Hawaiian Islands Satellite Interpretation Message
Fri, 17 Dec 2010 06:30:00 -0600
Based on data through 1200 UTC December 17 2010.
High clouds moving over the main Hawaiian islands from the west have thickened somewhat from Thursday evening, especially over Kauai, and waters west of Kauai. Other than the high clouds, skies over most island areas are mostly clear, with light winds allowing island scale land breezes to bring about clearing of any low clouds. Near the Big Island, however, a light east wind prevails, and these winds are carrying an area of broken, but stable, low clouds over the lower slopes of windward and southeast Big Island. Low clouds near windward Big Island, and over waters south of the Big Island, are moving toward the west at about 15 mph, while low clouds over windward waters east of the other islands are moving toward the northwest at about 10 mph.
While the encroaching high clouds are limiting the view of lower clouds over waters west of Kauai, most of the low cloud features over the islands and adjacent waters still remain identifiable. An area of broken to overcast cumulus /cu/ and stratocumulus /sc/, with embedded towering cu, continues to trek slowly northwestward over waters to the south and southwest of the islands. This area of clouds lies about 100 miles either side of a line from 22°N 161°W to 16°N 159°W, with the colder cloud tops indicating towering cu located near 17°N 159°W.
Water vapor imagery highlights the extremely amplified upper air pattern of the north Pacific, with a sharp trough aloft straddling the international date line west of the islands. A strong southerly jet along the trough's western flank has sharpened the trough over the past 6 to 10 hours, and appears to have incited increased thunderstorms east and southeast of the trough axis. The trough extends through 30°N 176°W to 20°N 180° to 10°N 175°E to the equator near 161°W, and has been nearly stationary over the past 12 hours, if not longer. This trough is responsible for the extensive and persistent, northeast to southwest oriented, area of layered clouds, and embedded thunderstorms, that lies west of the islands, from about 7°N to 30°N, between 160°W and 180. A surface low centered near 25°N 178°W has scattered thunderstorms near its center, and is associated with a weakly defined closed low aloft near the core of the trough.
Water vapor imagery also highlights a compact low aloft centered about 450 miles south of the big island's South Point, and this low has become elongated in an east-west direction over the past 8 hours. Isolated thunderstorms associated with this low are located from 08°N to 16°N between 145°W and 154°W.
BIRCHARD
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