IASA #86

Naughty Mo'o chewed through the heavy duty cable tie out!

 

IASA #85

Kyle stopped at Lapakahi on a bike camping tour around Hawai'i Island; turns out we met in 2018 on O'ahu.

Kīlauea Eruption Pau

At around 9 this morning the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory officially declared the Kīlauea eruption over. This is the eruption that began last Sunday at around 3:15 pm HST. So the eruption lasted just 6 days. The Kīlauea Recent Eruptions page has more information about the eruption, including a chronology, photos, videos, & maps. 

When Kīlauea 1st erupted about a week ago, I got a notice from the USGS Volcano Notification Service (VNS) about an hour after the eruption started. You can subscribe by clicking on the link above & following directions. Notifications are available for these U.S. Volcano Observatories: Alaska (AVO), California (CalVO), Cascades (CVO), Hawaiian (HVO), Northern Marianas Islands (NMI) and Yellowstone (YVO). I subscribe to the HVO & AVO notifications. (Tsunami affecting Hawaiʻi can be caused by earthquakes associated with volcanoes in Alaska.) 

Big Island Now has a great article on living on Kīlauea, which is one of the most active volcanoes in the world. Since the 2018 eruption that destroyed more than 700 structures, there have been 5 more eruptions. The article examines methods to mitigate the damage from lava flows.

Tropical Depression Twelve-E dissipated overnight. There is another system closer to Mexico that has an 80% chance of becoming an organized system in the next 7 days.

IASA #84

NKCDP-AG Culture & History subcommittee visited pōhaku at Hawai'i Island Retreat.

 

Kīlauea Still Erupting

Kīlauea is still erupting! This is a great USGS video that provides a lot of information about this eruption. It also has great maps! And notes the closed viewing area & the open areas.

 

These are photos from the USGS Kilauea summit webcams from various points around the Halemaʻumaʻu caldera. These are screenshots of photos from around 6 pm; views after sunset show the glow of the molten magma in cracks between the cooler surface layers of lava.

This is the thermal image taken from the same viewpoint as the previous photo.

View is from the north rim of the downdropped block and looking west.

Here is another video that explains more about the eruption & its potential effects on the community. They provided information about the sulfur dioxide levels as well as potential vog problems for adjacent communities. The video also shows scientists sampling the lava.

The weather this morning looked promising; there were a few light clouds in the sky. As I left for Lapakahi State Historical Park the clouds looked even thinner than earlier in the morning.

1 hour 17 minutes after sunrise.

While at Lapakahi this morning I let tourists know that Kīlauea had started erupting again & found only about half of them had heard the news. Dane had bought Chocolate Banana Cream Pie for dessert with lunch; but since he did not have his cooler today we ate dessert 1st! Jaime came by after lunch. We talked about new interpretive projects that she is hoping to work on this year. I stayed about an hour longer than I usually do so I went up to close of the entry gate at 3:15; Dane & Jaime closed the main park gate later.

This half of the gate has a sign saying entry is closed at 3:15 pm.

There is a disturbance in the Eastern Pacific basin near longitude 125W, about 2100 miles east-southeast of Hilo. This morning it was forecast to have a 60% chance of becoming a tropical depression within the next 7 days; by the evening that went up to 70% chance in 7 days. It is moving northwesterly. 

Hauʻoli lā Hānau e Kathleen!

Kilauea Erupting Again!

At around 3:15 this afternoon, Kilauea began erupting again. Here is a USGS live cam of the eruption.

 

 

IASA #83

Had dinner with WA friends Carmel, Eva, Heidi, & Nawo at King's View Cafe.

 

Maui Recovery Resources

A new website recently came online to help the victims of the Maui wildfires. It is called MauiRecovers.org. A lot of information for survivors has been gathered in one place; it includes information on the recovery phases, how to get financial assistance, safety of water resources, which areas are safe to re-enter & what you should do to keep safe when you return to your property, the fire debris removal process & how to get assistance. My favorite part is the maps & data section. 

This detail shows the only zones in Lāhainā currently safe to re-enter.

For some reason, I was very tired today. I did not stay up too late last night. Or do a lot of physical activity to make me more tired than usual. I did get up about an hour earlier than usual. But that should not have made me so tired by mid-day that I needed a nap, which lasted until just before dinner! Auē! Is this what getting older is about?

There was a list on Hawaii News Now this morning about best places for plate lunches on Oʻahu. I've only had lunch from Waiahole Poi Factory, several times; it deserves a place on this list! I've had breakfast at Diamond Head Market & Grill but not lunch; it did look like it had a great lunch selection. I will have to try these out on my next visits to Oʻahu. 

Another thing I noticed about Wordle is that you can repeat letters. Several of the other word search games I play do not allow the use of a letter more than once. Of course, this does make it more challenging to figure out the word since there are no hints that a letter is used more than once. Or if there is, I have not figured it out.

What is going on with people! A woman was shot with an arrow yesterday at Hapuna Beach Park; that is on the opposite side of the road from where Dane's office is at State Parks maintenance department. The attacker is still on the loose.

This headline got me interested in trying their ice cream called Not Fried Chicken, after the Listeria contamination is cleared. At first I thought someone at the FDA needed to go back to English class, but it turns out Life Raft Treats really does have an ice cream flavor called Not Fried Chicken!

Hurricane Jova was a Category 5 hurricane this morning with sustained winds of 155 mph.  The forecast is for it to become weaker as it heads northwesterly, crossing over cooler waters; in fact it decreased to a Category 3 over the course of the day with sustained winds at about 125 mph later in the evening. Currently it is about 2300 miles to the east of us & moving west-northwestward at about 17 mph.

Hauʻoli lā Hānau e Leno, Charlene, & Grey!

Visitors from WA!

Yesterday I was checking Facebook, & saw that my friend Nawo posted about his daughters being in Kona. So I messaged him on FB. This afternoon he got back to me; we met later for a brief tour of the yard & sampling of fruit fresh off the trees! Then Nawo, Heidi, Carmel, Eva, & I went to dinner at King's View Cafe; we closed the place down.

L to R: Carmel, Eva, Heidi, & Nawo.

I got Nawo in touch with Elaine, a Baha'i woman that I met back in April; she lives in Hāwī. Hopefully they can meet in person in a few days; she is currently on Oʻahu but will be back tomorrow evening. I looked up the Hawaiʻi Baha'i's website this evening & was pleasantly surprised to find that their site is bilingual with Hawaiian translations of their prayers. There was even a video of a group singing one of the prayers in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi. I think I will be spending more time on their website practicing Hawaiian.

I think itʻs really cool that they list the ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi 1st.

I could understand about 1/2 of this because of repeated phrase.

I got this from Facebook. I have "joined" a couple ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi sites on FB so sometimes cool things like this pop up.

I understood about 75% of this because they're just words not sentences.

Watched this wonderful video called Lahaina Before the Fire. Its made by a local videographer as a tribute to Lāhainā & a hope to encourage rebuilding what was lost. Having never, ever been to Lāhainā, I found it to be a great summary of what I will never be able to see.

That bit of weather south of Mexico became Tropical Depression Eleven-E this morning; which means it is the 11th one of the season. By the end of the day its sustained wind speed increased enough it is now Tropical Storm Jova. It is forecast to develop in to a hurricane later in the week. The good news for Hawai'i is that the forecast is for it to move northwesterly along the coast rather than continuing westerly towards us.

In the meanwhile, weather here has been very pleasant. Not too hot, not too cold, very little rain. And the precipitation that we have is usually in the very early morning hours before I get out of bed.

I am going to try to keep up with doing at least one Wordle a day. I apparently have done 19 so far. I try to do 15 minutes a day; which means sometimes I am working on puzzles from previous days. So may be its a good thing I have not been doing it long or daily consistently. One thing I am noticing, however, is that there are some real words that it will not accept as real words. I guess it must have a limited "dictionary" of words to choose from. I have noticed that with a lot of other word games that I play; they don't seem to like scientific words.

I've been checking the time statistics for the Roomba; they seem to be getting better. By that I mean that they seem to more accurately reflect the amount of time I hear the Roomba actually cleaning. These statistics for the bathroom are a good example. Except for the "dirt events", I would think there were at least 2 based on the map image. Or perhaps everything "looked" the same to it so it "thought" there was no "dirt event".

I prepped 3 more packages for shipping via Pirateship.com. I can still use the USPS priority mail packages but pay $1.75 less for each than if I took it to the post office to have them print & affix the labels. I don't mind doing my own printing & labeling if I can save money! And since I reuse paper that is printed on one side & rubber cement, I do not pay for more expensive pre-made self-sticking labels. The post office does not have a problem with my home-made labels.

I also saw this on FB. I might be making one for Halloween ... along with the screaming snails & devil chicks.

Hauʻoli lā Hānau e Michael & Jeremiah! A me ka Hauʻoli lā Hoʻomanaʻo makahiki ʻumi kumamāwalu e Karin & Thomas!

Mind ... Blown ... 🤯

Last night I clicked on the "Stats" button for the blog to turn off the tracking for my views when I am previewing & editing posts. (Not sure if I really need to do that but I don't want to inadvertently increase the number of views Google is recording for this blog.) As I was scrolling down to the place to do that I noticed that there were a bunch of views ... like a whole lot more than I am used to seeing.

Over 2000 views yesterday!

I think it is probably posts about the fires on August 8th that are the cause of the increased posts. The stats for the previous week show a high level throughout that week. When you examine the past month, posts begin to rise about 2 weeks after the fires & remains higher than normal. (Not sure what was going on in June that caused a spike.) The trend of a big spike in August holds when the statistics are examined for the year as well as the life of the blog. (I think the spike in January 2020 was due to my posts about COVID-19.)

Posts for previous 7 days.

Posts for previous 30 days.

Posts for previous year.

Posts for all time.

The section on views of all posts with the highest number of views did not include any posts with information about either the Hawaiʻi Island or Maui fires. I thought that just might be because not enough people have clicked on the specific posts; the top one has 783 views. The list also only shows the top 20 posts; the lowest one had 70 views. So I checked the section showing views of posts for the last month & 6 of the 7 posts about the fires were in the top 10. In the section showing views of posts over the last 3 months, all 7 posts about the fires are in the top 10. I am pretty sure these views are not just from friends & family; I think when people search for "Maui fire" or "Hawaiʻi fire" some of the posts are showing up. Then they read other posts.

Ranking for the entire time of the blog.

Views from last month.

I took an at-home COVID-19 test this morning; its negative. Since my test kits are all going to expire in late October, I decided to test myself weekly until I am done with the kits. Also the latest COVID-19 variant EG.5 is apparently more transmissible & acts like a common cold so could fly under the radar. Both of these characteristics are within the normal evolution of a disease organism; if they could think enough to develop a plan it would be to spread faster & not kill the host so it can continue to spread.

As I mentioned yesterday, the update for the Roomba software now shows how long it runs to clean a particular area. Based on the information provided today, I don't think it's accurate. It said it took the Roomba only 6 minutes to clean the bathroom & had only 2 "dirt events". I am sure I heard it running for more like 15 minutes. And I think the whole thing should be listed as 1 big "dirt event"!

The weather here this morning was looking very good when I woke up. It continued to be good throughout the day.

Twenty-two minutes after sunrise.

But the weather system in the East Pacific basin now has a 60% chance of developing in to a tropical depression over the next 48 hours. It is moving west to west-northwestward at about 10 mph.

Hauʻoli lā Hānau e Sophia, Ian, & Darien!