Tag Archives: Hawi

Wind turbines crank out the power

Wind turbines Hawi and Mauna Kea

This week’s Sunday Stills challenge is ‘Drunk with .…’ I thought about a photo of my liquor cabinet, but settled instead for ‘Drunk with Power,’ a reasonable choice in these turbulent times.

Hawi Wind Farm began operations in 2006 and has 16 turbines churning out 10.56 MW. This power is supplied to Hawaii Electric Light Company, which runs the power grid on the island.

My interest in the wind farm is mostly visual. I like the patterns that the turbines make, and every once in a while the telescopes of Mauna Kea can be seen in the distance.

See more Sunday Stills responses here.

Wind turbines Hawi

Gnat cloud

Gnat cloud and wind turbine

Gnat cloudDriving past Hawi Wind Farm, I unexpectedly ran into several clouds of gnats. I quickly rolled up the windows on my truck, not needing a cab full of gnats to influence my driving. Sometimes the clouds blended and made one big gathering, and I was reminded of murmurations of starlings, though perhaps not as dramatic.

It’s the first time I’ve seen anything like this since I’ve lived here. The clouds are made up of male gnats hoping to snag a mate. The large numbers give them visibility so that the females can spot them. Of course, that doesn’t explain how the males can spot the individual females when they show up. Hmmm.

Posted in response to this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge ‘Unlikely.’

 

Hawi Post Office mural

Murals tell stories and this one, on the side of the Hawi Post Office building, tells the story of North Kohala’s sugar plantation era. The mural was painted by students from Kohala High School working with staff, faculty and community members.

For more information about the mural, go to kohalamountainnews.com/2017 and click on the May edition.

Posted in response to this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge to be a visual storyteller.

Stampede

When I’m out walking I often pass fields of cattle. In general they either stare dolefully or run off when I look at them. Recently though, I was walking alongside one field and, at my appearance, the cattle ran to one side of the field, formed a group and then thundered down the hill toward me. When they got close, they did a U-turn and shot back up the hill.

Next day they did the same thing, but this time instead of the U-turn they stopped just across the hedge from me and stared. All the running about had stirred up the cattle egrets that invariably accompany them and that’s when I took this photo. I particularly like the devilish horns of the one animal peering out from the crowd.

I moved on and the cattle followed. We repeated this a couple of times before they decided they’d had enough.

On the third day, my appearance provoked only dull stares. Obviously the thrill of my presence had gone.

Angry bees

Beekeepers remove a swarm of bees nesting in a wallA beekeeper removes a swarm of bees nesting in a wall

 

A swarm of bees is removed from a wall and settled in a new hive

Recently, when I moved my truck to mow the lawn, I noticed this scene at a neighbor’s house. I was impressed by the number of bees and the huge, hanging combs filled with sweet honey. When I got out of the truck, I thought I’d get a few photos.

The bee wrangler called out to me that there were a lot of angry bees about. I said I wasn’t going to come closer and asked if it was OK to take photos. He said that was fine, but the bees might come and find me where I was. Since I was a good 70 or 80 feet away, I wasn’t too worried. I snapped a few photos, then heard a buzzing noise, and felt something on my arm. Sure enough it was a bee.

I imagined this bee sending back a message along the lines of, ‘Hey, here’s another one of those creatures, but this one doesn’t have protective clothing. Let’s get him.’ I pictured the rest of the colony heading my way in a matter of moments, so I blew the bee off my arm and hotfooted it back home. Before I went inside I made sure I hadn’t accidentally ended up with the queen bee lodged somewhere in my clothing. No need to have my day turn into a starring role in a horror movie.

After the lawn was mowed, the bee wranglers were still on the scene so I left the truck where it was. A couple of hours later I thought it would be safe to retrieve it. As I reached the house, the bee wranglers were just leaving. We chatted a bit about what they’d been doing. They’d cleaned out the bees’ home in the wall and put a new hive next to it. Presumably they’d found the queen and installed her in her new digs. The idea is to have the bees relocate to the new hive and, when they’re settled in, move it to a new location, probably on one of the farms around here.

They warned me, however, that there were still some disgruntled bees flying around. As if on cue, I heard buzzing. Something landed on my head and started burrowing into my hair. The bee wrangler had just handed my his card and I used that to try and extract the bee. The buzzing intensified, but I couldn’t dislodge it. Finally, it popped loose and I took off for my truck. I jumped inside, making sure the door shut properly and the windows were closed, and drove home.

I avoided walking past that house for a while until, two days later, the hive was gone and it was safe to venture out again.

For more information about Ho’ola Beekeepers, go to savehealthrive.com.

Transformered

Workers prepare to remove and electrical transformerWorkers prepare to remove and electrical transformer

A week or so ago, I posted (here) about a temporary electrical substation that sprang up on the edge of Hawi to facilitate a change in the local distribution network. A few days ago, the specifics of that change made itself felt here when the house was without power for four hours or so. This outage was planned and communicated so it wasn’t a surprise.

What was a surprise was that I hadn’t anticipated the road to the house being blocked by electic company trucks for a couple of hours. What that meant was that the plan to be away for most of the power outage got off to a rocky start.

The work they were doing was replacing the small transformers on local poles with ones that operate on a new voltage, a transformer transformation if you will. At least that’s my understanding of what I was told. When it comes to electicity, I push a plug into a socket and the light goes on. If it doesn’t, I whack the lamp a couple of times and that often helps.

Temporary substation

A temporary substation is installed while work is done on the Big Island of Hawaii

This little arrangement sprouted up in a cow pasture, beside the road to Upolu Airport, over the course of a week of so. It’s quite substantial with three new poles, fencing, and a gate having been put in, but the equipment itself is on wheels.

I was curious as to its purpose and finally happened by while workmen were there. As the title says, it’s a temporary substation. It’s been installed so that changes in the local distribution network can be achieved without power shutdowns. Supposedly, it will be in operation for two or three weeks, then the poles, fences, and equipment will be removed and the cows will get their pasture back.

Downpour

Heavy rain falls on the Big Island of Hawaii.Heavy rain falls on the Big Island of Hawaii.

The weather here is governed by the northeast trade winds. These bring abundant moisture to the windward side of Big Island, but the western side, in the lee of the volcanoes, is mostly hot and dry. There are local variations, and different times of the year can bring different winds. During the summer, Kona winds, blowing from the south or southwest, reverse the usual pattern.

Then there are weather systems which upset all the norms. Hurricanes are the most obvious. This year, in dramatic contrast to the Atlantic and Caribbean areas, there has been virtually no action in the Central Pacific. Only a couple of storms headed in this general direction and both petered out well before they reached the islands.

From time to time, an unstable air mass will pass over the state bringing with it unsettled weather and thunderstorms. One of the biggest dangers with such systems is when a storm cell settles over an area, dumping many inches of water, and sometimes generating flash floods. It’s interesting to follow these on the weather radar. The storm cells show up red, orange, and yellow. Sometimes they’re big enough to blanket an entire island.

One such system passed through the islands recently. Thunder had rumbled through the night, with distant lightning illuminating the sky. Next morning, I checked the radar and saw large areas of red and orange slowly working their way southeast, toward the Big Island. Then I noticed a little ball of orange appear and start to grow close to where I live. That online apparition was matched by an increase in the thunder’s volume and by the lightning becoming distinct strikes.

Very quickly, a cell built up that hung over this area for a couple of hours. It was quite the show. Three times the disturbance was so close overhead that I heard the crack of the lightning followed instantly by a clap of thunder that shook the house. Through it all, the rain hammered down, which I tried to capture in these photos.

Eventually, the large cell moving down from the northwest arrived, but instead of making things worse, it absorbed our local fireworks show and carried on to inundate areas to the southeast. An hour later, the sun broke through and our temporary weather maelstrom was over.