December 10-11 2008
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Wednesday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 79
Honolulu, Oahu – 79
Kaneohe, Oahu – 78
Kahului, Maui – 84
Hilo, Hawaii – 80
Kailua-kona – 81
Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level, and on the highest mountains…at 2 p.m. Wednesday afternoon:
Kahului, Maui – 83F
Lihue, Kauai – 76F
Haleakala Crater – 50 (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 Wednesday afternoon:
1.46 Mount Waialaele, Kauai
0.46 Schofield Barracks, Oahu
0.20 Molokai
0.02 Lanai
0.04 Kahoolawe
0.14 Puu Kukui, Maui
0.56 Pali 2, Big Island
Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a low far NW of the area will deepen rapidly and move SE at 10 kt through this evening, then move away to the northwest. A front will move SE at 25 kt and enter the NW waters Thursday. The front will stall over the central waters Thursday night, then move west slowly.
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
Aloha Paragraphs
Windy and rainy weather
Photo Credit: Flikr.com
An unusually deep low pressure system will push down from the middle latitudes, bottoming out near 600 miles northwest of
This is quite a serious storm, given the fairly major impact it will have over the western end of the
In the rainfall department, once again, those two western islands will get the wettest. There will likely be a train of moisture, perhaps more appropriately referred to as a conveyor belt, coming up from the deeper tropics. The winds rotating around this low pressure system will be counterclockwise, scooping up lots of available moisture from over the warm ocean. This Kona low will be an upper air feature, with a surface reflection, making it particularly dangerous for drivers on wet roads, and those having to deal with very gusty winds on the windward sides. There hasn’t been much said about the islands of Maui County, and the Big Island, mostly because the models haven’t shown nearly as much action, further away from the center of the low pressure cell. Speaking of which, here’s a looping satellite image of this Kona low, as it barrels in our direction. It wouldn’t take much of a nudge eastward in this whole gusty and wet weather scenario…for those two eastern islands to come under the gun as well. While we’re looking at things, here’s the looping radar image, showing the rains coming up from the south on the Kona winds. Kona is a Polynesian word for leeward, which becomes the windward side under such conditions.
Looking a bit further ahead, this big, or what the NWS forecast office has been calling massive, low pressure system will move northward away. As the low pressure system departs on Friday, our local winds should calm down rather quickly. The one sticky problem here is that the low will leave a trough of low pressure in its wake. This trough will keep our overlying atmosphere unstable and still shower prone. The winds will swing around from the southwest and south, to the southeast. This is a direction that carries volcanic haze up from the vents on the
It’s early Wednesday morning here in Kula, Maui, as I start writing this last paragraph. The computer models have done a marvelous job of pointing this stormy weather out, which they latched onto last week. Everything seems to be taking shape pretty much as planned, with windy and rainy weather right around the corner now. As has been made quite clear, the two islands of Kauai and Oahu will take the brunt of these inclement weather conditions. It would be a good time to batten down the hatches, as the winds will be strong enough to do some localized damage. As far as the rainfall is concerned, the NWS forecast office in Honolulu has issued a flash flood watch for Kauai and Oahu, although the heavy rains hadn’t begun in earnest yet. Here’s a satellite image, so you can see this counterclockwise rotating storm developing to the northwest of Kauai. It’s time to add this looping radar image as well, so we can keep an eye on the heavy rains as they begin arriving soon. ~~~ I’ll certainly be back often today, with all the necessary updates that will need to be made. I’ll try and find the time to add a few more of the interesting news stories which I put below as well. ~~~ I want to let you know that I have a doctors appointment upcountry in Pukalani this afternoon, and then have to turn right around and drive down to the Maui Community College, for a Pacific Disaster Center Christmas party. So, I’ll be back with more weather news very early Thursday morning. Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting: Papua New Guinea’s northern provinces and parts of the north coast were swamped by huge waves on Tuesday afternoon. Hundreds of homes and businesses were submerged and more than 1500 people were evacuated to higher ground. The worst affected areas were the St Mathias Group of islands, including the island of Mussau, in the north of the country, and also New Ireland, in the northeast. The tidal surge was not just felt in PNG. The Marshall Islands in particular were also badly hit, with a high tide of over four feet combined with high waves. It was this combination of a high tide, and high waves generated from a low-pressure system some 500 miles to the north, that caused the coastal flooding in the region. Although significantly higher tides are forecast later this week, flooding is not expected to be a problem, as the low pressure system has now moved off to the west. The low-lying islands and atolls of the western Pacific are particularly vulnerable to small changes in weather patterns that can have a big effect on coastal flooding. This recent flooding has prompted further concern over the future impact of a possible rise in sea level.
Interesting2: A South Korean court on Wednesday found the captain of a Hong Kong tanker criminally negligent in the country’s worst oil spill, which caused at least $500 million in estimated damages and blackened a wide stretch of coastline. In December 2007, a crane mounted on a Samsung Heavy Industries barge pierced the hull of the Hong Kong-registered Hebei Spirit tanker while it was at anchor, leading to over 10,500 tons of crude oil being spilled into the Yellow Sea. The South Korean appeals court sentenced the Hebei Spirit captain to 18 months in jail and fined him 20 million won ($13,990). It also fined the ship’s owner 30 million won. A district court in June found the operators of the Hebei Spirit not guilty and said the accident was almost entirely the fault of the barge operator who lost control of the crane in rough seas.
Prosecutors appealed that decision. The district court gave out prison sentences of one to three years to the barge’s crew members. The higher court rejected an appeal on their behalf. The Hebei Spirit’s management company has expressed dismay over the case, saying their crew acted with the utmost professionalism to slacken the anchor line and move the massive tanker on short notice to minimize the collision. "The captain could have averted a collision by pulling up the anchor or moving backward at full or half the usual speed," the appeals court said in its decision. The Taean area, about 150 km (95 miles) southwest of Seoul is still struggling to recover from the spill that wiped out oyster beds, coated birds in oil and turned national parks into tar-covered messes. "The oyster business is all gone," said Ga Woo-hyun, a Taean province official.
Interesting3: The world has lost about a fifth of its corals and many of the remaining reefs could die in the next 20 to 40 years unless humans reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a report said on Wednesday. Further coral loss will have alarming consequences for some 500 million people who depend on reefs for their livelihood, said the report by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN) presented at a December 1-12 U.N. conference on global warming. "Climate change must be limited to the absolute minimum to save corals," Julia Marton-Lefevre, head of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) which is a member of the GCRMN, told a news conference. "If nothing is done to substantially cut emissions, we could effectively lose coral reefs as we know them, with major coral extinction," she said.
The impact of the main climate threats, such as rising sea surface temperatures and seawater acidification, is being strengthened by other negative factors like overfishing, pollution and invasive species, said the report. As emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide increase, oceans absorb more of them and become more acidic, and this is damaging a wide range of marine life from corals to plankton and from lobsters to sea grasses, it said. Scientists cannot say how much of the coral loss in recent years has been caused by global warming but agree that climate change is the biggest threat to reefs. The report said one encouraging sign was the ability of some corals to recover after major "bleaching" events — when colorful algae living in corals die off — and to adapt to climate change. But the global trend of recent years of a worsening environment for corals has not been reversed, it said. Coral reefs offer economic and environmental benefits to millions of people, including coastal protection from waves and storms and as sources of food, pharmaceuticals and jobs.
Interesting4: Researchers in United States and China are reporting progress toward a simple, low-cost method to make "smart fabrics," electronic textiles capable of detecting diseases, monitoring heart rates, and other vital signs. A report on these straight-out-of-science-fiction-fibers, made of carbon nanotubes, is scheduled for the December 10 issue of ACS’ Nano Letters. In the new study, Nicholas A. Kotov, Chuanlai Xu, and colleagues point out that electronic textiles, or E-textiles, already are a reality. However, the current materials are too bulky, rigid, and complex for practical use. Fabric makers need simpler, more flexible materials to make E-fibers practical for future applications, they say. The scientists describe development of cotton fibers coated with electrolytes and carbon nanotubes (CNT) — thin filaments 1/50,000 the width of a single human hair. The fibers are soft, flexible, and capable of transmitting electricity when woven into fabrics. In laboratory tests, the researchers showed that the new E-fibers could light up a simple light-emitting diode when connected to a battery. When coated with certain antibodies, the fibers detected the presence of albumin, a key protein in blood — a function that could be used to detect bleeding in wounded soldiers. The fabrics could also help monitor diseases and vital signs, they say.
Interesting5: An historic diamond of European royal provenance was sold for a credit crunch-defying 24.2 million dollars at Christie’s in London Wednesday. The Wittelsbach Diamond, an extremely rare 35.56-carat greyish-blue diamond, set a new world record price for any diamond sold at auction, Christie’s said. It had been estimated to fetch a maximum of 9 million pounds. Wednesday’s sale beat the previous world auction record for a coloured diamond, sold for 8.9 million dollars at Christie’s in Geneva in May, the auction house said. "The diamond market as a whole, like the international jewellery market, continues to be strong," said Christie’s. It confirmed that the Wittelsbach Diamond had been bought by London Jewellers Laurence Graff. The diamond, which originated from India, was chosen as a dowry by King Philip IV of Spain (1605-1665) for his daughter, the Infanta Margarita Teresa. It entered the Austrian royal family through the princess’s marriage to Emperor Leopold I of Austria and passed, again through marriage, to the Bavarian royal house of Wittelsbach in 1722, where it remained a prized possession until the end of the German monarchy in 1918. The diamond had been in a private collection since 1964.
Interesting6: Japanese whalers in the Antarctic were warned Wednesday that they risked having their vessels rammed or boarded this hunting season. "We have pretty much got the key to shutting them down," Paul Watson, captain of the Steve Irwin protest ship, told reporters in Hobart, Tasmania. "We just keep on them, keep them running and keep chasing them. As long as they are running, they are not killing whales." The Steve Irwin, which is owned by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, is in Hobart to refuel and take on supplies before attempting to track down the Japanese fishing fleet, which set sail last month. Last whaling season the Steve Irwin collided with a Japanese harpoon ship and also landed two of its crew members on board a whaler.
Watson said the Australian government, which with New Zealand leads the international campaign to ban commercial whaling, had hindered the Sea Shepherd activists. "My crew are being detained at immigration for the first time, I was detained at immigration. We aren’t allowed to bring in the equipment we need," he told Australia’s AAP news agency. Watson said Canberra had denied permission to bring in bullet-proof vests. Last season he claimed the Japanese had shot at him and that a bullet had lodged in his bullet-proof vest. Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said last year that Canberra "strongly discourages activity which could be illegal or unsafe activity which could lead to injury or loss of life at sea." In January, after the two Sea Shepherd activists boarded and were taken hostage, Canberra brokered their release. Despite an international moratorium on whaling, Japan continues to hunt whales for "scientific reasons."
Interesting7: A prominent team of researchers predicted 14 tropical storms in the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season Wednesday and said seven would develop into hurricanes. The Colorado State University team, formed by forecasting pioneer William Gray, said 2009 would be another "above-average" hurricane season after an active 2008. The long-term average during the six-month season, which runs from June through November, is for 10 or 11 tropical storms and six hurricanes. Gray’s team, now led by his protege Philip Klotzbach, predicted three of next year’s hurricanes would be dangerous storms with a rank of Category 3 or above on the Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity. That would mean a potentially deadly trio of storms packing powerful sustained winds of at least 111 mph. The Colorado State experts, whose forecasts are followed closely in energy and commodity markets, had originally predicted 13 tropical storms in the 2008 season and said seven would strengthen into hurricanes.
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