The weather here is so unfathomable.

[Durian Fiend]

quote:

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Originally posted by glassnumbers

http://bigislandnow.com/wp-content/uploa...067203.png

it's been raining for 11 months. I got here in mid-may, and ever since then the only sunny month was December.

Now, specifically for today, it's one degree off from Kona? what the hell? How is that even possible with the thousands of gallons of rain Discovery Harbor has been hit with?

Oh yeah, also, my apologies. I know this isn't about Puna, but there's no Ka'uweb that i know of, and for some reason, Ka'u tends to get all the rain that Puna does, at least for the last 11 months.

Aloha

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2017 was drier than average just about everywhere island wide. Pahala had 70 pct of normal rainfall while South Point was less than 50 pct. For the year Mt. View had 100 inches more rain than Pahala. Puna is always much wetter than Kau. http://www.prh.noaa.gov/hnl/hydro/pages/...ytd_12.gif

[Kenney]

BTW Tom, we really enjoyed “Decoding the Weather Machine” on PBS, and learned quite a bit while we were at it.
I didn’t realize tilling the soil contributed to releasing Carbon Dioxide, or how much trees absorb. Wonderful to see Mauna Kea and learn of the contributions made by the Scientist there. Mahalo for the head’s up! (a natural position for you star gazers..)

[Lodestone]

Thanks Tom! That was the best explanation of climate change of seen (that link again: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/decod...chine.html )

For those without 2 hours to spare, it pretty much wraps up its case by the 41 minute mark; the remainder hashing out the details, as well as offering some rays of hope in the form of new technologies and approaches.

Very interesting to see that, having completed analyzing the bubbles trapped in ancient Antarctic ice cores, the long suspected correlation between CO2 levels and temperatures has been confirmed going back 800,000 years.

As for Puna-related content, there is the prediction of sea levels rising between 2 and 9 feet by the end of the century (depending on how much of the Antarctic ice sheets calve off). If you believe in climate change, you should to sell off your waterfront property in Kapoho while you still can. If you don't believe in climate change, you should buy some waterfront property from a panicked seller.

[Mimosa]

Nice to see GN back -- No weather day or night is the same state wide or Hawaii the Island.
Those of us in our 80s and 90s in earth years and who are farmers and ranchers remember droughts and extreme rainy spells lasting years.
We suspect since the island wide drought is pau for this year that we are entering into a 30 - 50 year cycle of more rains as the last 10 to 30 years here on island has been on the dry to drought conditions mode .
Expect more rain and storms from the south south west along with more late season snow on our peaks.Prior to roads built in the late 1950s to the top of our Mtns - some years in the 1920s and 1930s had snow year round.As a general rule the rainy season lasts from Jan 1st to Dec 31st of any given year.
A drought in the flat lands of Puna is more than 4 days of no Ua.
Mrs.Mimosa

[Midnight Rambler]

I'm curious, during what part of the last 4.543 billion years was the climate not in a state of change?

It's been pretty stable for the past 10,000 years or so (with a couple of little bumps as the last bits of ice sheets melted), until the past 20.

First arrived here in 1975. Can't say I've seen much in the way of "climate change". Like you said droughts and floods seem to have always been part of the weather picture.

The long-term average has been considerably lower since 1998, the first seriously hot year, than it was before then. Particularly on the dry side, but even on the windward side (obviously, a 20% drop in rainfall is less noticeable when it goes from 120 inches to 100 than going from 40 to 32). Nearly everyone I know who has been here as long as you have has said this.

When was the last time the streams in Kau flooded and cut off Highway 11 below Pahala? IIRC it happened once last year, for the first time in 10 years or so. When I first got here in the early 90s, it happened two or three times a year, every year.

[TomK]

"When was the last time the streams in Kau flooded and cut off Highway 11 below Pahala? IIRC it happened once last year, for the first time in 10 years or so. When I first got here in the early 90s, it happened two or three times a year, every year."

Midnight - to be fair, a big part of that might be because the drainage and run-off engineering in that area was greatly improved after the great storm of 2000.

[TomK]

Kenney - thanks for the feedback and really glad you enjoyed it! Just a quick correction; it's Mauna Loa where all the climate research is being done, not Mauna Kea, although observations from the Mauna Kea telescopes of Mars and Venus have helped frame the idea of greenhouse gases and their effects on a planet.

Lodestone - definitely one of the best Nova episodes I've watched and came away learning stuff even though I understand the science quite well.

[Kenney]

Ha! I always get the Mauna’s mixed up. I’ll probably do it again Tom.

[TomK]

No problem, Kenney, and the photography from Mauna Loa on the show made me think back to the times I regularly worked at the Mauna Kea summit and got to see those sunsets! I do miss those times. These days we work remotely which is very efficient and cost-effective but nowhere near as satisfying.

[Midnight Rambler]

Midnight - to be fair, a big part of that might be because the drainage and run-off engineering in that area was greatly improved after the great storm of 2000.

Aren't those changes mostly east of Pahala? It shows up mauka as well - you walk up the streambeds and they're full of trees now, all less than 15 years old.