Friday morning:

15  Poipu, Kauai
37  Oahu Forest NWR, Oahu
35  Molokai
35  Lanai
36  Kahoolawe
32  Maalaea Bay, Maui
40  Kealakomo, Big Island

Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live webcam on the summit of our tallest mountain Mauna Kea (nearly 13,800 feet high) on the Big Island of Hawaii. Here’s the webcam for the 10,000+ feet high Haleakala Crater on Maui. These webcams are available during the daylight hours here in the islands, and at night whenever there’s a big moon shining down. Also, at night you will be able to see the stars, and the sunrise and sunset too…depending upon weather conditions.


Aloha Paragraphs

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Streaks of high cirrus clouds…moving by to the south
 (click on the images to enlarge them)

 

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This high cirrus cloudiness is just clipping the Big Island

 

https://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/west/hi/ir4.jpg
Clear to partly cloudy…along with cloudy areas too

 

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Just a few showers…mostly windward and mountains
Looping image

 

Small Craft Advisory…pink color below

High Surf Advisory…purple color below

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~~~ Hawaii Weather Narrative ~~~

 

Broad Brush Overview: The gusty trade winds will persist due to high pressure prevailing north of the state. The winds will gradually diminish this weekend into early next week, as this high moves slowly south and weakens. A stable weather pattern with brief windward and mountain showers will prevail through Monday…with dry conditions across most leeward areas. A cold front is expected to move down the island chain late Tuesday through Wednesday, bringing an increase in showers and breezy northeasterly trade winds.

Details: The trade flow will weaken slightly this weekend into early next week. The winds may drop off enough to allow the development of alternating local afternoon sea breezes and nighttime land breezes by Monday. A strong mid-level ridge will remain overhead this weekend into early next week, which will maintain very stable conditions and a generally dry weather pattern. This will allow brief light showers along some windward facing slopes Saturday through Monday, while dry conditions will prevail over most leeward areas this weekend.

Looking Ahead: The forecast models show a shallow cold front approaching the state from the northwest early Tuesday. At this time, the GFS and ECMWF models indicate the front may reach Kauai late Tuesday, and then move down the island chain Tuesday night through Wednesday. The arrival of this front would likely bring an increase in showers and a period of breezy trade winds. The depiction of the front by the models would suggest that it will be relatively weak…with no heavy rainfall expected at this time.

Here’s a near real-time Wind Profile of the Pacific Ocean – along with a Closer View of the islands / Here’s the latest Weather Map

Marine Environmental Conditions: A high pressure system passing north of the area will maintain strong trade winds.

A small northwest swell building through Saturday will maintain surf along north and west facing shores, although is expected to remain below advisory levels. A large northwest swell will build late Saturday, peaking Sunday, and start to subside Monday. An even larger northwest swell will build late Monday. Both of these large swells are expected to bring warning level surf to north and west facing shores.

Rough surf produced by the strong trades will lower below advisory levels by tonight as the trades ease.

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World-wide Tropical Cyclone Activity

 

Here’s the Friday Pacific Disaster Center (PDC) Weather Wall Presentation covering the western Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean, and the Arabian Sea, including Tropical Cyclone Owen…and two tropical disturbances


>>> Atlantic Ocean: The 2019 hurricane season begins June 1, 2019

Here’s a satellite image of the Atlantic

>>> Gulf of Mexico: The 2019 hurricane season begins June 1, 2019

>>> Caribbean Sea: The 2019 hurricane season begins June 1, 2019

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

>>> Eastern Pacific: The 2019 hurricane season begins May 15, 2019

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

>>> Central Pacific: The 2019 hurricane season begins June 1, 2019

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

 

>>> Northwest Pacific Ocean: No active tropical cyclones

>>> South Pacific Ocean: 

Tropical Cyclone 05P (Owen)

JTWC textual advisory
JTWC graphical track map

>>> North and South Indian Oceans / Arabian Sea: No active tropical cyclones

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

 

Interesting: How This Supercolony of 1.5 Million Penguins Stayed Hidden for Nearly 3,000 Years – This year, scientists announced an incredible discovery by looking at poop stains in satellite images — 1.5 million Adélie penguins were living and thriving on a little patch in Antarctica surrounded by treacherous sea ice called the Danger Islands.

It turns out that these elusive seabirds had lived on the islands undetected for at least 2,800 years, according to new, unpublished research presented Dec. 11 at the American Geophysical Union meeting in Washington, D.C.

It all started when a group of researchers spent 10 months doing what they thought was a pan-Antarctic survey of Adélie penguins by looking through every single cloud-free satellite image that they had of the southern continent. “We thought that we knew where all the [Adélie] penguin colonies were,” said Heather Lynch, an ecologist at the Stony Brook University, during the news conference.

That is, until a colleague at NASA developed an algorithm that made the detections automated. That’s when it “bing bing bing,” started flagging all of these pixels from the Danger Islands that “we as human annotators had simply just missed,” Lynch said. When Lynch and her team went back to look more closely at the images, sure enough, they saw the extent to which the Danger Islands were filled with penguin poop.

“We, I think, had missed it in part because we hadn’t expected to find them there,” Lynch said. They had previously surveyed one of the islands of the group, but not all of them.

The Danger Islands are not easy to get to, as they are “so-called because they’re almost always covered by a thick layer of sea ice all around that precludes regular censuses in this area,” Lynch said.

Even so, spurred by the poop stains, Lynch’s colleagues journeyed to the islands for a full survey, where they counted — physically on the ground and with drones — just how populated by this seabird they were. “In this area that’s so small that it doesn’t even appear on most maps of the Antarctic,” live more Adélie penguins than the rest of Antarctica combined, Lynch said. She stayed at Stony Brook University and managed satellite images to help them avoid sea ice.

The news shocked and delighted people across the globe when it came out in March.

After all, the rest of the Adélie penguins on the mainland, their habitat hit hard by climate change, have been steadily declining for the past 40 years. In fact, “nowhere is the climate changing more rapidly than on the Antarctic peninsula,” Lynch said.

But some of the team’s new findings suggest that although 1.5 million seems like a big number, it’s not as large as it once might have been. After their initial analyses of recent satellite imagery, the team decided to look at past satellite images that date back to 1982.

They found that the Adélie penguin populations likely peaked in the late 1990s and “has been on a slow but steady decline ever since,” Lynch said. The decline “is not catastrophic,” but rather on the order of a 10 to 20 percent decline, she later added.

Because the Danger Islands are almost always surrounded by sea ice, they are more protected from krill fishing and other human interventions than other areas of the continent, Lynch said. But even so, the best working hypothesis is that the population decline there is probably also due to climate change.

Part of the team, led by Casey Youngflesh, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Connecticut, also spent some time figuring out what the penguins were eating based on the shade of pink of their poop in satellite images — eating krill versus fish can make a difference in poop color. Another part of the team, led by Michael Polito, an assitant professor in the department of oceanography and coastal sciences at Louisiana State University dug holes in the island to learn about the penguins’ past. Radiocarbon dating of the bones and eggshells found in these holes revealed these penguins have been hiding out on the islands for a long time: They seem to have first appeared on the islands 2,800 years ago.

And “now that we have discovered this hotspot of Adélie abundance here in the Danger Islands, we want to be able to protect it, and that involves trying to understand why the populations may have changed,” Lynch said.