Category Archives: Weather

Super blood wolf moon

blood moon over hawi

blood moonThe recent lunar eclipse occurred last Sunday evening here in Hawaii. When the moon rose at 6:02 p.m. (five minutes before sunset) the eclipse was already well underway. Where I was watching, the sky was hazy so the moon wasn’t very clear. It then disappeared into a bank of clouds and I considered heading for home. But the cloud bank wasn’t huge and was drifting away from the area I was watching.

Sure enough, a little before 7 p.m., the now fully-eclipsed moon slid above the clouds into a beautiful starlit night. I took some photos where I’d set up, down by the coast, and then headed into Hawi to see what it looked like there.

Above is a view from downtown Hawi (not exactly hopping at 7:20 on Sunday night). The second photo is the moon soon after it rose above the clouds before the sky was fully dark. Below is the night sky with the moon in the bottom left and Orion at the top right.

Why the grand name for this eclipse? The moon was closer to the Earth than normal so it seemed bigger and brighter than usual, which is known as a supermoon. Because this was a total eclipse it gave the moon a red tint, which is known as a blood moon. And January’s full moon is sometimes called a wolf moon. Voila – a super blood wolf moon.

Posted in response to this week’s Sunday Stills challenge on the theme of ‘Night,’ (See more responses here.) and this week’s Friendly Friday challenge on the theme of ‘Coral-ish colors.’ (See more responses here.)

blood moon and orion

Ghostly tree

ghostly tree

The last time I visited the Palila Forest Discovery Trail, on the southwest slopes of Mauna Kea, I didn’t see too many birds, but did enjoy looking down on the cloud layer covering the lowlands between Mauna Kea and Hualalai.

This tree sat on the slope of Mauna Kea at the point where the top of the clouds swirled around it, giving it a very ghostly appearance.

Rainbow over the road

Rainbow

Rainbow over the roadToday marks the start of the fourth year for this blog. Post number one was of a rainbow over the northern coast, so I thought I’d post another one on the anniversary.

This rainbow occurred just last week over the road leading up to Hawi. Hawi gets around 60 inches of rain a year. A few miles south, the rainfall drops off to less than 20 inches, and it’s usually dry and sunny there. One byproduct of this climatic contrast is that there are frequent rainbows.

This one occurred in the late afternoon as I was heading home and, even though I see a lot of rainbows, I felt moved to pull over and snap a few photos before heading up into the clouds and rain over Hawi.

Kawaihae dirt storm

Kawaihae dirt storm

The winds were blowing here last week, 30+ mph on a consistent basis. But one afternoon the winds picked up even more and triggered dirt storms off the hills above Kawaihae.

The wind whistled down the slope from Kohala Mountain and dry dirt was gathered up, whirled around, and blasted down the slope toward the ocean. This happened for an hour or so. Sometimes, white sand from the beach in Kawaihae harbor was similarly stirred up.

The unfortunate aspect of this display was that it visibly demonstrated the problems with erosion when the ground is dry. If it’s not the wind, then any rainfall washes the soil down gullies and into the ocean. All this dirt being deposited in the relatively shallow waters off the coast degrades the water quality and can have a seriously adverse effect on corals in the area.