December 5-6 2008
Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Friday afternoon:
Lihue, Kauai – 78
Honolulu, Oahu – 82
Kaneohe, Oahu – 78
Kahului, Maui – 82
Hilo, Hawaii – 80
Kailua-kona – 82
Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level, and on the highest mountains…at 4 p.m. Friday afternoon:
Port Allen, Kauai – 81F
Molokai airport – 75F
Haleakala Crater – 46 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea summit – 36 (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 Friday afternoon:
0.02 Hanapepe, Kauai
0.04 Waimanalo, Oahu
0.00 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
0.07 West Wailuaiki, Maui
0.52 Waiakea Uka, Big Island
Weather Chart – Here’s the latest (automatically updated) weather map showing a weak ridge of high pressure just north of the state, which will provide trade winds to the islands into Saturday. The ridge will move south to near Kauai Saturday night. It will then recede eastward Sunday night as a front approaches the state from the northwest. The dissipating front will be near Kauai Monday with only its remnant expected near the state on Tuesday.
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
Nice weather here in the islands!
Photo Credit: Flikr.com
The trade winds will continue into Saturday, before giving way to lighter southeast breezes Sunday into early in the new week ahead. A high pressure ridge is located north of Kauai Friday evening, providing a firm trade wind flow. This has allowed better visibilities, now which will last through at least the first half of the upcoming weekend…the one exception will be parts of the Big Island. We expect more light southeast winds Sunday, which may bring the volcanic haze back then. The winds will remain from the southeast moving into early in the new week, ahead of a cold front forecast to arrive near Kauai
The trade winds will bring a few passing showers to the windward coasts and slopes, with generally dry weather elsewhere through Saturday into Sunday. The breezes return to the southeast later this weekend, when we may see afternoon interior clouds and showers forming Sunday into Monday. There may be a further increase in showers Tuesday…as a cold front works its way down to near Kauai. The latest GFS model runs continue to show the potential for considerably wetter weather, especially on the Kauai end of the state, starting next Thursday into Friday. This will result form a storm that dips down from the northwest, into the area NW of Kauai around Thursday.
It’s early Friday evening here in Kihei, Maui. Looking out the window about an hour before sunset, I see some very minor streaks of high cirrus clouds. These may be substantial enough, that they could reflect a little light as the sun goes down. Here’s a satellite image, showing those few stray high cirrus clouds dropping down over the islands from the north. Otherwise, skies are clear to partly cloudy, with the trade winds blowing nicely. Friday night will continue the string of days sporting nice weather, which should carry forth into the weekend. The way it looks from here, I anticipate that our weather will remain generally favorable through much of the weekend, if not right through the entire day Sunday. Next week looks not bad either, at least through the first half, with Kauai and perhaps Oahu finding most of the showers around Tuesday. Further out, and during the second half of the new week ahead, we could see a significant change, with potentially wetter weather arriving around Thursday. This too looks like it will clip the Kauai end of the island chain, with locally blustery Kona winds…coming up from the south and southwest. ~~~ I’m about ready to drive over to Wailea with a friend. There’s a couple of friends of ours that are hosting a Christmas toy drive for kids, which is an annual event. They live in a gated fancy community, and serve food and drinks. I’m looking forward to meeting some new people, and doing some socializing, rather than going to see a new film at the theatre, which is my usual Friday night thing. I’ll be back online early Saturday morning with your next new weather narrative. I hope you have a great Friday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Interesting: Between 1998 and 2007, India has lost more people due to extreme weather events caused by climate change than any other country, with an average of 4,532 people killed every year, a well-known German NGO has calculated. The monetary losses were an average of $12 billion a year in terms of purchasing power parity, representing 0.62 percent of India’s GDP, added Sven Harmeling of Germanwatch here Thursday. Releasing his findings on the sidelines of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) summit in this western Poland town, Harmeling said if one took into account average death, deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, average total losses and average losses as percentage of GDP, India would rank seventh among countries most affected by extreme weather events in the last decade. Germanwatch had created an index with these four factors, by which Honduras was the country worst affected in the last decade, followed by Bangladesh.
The benchmark Fourth Assessment Report brought out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 had said extreme weather events such as more frequent and more severe droughts, floods and storms were strongly correlated to climate change caused by global warming. Harmeling said 2,502 Indians had been killed by extreme weather events in 2007 alone. But other countries had suffered worse, which placed India 19th among the list of countries affected last year. Around 9,000 delegates from 186 countries and over 400 NGOs are attending the UNFCCC summit. Harmeling said that since climate change was now an ongoing reality, countries had to step up their risk management systems in every way.
Interesting2:
The Big Three were late to the hybrid party, but they’re finally getting into the swing of things with cars like the 39-mpg Ford Fusion Hybrid, a car that should make
Interesting3:
It was recently discovered that a fungus found in the
The fungus has a clear advantage over these biofuels because it produces “myco-diesel” directly from cellulose. The shortened production process means a reduction in costs and carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. Because current biofuels are derived mostly from food crops that are required to be grown and harvested on farmland, they have a substantial impact on food supply and prices. The fungus, however, can be grown in factories, eliminating any such impacts. Oddly enough, this remarkable discovery was the result of serendipity. Dr. Gary Strobel, a professor at
Interesting4: Polar dinosaurs such as the 3.3-ton duckbill Edmontosaurus are thought by some paleontologists to have been champion migrators to avoid the cold, dark season. But a study now claims that most of these beasts preferred to stick closer to home despite potentially deadly winter weather. While some polar dinosaurs may have migrated, their treks were much shorter than previously thought, University of Alberta researchers Phil Bell and Eric Snively conclude from a recent review of past research on the animals and their habitat. Polar dinosaurs include hadrosaurs, ceratopsians, tyrannosaurs, troodontids, hypsilophodontids, ankylosaurs, prosauropods, sauropods, ornithomimids and oviraptorosaurs.
This idea goes against a once-popular "Happy Wanderers" theory published in 1980 by paleontologist Nicholas Hotton III, who thought that long-distance migration allowed polar dinosaurs to escape the coldest winter temperatures. Hotton and others suggested that some dinosaurs living near the North Pole followed the centrally shifting sunlight, or latitudinal "sun line" where the sun ceases to rise for part of the year, as part of their migration. That would mean the animals might travel as far as 30 degrees of latitude, or 1,980 miles (3,200 kilometers) one way, in order to survive and avoid the total darkness of a polar winter. "There are strong opinions regarding dinosaur migration, but we decided to take a different approach, looking at variables such as energy requirements," Bell said.
Interesting5: Older people tend to feel about 13 years younger than their chronological age, a new study finds. The seniors in the study, all 70 and over, also thought they looked about 10 years younger than their numerical age, with women perceiving their appearances to be closer to their actual age than men. "People generally felt quite a bit younger than they actually were, and they also showed relatively high levels of satisfaction with aging over the time period studied," said researcher Jacqui Smith, a psychologist at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. She added, "Perhaps feeling about 13 years younger is an optimal illusion in old age." The results, which will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Science, have implications beyond the psychological.
Past research has shown that feeling youthful is linked with better health and longer life, the researchers say. Smith and her colleagues analyzed information collected from surveys of 516 men and women age 70 and older who participated in the Berlin Aging Study. The survey tracked how seniors’ perceptions about age and their satisfaction with aging changed over a six-year period ending in 1998. (Even though the study was conducted on Berlin residents, Smith said the same results should apply to Americans. And in fact her recent research on Americans is showing similar results.) Some of the oldest participants actually felt even younger than the average delightful self-deception in the study. This could be due to the fact that individuals on the older side, say 85, experienced less overall decline with age. And that’s why they survived, while their 70-year-old counterparts perhaps didn’t have so much longer to live.
Interesting6: A slow-moving tongue of molten rock that recently broke off from the main flow of lava on the Big Island is inching its way closer to the boundary of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and, not far from there, the Pacific Ocean. The swath of lava is just west of the main flow that has for years run toward what is called the Waikupanaha ocean entry on the island’s southeast side. Jim Kauahikaua, scientist-in-charge of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, said the new flow is likely to breach the national park boundary later this week. "It’s not a terribly threatening flow," he said. National Park Service officials are gearing up for the flow to cross onto federal land but are hesitant to predict when or whether it will crawl another mile to reach the ocean. "It’s a dynamic and unpredictable phenomenon," said park ranger Mardie Lane, noting the flow also could stop and crust over or turn in another direction.
On Monday, Geological Survey volcanologists walked along the perimeter of the flow with hand-held global positioning system devices to measure its location. It had moved several hundred feet in three directions since the previous measurement 10 days before. The swath measured a mile or more across. The public will not be prohibited from accessing park service land once the lava begins moving over the park boundary. But Lane stressed that to do so would be highly unwise. For one, Chain of Craters Road ends about six miles from where the lava is expected to go, she said. Hikers would then have to traverse hot, humid, shadeless and rocky terrain that contains no public services. They also might have to cope with vog – a mixture of sulfur dioxide and other volcanic gases that chemically interact with sunlight, oxygen, moisture and dust – and lava haze from molten rock striking sea water at the Waikupanaha ocean entry, she added. One park ranger is now posted three days a week at the end of Chain of Craters Road, and more could be sent if the lava crosses the park border. No lava has reached national park land since last year.
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