Air Temperatures – The following maximum temperatures were recorded across the state of Hawaii Sunday:
Lihue, Kauai – 82
Honolulu airport, Oahu – 84 (Record high for Sunday / 89 – 1989)
Kaneohe, Oahu – M
Molokai airport – 80
Kahului airport, Maui – M
Kona airport – 83
Hilo airport, Hawaii – 81
Air Temperatures ranged between these warmest and coolest spots near sea level – and on the highest mountain tops…as of 5pm Sunday evening:
Barking Sands, Kauai – 83
Kapalua, Maui – 72
Haleakala Crater – 41 (near 10,000 feet on Maui)
Mauna Kea – 34 (near 13,800 feet on the Big Island)
Hawaii’s Mountains – Here’s a link to the live web cam on the summit of near 13,800 foot Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii. This web cam is available during the daylight hours here in the islands…and when there’s a big moon shining down during the night at times. Plus, during the nights you will be able to see stars, and the sunrise and sunset too…depending upon weather conditions. Here's the Haleakala Crater webcam on Maui…although this webcam is not always working correctly.
Tropical Cyclone activity in the eastern and central Pacific – Here’s the latest weather information coming out of the National Hurricane Center, covering the eastern north Pacific. You can find the latest tropical cyclone information (once the season begins June 1) for the central north Pacific (where Hawaii is located) by clicking on this link to the Central Pacific Hurricane Center. A satellite image, which shows the entire ocean area between Hawaii and the Mexican coast…can be found here. Here's a tropical cyclone tracking map for the eastern and central Pacific.
Aloha Paragraphs
Strong and gusty trade winds…passing
windward showers, a few leeward
Small craft wind advisory coastal and channel
waters statewide, wind advisories on the upper
slopes of the Haleakala Crater on Maui
High surf advisory east facing beaches
Remembering and honoring those
who risked their lives to protect our
country on Memorial Day!
As this weather map shows, we have a large near 1034 millibar high pressure system to the north-northeast of the islands, with elongated high pressure ridges extending far southeast and northwest of the state. Our local winds will continue to be from the trade wind direction…remaining locally strong and gusty.
The following numbers represent the most recent top wind gusts (mph), along with directions as of Sunday evening:
33 Port Allen, Kauai – NE
42 Kuaokala, Oahu – NE
40 Molokai – NE
45 Kahoolawe – ENE
42 Kahului, Maui – NE
47 Lanai – NE
38 South Point, Big Island – NE
We can use the following links to see what’s going on in our area of the north central Pacific Ocean. Here's the latest NOAA satellite picture – the latest looping satellite image…and finally the latest looping radar image for the Hawaiian Islands.
Here are the latest 24-hour precipitation totals (inches) for each of the islands as of Sunday evening:
1.12 Mount Waialeale, Kauai
0.76 Waiawa, Oahu
0.30 Molokai
0.00 Lanai
0.00 Kahoolawe
5.30 Puu Kukui, Maui
1.64 Kawainui Stream, Big Island
Sunset Commentary: The trade winds will remain stronger than normal through Memorial Day into Tuesday. This is a long lasting trade wind weather regime, as our trades will remain active through the next week. The NWS forecast office in Honolulu is keeping the small craft wind advisories active across all the marine zones statewide through Monday evening. Meanwhile, the winds are strong on the upper slopes of the Haleakala Crater, Maui, which warrants the current wind advisory through Monday evening as well. These gusty winds will gradually taper off…becoming moderately strong as we push into the middle of the new week.
As far as precipitation goes, there will be incoming showers at times, carried by the stronger than usual trade wind flow. As this satellite image shows, there will continue to be showery clouds coming into the windward sides, although not quite as many as we've seen the last 24 hours. These clouds will bring showers into the morning hours on most of the islands Monday, although should be tapering to more normal levels thereafter. Here's the looping radar image that shows these windward biased showers moving into the state. At the same time, some of the leewards areas will find clouds being carried over there on the blustery trade winds…leading to a few showers at times there at times too.
My neighbors invited me to see a film at their house this last Friday evening, called Rum Diary (2011), starring Johnny Depp, Aaron Eckhart and Amber Heard…among many others. The synopsis: Based on the debut novel by Hunter S. Thompson. Tiring of the noise and madness of New York and the crushing conventions of late Eisenhower-era America, Paul Kemp (Johnny Depp) travels to the pristine island of Puerto Rico to write for a local newspaper, run by downtrodden editor Lotterman (Richard Jenkins). Adopting the rum-soaked life of the island, Paul soon becomes obsessed with Chenault (Amber Heard), the wildly attractive Connecticut-born fiancée of Sanderson (Aaron Eckhart). Sanderson is one of a growing number of American entrepreneurs who are determined to convert Puerto Rico into a capitalist paradise in service of the wealthy. When Kemp is recruited by Sanderson to write favorably about his latest unsavory scheme, the journalist is presented with a choice: to use his words for the corrupt businessmen's financial benefit, or use them to take the bastards down. ~~~ It turned out to be quite good, although not great in my book. I like Johnny Depp, its hard not too, although I'm not typically overly moved by his films. This particularly one deserves a soft B in my humble opinion…although was certainly entertaining. Here's a trailer in case you're interested.
Here in Kula, Maui at 520pm, it was partly cloudy with generally light breezes, with an air temperature of 75.4F degrees. The winds kept up today, and actually have been the windiest of this current strong and gusty trade wind episode. I didn't see any gust actually reach 50 mph, although almost all the islands, if not all, had gusts reaching well into the 40+ mph range. Here on Maui, showers remained active last night through most of the day today. I would expect that these showers will continue through the night, into Monday morning. An upper level low pressure system near the islands enhanced our incoming showers lately. One clear example of that was the 5.30" rainfall total atop the West Maui Mountains, which fell in the Puu Kukui rain gauge during the last 24 hours! ~~~ I'll be back Monday with your Memorial Day weather narrative, I hope you all have a good Sunday night until then! Aloha for now…Glenn.
Youtube video…Spandau Ballet – True
Atlantic Ocean: Tropical storm Beryl has moved ashore inland over northeastern Florida. This storm will lose some of its strength as it moves inland, although reached near hurricane strength before impacting the coast in far northeast Florida. It was located 5 miles east of Jacksonville, Florida, and 60 miles south of Brunswick Georgia, with 65 mph winds. Here is the NHC graphical track map, along with a satellite image of this area. This tropical system is bringing rain, gusty winds, and thunderstorms to the area as it moves inland. Here's a looping radar image of the rainfall associated with TS Beryl.
Eastern Pacific: There are no active tropical cyclones.
Central Pacific: There are no active tropical cyclones. Here in the central part of the Pacific, the hurricane season begins as of June 1. The Central Pacific Hurricane Center in Honolulu is forecasting 2-4 tropical cyclones in this part of the Pacific Basin…which is slightly below the average number. An average season has 4-5 tropical cyclones, which include tropical depressions, tropical storms and hurricanes.
Western Pacific Ocean: There are no active tropical cyclones.
Interesting: Noted paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey predicts skepticism over evolution will soon be history. Not that the avowed atheist has any doubts himself. Sometime in the next 15 to 30 years, the Kenyan-born Leakey expects scientific discoveries will have accelerated to the point that "even the skeptics can accept it."
"If you get to the stage where you can persuade people on the evidence, that it's solid, that we are all African, that color is superficial, that stages of development of culture are all interactive," Leakey says, "then I think we have a chance of a world that will respond better to global challenges."
Leakey, a professor at Stony Brook University on Long Island, recently spent several weeks in New York promoting the Turkana Basin Institute in Kenya. The institute, where Leakey spends most of his time, welcomes researchers and scientists from around the world dedicated to unearthing the origins of mankind in an area rich with fossils. His friend, Paul Simon, performed at a May 2 fundraiser for the institute in Manhattan that collected more than $2 million.
A National Geographic documentary on his work at Turkana aired this month on public television. Now 67, Leakey is the son of the late Louis and Mary Leakey and conducts research with his wife, Meave, and daughter, Louise. The family claims to have unearthed "much of the existing fossil evidence for human evolution."
On the eve of his return to Africa earlier this week, Leakey spoke to the Associated Press in New York City about the past and the future. "If you look back, the thing that strikes you, if you've got any sensitivity, is that extinction is the most common phenomena," Leakey says.
"Extinction is always driven by environmental change. Environmental change is always driven by climate change. Man accelerated, if not created, planet change phenomena; I think we have to recognize that the future is by no means a very rosy one." Any hope for mankind's future, he insists, rests on accepting existing scientific evidence of its past.
"If we're spreading out across the world from centers like Europe and America that evolution is nonsense and science is nonsense, how do you combat new pathogens, how do you combat new strains of disease that are evolving in the environment?" he asked.
"If you don't like the word evolution, I don't care what you call it, but life has changed. You can lay out all the fossils that have been collected and establish lineages that even a fool could work up. So the question is why, how does this happen? It's not covered by Genesis.
There's no explanation for this change going back 500 million years in any book I've read from the lips of any God." Leakey insists he has no animosity toward religion. "If you tell me, well, people really need a faith … I understand that," he said.
"I see no reason why you shouldn't go through your life thinking if you're a good citizen, you'll get a better future in the afterlife …." Leakey began his work searching for fossils in the mid-1960s. His team unearthed a nearly complete 1.6-million-year-old skeleton in 1984 that became known as "Turkana Boy," the first known early human with long legs, short arms and a tall stature.
In the late 1980s, Leakey began a career in government service in Kenya, heading the Kenya Wildlife Service. He led the quest to protect elephants from poachers who were killing the animals at an alarming rate in order to harvest their valuable ivory tusks. He gathered 12 tons of confiscated ivory in Nairobi National Park and set it afire in a 1989 demonstration that attracted worldwide headlines.
In 1993, Leakey crashed a small propeller-driven plane; his lower legs were later amputated and he now gets around on artificial limbs. There were suspicions the plane had been sabotaged by his political enemies, but it was never proven. About a decade ago, he visited Stony Brook University on eastern Long Island, a part of the State University of New York, as a guest lecturer.
Then-President Shirley Strum Kenny began lobbying Leakey to join the faculty. It was a process that took about two years; he relented after returning to the campus to accept an honorary degree. Kenny convinced him that he could remain in Kenya most of the time, where Stony Brook anthropology students could visit and learn about his work.
And the college founded in 1957 would benefit from the gravitas of such a noted professor on its faculty."It was much easier to work with a new university that didn't have a 200-year-old image where it was so set in its ways like some of the Ivy League schools that you couldn't really change what they did and what they thought," he said.
Earlier this month, Paul Simon performed at a benefit dinner for the Turkana Basin Institute. IMAX CEO Rich Gelfond and his wife, Peggy Bonapace Gelfond, and billionaire hedge fund investor Jim Simons and his wife, Marilyn, were among those attending the exclusive show in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood.
Simon agreed to allow his music to be performed on the National Geographic documentary airing on PBS and donated an autographed guitar at the fundraiser that sold for nearly $20,000. Leakey, who clearly cherishes investigating the past, is less optimistic about the future.
"We may be on the cusp of some very real disasters that have nothing to do with whether the elephant survives, or a cheetah survives, but if we survive."
Email Glenn James: 
