Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / November 22-23, 2008

November 22-23 2008

Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Saturday afternoon: 

Lihue, Kauai – 73
Honolulu, Oahu – 71
Kaneohe, Oahu – 74
Kahului, Maui – 75
Hilo, Hawaii – 79
Kailua-kona – 79

Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level, and on the highest mountains…at 4 p.m. Saturday afternoon:

Kailua-kona – 78F
Lihue, Kauai – 68F

Haleakala Crater    – missing  (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – missing  (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 Saturday afternoon:

3.35 Kokee, Kauai
5.05 St. Stephens, Oahu
1.89 Molokai
0.65 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.39 Hana Airport, Maui
0.12 Kealakekua, Big Island

Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a surface trough located about 180 nautical miles west of Kauai, which is expected to move slowly east today, before it shifts westward away from the state on Sunday. A surface high will be far northeast of the islands from Sunday through Wednesday…bringing the trade winds back.

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. 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

      

 
  Gradually clearing skies later Sunday
Photo Credit: Flikr.com

The trade winds will gradually fill into our Hawaiian Island weather picture later Sunday into Monday. The recent southeasterly brought lots of moisture up from the deeper tropics, along with higher humidity levels…and localized volcanic haze. These southeast winds will give way to returning fresh trade winds later Sunday…into the first half of the new week ahead. The long range computer models suggest that lighter southeast winds will return as we move into the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, ahead of a cold front scheduled to arrive on Kauai by Friday.

The troughs of low pressure, which brought wet weather from Kauai down into Maui Saturday, will gradual recede westward later Sunday into Monday. This trough of low pressure, with its cold air aloft, kept our air mass very shower prone. There have been, most recently, periods of localized moderate rains from Oahu into Maui, with the Big Island finally seeing some of this showery weather on its northwest side…although Kona seems to be getting into the act now too. Windward biased showers will return as we move into the new the week. The leeward beaches will finally break back into their normal sunny skies later Sunday or by Monday.

The NWS forecast office in Honolulu continues its flash flood watch, although the Big Island has now been dropped. At the same time, we find a new small craft wind advisory over most areas on the Big Island and Maui. As the aforementioned troughs move away westward, and the trade winds return, our local weather will gradually trend back into the favorably inclined side of our weather spectrum later Sunday into the first part of the new week. The windward sides are apt to see some showers, with dry and sunny weather on tap for the leeward sides quite after the weekend.

The islands of Oahu down to the islands of Maui County are finding the most generous rainfall Saturday evening.  Here’s the latest looping satellite imagery, showing the copious cloud cover that continues to develop to the west and southwest of our islands…moving northeast over us. Here’s the looping radar image, which as of Saturday evening showed the wet weather moving most generously over the central islands, just clipping the northern part of the Big Island. I will leave these two live images available here, as they will make it easiest to see where the heaviest rainfall is occurring. 

It’s early Saturday evening here in Kula, Maui, as I begin writing this last paragraph. Last evening after work I went to see Quantum of Solace (2008), the new James Bond film, starring Daniel Craig, Judi Dench among many others. This newest version of the James Bond series is billed as an action, adventure, thiller…adaptation and sequel. These words of course were "right down my alley", and have had me looking forward to seeing this new movie ever since I found it was coming our way. The truth is that I really liked this film, right from the first frame, right through to the last! It was a very fast paced film, and had me on the edge of my seat off and on through the one hour and 45 minutes that it played. If this has triggered your curiosity, here’s a trailer for your viewing pleasure. ~~~  I’m home here in Kula a bit before darkness falls, and the clouds are getting thicker by the minute. Rains here on Maui were light most of the day, never really breaking into the heavy stuff that the areas from Kauai down through Molokai have received during the last 24 hours. Looking at the radar image, in the paragraph above, it appears that rain will again start falling in my area, and it certainly feels that way out on my weather deck right now! ~~~ I’ll come back online and let you know if the rains really start to come down, otherwise, I’ll be back again Sunday morning with my next report. I hope you have a great Saturday night wherever you happen to be reading from! Aloha for now…Glenn.








 
Interesting:

Little more than a week after enduring what was said to be Queensland’s worst storms in over 25 years, the state has been pummeled once again. A series of violent storms first tore across Australia’s east coast last weekend. The storms especially affected Brisbane and the popular tourist areas of the Sunshine and Gold coasts. Just when residents might have thought things were returning to some normality, most of the same areas were hit again Thursday by a second spate of storms. The first storm hit early in the day dumping almost 200mm (8 inches) of rain across Queensland’s capital Brisbane and surrounding areas. Much of this fell in a matter of hours triggering flash floods. Troops were deployed once again to help thousands of residents. Although the weather improved across Queensland on Thursday the Australian Bureau of Meteorology issued an advisory concerning severe weather and potential flooding for eastern Victoria this weekend. An intense area of low pressure is expected to develop over the eastern Bass Strait on Saturday bringing widespread heavy rain and some very strong winds across parts of Victoria.





























































































Interesting2:

Over a third of China’s land is being scoured by serious erosion that is putting its crops and water supply a risk, a three-year nationwide survey has found. Soil is being washed and blown away not only in remote rural areas, but near mines, factories and even in cities, the official Xinhua agency cited the country’s bio-environment security research team saying. Each year some 4.5 billion tons of soil are lost, threatening the country’s ability to feed itself. If the loss continues at this rate, harvests in China‘s northeastern breadbasket could fall 40 percent in 50 years, adding to erosion costs estimated at 200 billion yuan ($29 billion) in this decade alone.

"China has a more dire situation than India, Japan, the United States, Australia and many other countries suffering from soil erosion," Xinhua quoted the research team saying. Beijing has long been worried about the desertification of its northern grasslands, and scaled back logging after rain rushing down denuded mountainsides caused massive flooding along the Yangtze in the late 1990s. But around 1.6 million square km of land are still being degraded by water erosion, with almost every river basin affected. Another 2.0 million square km are under attack from wind, the report said. The survey was the largest on soil conservation since the Communist Party took control of China in 1949.

Interesting3: Two plucky spiders on the International Space Station have bounced back from a tangled false start to weave amazing new webs in zero gravity, astronauts said Friday. The orb-weaving spiders were transported to the station aboard NASA’s shuttle Endeavour earlier this week, but initially wove an aimless concoction in their lab enclosure during their first days in weightlessness. But now they’ve taken another stab at weightless web construction. "We noticed the spiders’ made a symmetrical web," the space station’s current skipper Michael Fincke radioed to Mission Control today. "It looks beautiful." Fincke said he was amazed at how fast the two eight-legged creatures appear to have adapted to living in space.

The spiders are part of an experiment aimed at sparking interest in science among students on Earth. The arachnids are the same kind of spider as "Charlotte" in the children’s book "Charlotte’s Web" by E.B. White. Students on Earth will compare the webs of the space station’s spiders with those of similar arachnids on Earth for the next few months. They’ll also follow the lifecycle of painted lady butterfly larvae, which also are part of the experiment. The University of Colorado at Boulder is overseeing the experiment and provided an ample supply of fruit flies to feed the spiders, and nectar for the butterflies that will eventually emerge.