Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / November 25-26, 2008

November 25-26 2008

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

Lihue, Kauai – 78
Honolulu, Oahu – 83
Kaneohe, Oahu – 80
Kahului, Maui – 82
Hilo, Hawaii – 77
Kailua-kona – 83

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

Port Allen, Kauai – 81F
Hilo, Hawaii – 74F

Haleakala Crater    – 52  (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 39  (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 Tuesday afternoon:

0.45 Mount Waialaele, Kauai
0.18 Kalaeloa airport, Oahu
0.00 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.20 West Wailuaiki, Maui
0.07 Glenwood, Big Island

Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a surface high northeast of the islands will be closer tonight into Wednesday…with strong and gusty trade winds the net result. As a cold front approaches from the northwest on Thursday, the high will move quickly northeast, and winds will veer to the south. The front will reach Kauai late Friday, and dissipate as it stalls near the central islands on Saturday. Fresh and cool north to northeast winds will briefly follow the front.

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

      

 
  Stronger trade winds on Wednesday
Photo Credit: Flikr.com

Trade wind weather pattern continues, with some increase in wind speeds expected on Wednesday. These gusty winds continue to be strong enough now, that a small craft wind advisory flag remains active across the area from Oahu through Maui, down to the Big Island. The computer models suggest that lighter southeast to south winds will take the place of the trades later on Thanksgiving, ahead of a cold front scheduled to arrive on Kauai by Friday night, moving down the island chain to Oahu, or perhaps as far as Maui on Saturday. Our winds will turn cooler from the north and northeast briefly following the frontal passage.

The mostly dry trade wind weather pattern will continue, with a slight increase in windward showers Wednesday. The gusty trade winds will carry just a few clouds to the windward sides, but the air mass is quite dry…which will limit the amount of showers greatly. A rising of the trade wind inversion Wednesday, may act to allow a few more showers to arrive then. Thereafter, we should find some changes, as a cold front arrives Friday into Saturday. This late autumn frontal system will bring clouds and showers to the islands as it passes down into the state, stopping short of Maui and the Big Island later Saturday. A brief period of cool weather will return after the cold front…although the latest model runs show a second cold front approaching shortly thereafter, prompting our winds back around to the south again later Sunday into Monday.

It’s early Tuesday evening here in Kihei, Maui, as I begin writing this last l paragraph.  The trade winds eased up Tuesday, at least compared to the very windy conditions that we saw on Monday. Rather than having the trade winds stay lighter Wednesday, they will surge again, back into the strong and gusty realms. This will be a short lived thrust of the trades however, as an approaching cold front will turn our winds lighter and from the southeast during the day Thursday. As noted above, we may see a modest increase in windward biased showers Wednesday, and then some afternoon upcountry showers on Thursday. As we move into later Friday and Saturday, a weakening cold front will bring some increase in showers to Kauai and Oahu, but the latest model runs are showing the cloud band skidding to a stop before moving on to Maui and the Big Island. It wouldn’t surprise me though, if the front did actually make it down to Maui, although the Big Island may be too much to hope for at this time. ~~~ Tuesday, with the lighter winds, got a little cloudier in places, especially along the leeward sides of the mountains. The windward sides remained quite clear in most areas, with little rainfall noted anywhere however. ~~~ I’m about ready to drive home to Kula, and if something catches my eye along the way, I’ll get back online and write about it. Otherwise, I’ll catch up with you very early Wednesday morning, when I’ll be back with your next new weather narrative from paradise. I hope you have a great Tuesday night wherever you happen to be spending it! Aloha for now…Glenn.

Interesting:

A plunge of cold Arctic air continues to head south across Europe, bringing freezing temperatures and snow falls. For the UK the first signs of the cold weather were across Scotland on Friday, with snow showers affecting northern and eastern areas. Over the weekend the cold took hold, particularly over Saturday night and early Sunday, with an Atlantic weather front moving in from the west prompting warnings of snow and black ice. Sweden, Finland and Russia, were also hit by the cold northerly winds. A blanket of snow forced runway closures at Helsinki and Stockholm airports, while thousands of residents were left without power.

The winter weather also spread south across France and the Netherlands, and arrived in northern Spain on Monday. Six provinces across the north of the country were put on alert for snow and freezing temperatures. Cantabria and Asturias remain on orange alert today, with up to 6 inches of snow forecast. Snow has arrived early across Europe this year prompting many ski resorts to open earlier than scheduled. Even across southern Spain, the Sierra Nevada resort has opened early for the first time in 20 years. While the cold weather will continue south across Spain over the next few days, the UK will see temperatures slowly creeping up. Atlantic weather fronts pushing across the UK from the northwest are expected to introduce some milder conditions.

Interesting2: 

Australian scientists are using mobile telephones to eavesdrop on koalas to understand what they are saying when they bellow and how this can help conserve the marsupial which is threatened by habitat destruction. The researchers tagged koalas on St Bees Island off northeast Australia with satellite tracking devices to monitor movements and placed mobile telephones in the trees which are programmed to turn on every 30 minutes and record for two minutes. The mobiles, charged by solar power and car batteries, record the koala bellows, then download the recordings to a computer at the University of Queensland in Brisbane. "Koala bellows can go from really quite short, sharp, and quite agitated sounding bellows to long, slow, deep bellows that can last for over a minute," said researcher Bill Ellis.

"Interestingly most of the bellowing seems to occur around midnight, not around dawn or dusk when we thought it might’ve occurred," he said on Tuesday. Ellis said he was studying whether male koalas communicate by bellowing to each other to mark out territory and whether bellowing was used to attract females during breeding season. "Over the breeding season males are quiet active at the start but their movements die down and females have a spike in movement somewhere in the breeding season," Ellis said. "After a male and female encounter, and we can’t see what they are doing, the female lets out a high-pitched scream and immediately after the male emits a loud bellow," he said. Ellis said results from his study could help manage koala populations by informing wildlife officials when is the best time to introduce new animals to a population and when is best time to allow changes to koala habitats such as urban development.

Interesting3: 

As many Americans get ready to fly to their aunt’s house in Milwaukee or grandmother’s house in Syracuse for Thursday’s traditional Thanksgiving meal, many critics are chiming in again about the polluting and wasteful nature of the air travel industry. In fact, air travel has come under severe criticism this year not only for how much fossil fuels are used and how many carbon emissions are produced, but also for many companies’ attempts at green washing the industry. However, according to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle earlier this month, United Airlines recently flew a flight from Sydney to San Francisco saving 1,664 gallons of fuel and 32,656 pounds of carbon emissions by using new technologies and more accommodating air traffic control procedures. In February, Virgin Atlantic flew what was touted as a groundbreaking flight from London to Amsterdam using a conventional Boeing 747 aircraft run on biofuels.

The biofuel was a mixture of coconut and babassu oils, a native tree to Brazil. Sir Richard Branson said, “This pioneering flight will enable those of us who are serious about reducing our carbon emissions to go on developing the fuels of the future, fuels which will power our aircraft in the years ahead through sustainable next-generation oils, such as algae." Greenpeace  called the demonstration a “high altitude green wash,” however, inciting the indirect effects of using biofuels such as these such as food crop displacement and the high costs that go into their production. Regardless, United’s demonstration this month seemed to be of a different character. There were no tanned CEOs with rebellious silvery-blond hair sipping coconut juice in front of the airliner. It was just the flight crew utilizing simple, state-of-the-art techniques to be more efficient with the flight patterns and air traffic control.

Interesting4: As many as 100 million people in southwestern China could lose the land they depend on within 35 years if soil erosion continues at the current rate, according to a nationwide survey. Deforestation and farming practices are the principal drivers of the erosion, the survey from China’s bio-environment security research team said. The report predicts harvests in northeastern — known as the national breadbasket — could fall by 40 percent within half a century on current trends, even as the country’s population of 1.3 billion continues to grow. "If we don’t conduct effective measures, erosion will cause major damage to social and economic development," Chen Lei, the director of the Ministry of Water Resources, told state media. The costs of erosion are expected to total $29 billion (200 billion yuan) in this decade alone, the report said, noting that poor people, many of whom live in coastal areas, will be the hardest hit.

Interesting5:

Enormous cave bears that once inhabited Europe were the first of the mega-mammals to die out, going extinct around 13 millennia earlier than was previously thought, according to a new estimate. Why’d they go? In part because they were vegetarians. The new extinction date, 27,800 years ago, coincides with a period of significant climate change, known as the Last Glacial Maximum, when a marked cooling in temperature resulted in a reduction or total loss of the vegetation that the cave bears ate (today’s brown bears are omnivores). The loss of this food supply led to the extinction of the cave bear, Ursus spelaeus, one of a group of "megafauna" — including the woolly mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, giant deer and cave lion — to disappear during the last Ice Age, the researchers wrote in a research paper published online Nov. 26 in the journal Boreas. Over the years, numerous cave bear remains have been discovered in caves where the animals probably died during winter hibernation.

Cave bears were huge, with males growing up to around 2,200 pounds. The maximum recorded weight of both Kodiak bears and polar bears — the largest bears living today — is 1,760 pounds, with averages of around 1,100 pounds. During the Middle Ages, the bones of cave bears, thought to be the remains of dragons, were collected and used for medicine, the researchers say. The question of what caused cave bears, woolly mammoths and the other large mammals to go extinct has been a mystery. Some researchers think humans hunted the mega-mammals to extinction, but researcher Martina Pacher of the University of Vienna and her colleague Anthony J. Stuart of the Natural History Museum, London, found no convincing evidence for this idea regarding cave bears.  Another theory is that some virus or bacteria could have sickened populations of mega-mammals, but Pacher and Stuart think such a "hyperdisease" is unlikely to explain the timing of the extinctions or the fact that body sizes of the dying-out animals varied so much.