Category Archives: Weather

On the water

Water lilies at Hawaii Tropical Bioreserve and Garden in Hawaii
A sailboat off the coast of Hawaii
Two outrigger canoes off the coast of Hawaii
A surfer in Hawaii

This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Water.’ See more responses here.

First up is a patch of water lilies on Lily Lake at Hawaii Tropical Bioreserve and Gardens, which reopened at the beginning of April after being closed all year. My wife and I visited last Friday and it was great to be back. As usual, I took a bunch of photos most of which still need processing.

Second is a sailboat running before the wind on the blue Pacific.

Below that is a pair of canoeists paddling along the island’s northern coast. Yesterday, I saw several vehicles going by with canoes, probably headed for Keokea Park, where they can put in safely, possibly for a race. One of the vehicles pulled in to the likely landing spot, where surf was crashing over the parking lot. The driver didn’t look too enthusiastic. I don’t know whether the race took place or not.

Fourth is that quintessential Hawaiian pastime – surfing. Watch out for those rocks!

Finally, a pair of northern pintails coast on a pool of water at Upolu. These used to be seen in large numbers in Hawaii, but not so much these days.

A pair of male northern pintails in Hawaii

Rainbow around the sun

A rainbow halo around the sun

For my last response to Becky’s April Squares challenge theme of ‘Bright,’ (see more responses here) I had scheduled a flower photo. But a couple of days ago I shot this image, which is decidedly bright and comes with a story.

I’d been cleaning a vehicle and found a single lens from a pair of sunglasses. It was one of those with a reflective blue surface, which I thought looked interesting. As I walked away, I fiddled with the lens, moving it around, seeing the different reflections. Then I held the lens directly in front of me and saw my image backlit with bright light and with a rainbow halo perfectly centered around my head. I looked like one of those biblical illustrations in religious manuscripts or a stained glass window (a lot of those guys were gnarly-looking, too).

Looking at this image, I wondered how it was that the lens had created this rainbow halo and why it was around my head. But there it was, still there, still in place. It took a while before the thought filtered into my tiny brain that, since my image was reflected there, perhaps something else was, too. At that point I turned around, looked up, and saw this halo around the sun.

This one wasn’t as good as one I posted last year, but it’s the first I’ve seen since then and it’s certainly the closest I’ll get to being in The Bible.

Abstracts: Lighthouse

The sun shines from behind a lighthouse in Hawaii

I was in the water, looking up at the lighthouse north of Lapakahi, and trying to get a photo of the sun behind the light. I was swimming back and forth, to get the sun and light lined up, while the sea whooshed back and forth in a quite shallow area. Results were mixed as they say, but I liked this image which has a bit of a Halloween feel to it.

Posted in response to Becky’s April Squares challenge theme of ‘Bright.’ See more responses here.

Rainbow violet

A Rainbow over the road in North Kohala, Hawaii
A Phalaenopsis orchid in Hawaii
A Japanese white-eye on a Japanese aloe flower

The seventh and final installment of my rainbow colors in response to Becky’s April Squares challenge theme of ‘Bright.’ (See more responses here.) ‘Violet’ also happens to be this week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme, which is what gave me the rainbow series idea in the first place. (See more responses here.)

My last rainbow spans the main highway to North Kohala. This is a good spot to see rainbows in the afternoon. It’s cloudy and wet toward Kohala Mountain on the right, sunny and dry down by the coast on the left.

This phalaenopsis orchid falls somewhere in the violet/purple range. This was another instance where I looked up the official RGB color values for violet and found quite a range of possibilities.

The final photo has a Japanese white-eye sampling the good things on offer in a Japanese aloe flower, backed up by a bold and bright splash of violet bougainvillea flowers.

Two donkeys

Two donkeys in Hawaii

Here’s the third of my three weather-related posts. Driving home from the walk in yesterday’s second photo, I saw these two donkeys. They live right on the shoulder of Kohala Mountain in the same 45-inches-of-rain-a-year range as Upolu. They’d been on the receiving end of the same weather as my first photo yesterday, but now they were standing on their little hill, soaking up bright sunshine, and drying out a little.

Posted in response to Becky’s April Squares challenge theme of ‘Bright.’ See more responses here.

Local weather

Rain falls at Upolu, Hawaii
The sun shines on the Kohala coast

Yesterday, I posted a photo of clouds over Upolu. Sometimes, those clouds do what clouds often do, which is dump a load of rain. When that happens, my drive down to the airport looks like the top photo. It also means that walking on the coast there will not be pleasant. Rain is one thing, but it turns the dirt roads into cloying mud and I end up with sandals weighing five pounds more than when I started.

However, such is the nature of the weather here that, most of the time when this happens, I can drive seven miles down the coast and walk there in bright sunshine as in the bottom photo.

Where I live in Hawi, we get around 60 inches of rain a year. Upolu, about three miles away to the north, gets about 45 inches a year. The spot in the second photo receives less than 20 inches a year. The abrupt differences in rainfall are down to the northeast trade winds bumping into the Big Island’s volcanoes. The windward sides of those volcanoes get lots of rain topping out at a whopping 280 inches a year just north of Hilo. The leeward side of the island is much dryer with the South Kohala shore, where the resorts are, receiving less than 10 inches a year. The northern tip of the island, where I live, is a transition area where the shoulder of Kohala Mountain runs down to the sea. I always tell anyone thinking of moving here to check the isohyet map. A half mile east or west, or a half mile up or down the mountain, can make a world of difference to the weather they’ll be living in.

Posted in response to Becky’s April Squares challenge theme of ‘Bright.’ See more responses here.