I like the effect caused by a recent full moon rising behind the hedge at the back of the house.
Moon on fire
Category Archives: Weather
View towards Maui and the coast
I was up at a ranch on Kohala Mountain Road and the place boasted an impressive 180° view, from Maui to Hualalai. This is the northern part of that view.
The downside of the location is that the wind can blow like crazy. During the big windstorm of a few months ago, they registered a wind speed of 83 mph!
Yachts at anchor
Recently, these two yachts were anchored off Mauna Kea Resort. I couldn’t make out the name of the blue boat but the other one is the Anawa, a Dutch built superyacht owned by a Brazilian billionaire. I confess my first thought on seeing this yacht was that it might be the ugliest boat I’d ever seen. Perhaps it was the angle. Perhaps not.
Abstracts: Green ring
Late afternoon sun shines through the trees.
Clouds in the Saddle
The Big Island’s weather is greatly influenced by northeast trade winds blowing up against Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa and dumping generous quantities of rain on the wet east side. Not much of this moisture reaches the much drier west side.
On a recent hiking trip to the saddle between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, I saw a visual example of what goes on. Cresting a hill, I saw a bank of cloud rolling in from the east. My hike was somewhere under that cloud. When I got closer to that wall of cloud, I could see it fading as it pushed to the west.
My hike started under gray skies, with some light rain, but on this day, the clouds did not keep building. Instead, they burned off somewhat so that it was dry and quite hot by the time I returned to my car, such is the fickle nature of Big Island weather.
Sunrise from Pelekane Beach
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Waiting for Peace.’ See more responses here.
This peaceful scene was taken at Pelekane Beach in Kawaihae. It’s a favorite spot of mine for an early morning walk, when it’s very quiet and calm. But it hasn’t always been that way.
In the late 1700s, King Kamehameha I ruled the north and west parts of Hawaii Island, but was engaged in a war with his cousin who ruled in the east. Kamehameha was advised to build a sacrificial temple for Kūkaʻilimoku, the war god. So Kamehameha had Puʻukoholā Heiau built. That’s the structure silhouetted on the hill to the left of the photo.
Kamehameha invited his cousin to the site, ostensibly to talk peace, but when his cousin arrived, he and his entourage were duly captured and became the first sacrifices to dedicate the temple. So not so peaceful after all. But this action ultimately led to Kamehameha being able to bring all the islands under his rule, ending many years of fighting and bringing stability and peace to Hawaii.
That situation largely lasted until the late 1800s when the Hawaiian Kingdom was overthrown in a coup d’état by a group seeking annexation to the United States. This duly happened, though the aftershocks of this event continue to disturb the peace in the islands to this day.
Lenticular clouds
A low pressure system northwest of Hawaii has drawn up a tropical moisture from the south, resulting in some wild weather, including much needed rain. Some of the cloud formations have been pretty impressive, too.
Posted for Bushboy’s Last on the Card photo challenge. See more responses here.
Seeing the light
A view of the light tower between Lapakahi and Mahukona on a day when the swells were rolling in.
Graham's Island 