A few fireworks from my neighbor’s modest show. At least somewhat modest compared to many in the village. With so many families practicing oriental traditions, the amount of fireworks expended for the new year celebration is rather staggering in a Hawaiian neighborhood. Then there are the resort shows, big professional aerials, I can just see them from the front lanai. They are distant, but the sounds reverberate and they light up the low cloud deck with a colorful glow.
Wishing you a happy new year, may it bring good memories and fun adventures!
Andrew
Not a great deal of snow, maybe an inch or two rearranged by the winds. More snow is expected over the coming few days before this storm is over. Where to find the heaviest snow on the mountain? Puʻu Poliʻahu of course, just look at the images below.
This is the first winter storm that our new weather mast camera is operating, since I bolted it in place a couple months ago. It is great fun to have a full pan-tilt-zoom camera available during weather events like this.
The summit ridge with an inch of fresh snowSnow around the Subaru telescope
Living in Hawaiʻi you pick up a few additions to your vocabulary. For centuries the islands have been a stew of languages, each borrowing words from one another. Hawaiian, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, English, Spanish and more have all added to the flavor of these islands. Everyone uses a few words from other languages in everyday conversation. Then there are local folks who grew up speaking the full mixture, a pidgin unique to the islands.
A handheld radio used at Keck for daily communication.Working with a bunch of island guys you need to learn a bit of pidgin simply to understand the conversations around you. To an English speaker, such as myself, the syntax seems mixed about. The words are mostly English and Hawaiian, with a clear context and a little exposure you begin to pick it up. After a while it seems natural to hear pidgin around you.
Some of the words that Hawaiian supplies seem much better than the English equivalents, it is understandable that they are used in preference to the English words. Some are simply more appropriate on an island… Mauka and Makai make perfect sense where everything is either towards the mountain or towards the sea. Puʻu us the perfect name for the numerous volcanic hills that dot the island. Puka, for small hole, just sounds right.
My favorite is Pau, meaning finished or done, a word that is commonly heard on the Keck radio channels. “How are you guys doing up there?” might go the radio chatter, “We all pau!” Something about the word just works, the sound and the meaning in agreement.
I expect these words will stay in my vocabulary, alongside British expressions I picked up living in England decades ago. Language is a fluid and dynamic thing, part of the richness of our lives.
An excellent video showing how pāhoehoe lava flows advance. A flow is a surprisingly complex process. A quick look or photograph will fail to reveal what it going on, it takes time to observe something that occurs this slowly. I have spent hours watching and filming flow fronts advance, totally amazed at what I saw when I really watched…
Time lapse shows the process more clearly than watching in person. It is the inflation of a pāhoehoe flow that shows in a compressed timescale. A flow a foot or two thick becomes six or ten feet thick over the course of a few hours. Also revealed are how other features of the flow form… The ropy surface, the broken plates, the cracks where lava has oozed out. After having watched a flow in process I see old lava flows in an entirely new way.
Below is an old video, filmed over several visits to the lava during the summer of 2010. I have better material now. Some time I need to put it together into a new video. Still, you can see the process of breakout, advance, crust over, inflate, then breakout again.
I have yet to have an opportunity to see an ʻaʻā flow advancing. They move entirely differently. I understand the sound of an ʻaʻā flow is impressive, a moving gravel pile of grinding and falling rock.
We have all been watching the lava flow for the past several weeks as it crept ever closer to the homes and businesses of Pāhoa. Not since the destruction of Kalapana in the 1980’s has the volcano threatened so much destruction. This historic plantation town is a special place, a town with a very unique character, a place that preserves some of what makes Hawaiʻi special.
This morning the flow crossed the first road above the town. If the flow keeps the current advancement rate it will be in the town over the next couple days. My thoughts are with the residents of Pāhoa… Stay safe!
Hurricane Ana brought nothing more than a day of soaking rain to our part of the island. It was the lack of wind that was striking, with the hurricane directly offshore we had calm conditions. There was some flooding and moderate winds along the Kaʻu coast. Not much word on damage, I suspect it was minimal, nothing like what would have happened if the storm had followed the original forecast track.
A new week has begin, time to see what next adventure life will bring…
Hurricane Ana as it appeared at 3pm 16Oct2014, 4km IR image from GEOS-West
The evening started as if there was no storm. Partly cloudy skies and a very pretty sunset. There was an odd element… Very hot and muggy, no wind. Bad enough you wanted the hurricane to start just to get the air moving.
Late in the evening the rain started, a soft steady rain that has lasted for several hours now. The storm is bringing a huge mass of moisture over the island. The satellite shows enormous blobs of angry red, you would expect the world to be ending under colors like that. Instead we have soft rain and almost no wind.
Hurricane Ana at midnight as it passes the island of Hawai’i
Not quite a hurricane… Yet. Ana is expected to reach hurricane status later today. it is an impressive sight in the satellite imagery as it closes on the island. This mornings forecast places the track even further offshore. We will not witness the full force of the storm, but will still experience some effects. While the storm is centered about 250 miles south of us, the outer cloud-bands are already over the island.
It is an interesting life.
Hurricane Ana south of the island of Hawai’i on the morning of 17Oct2014
