Honolulu overdue for a hurricane?

Honolulu topped the Weather Channel's list of the five cities most overdue for a hurricane:

Why, you may ask, are officials in Hawaii going to such great lengths to plan for a major hurricane strike in Honolulu? That’s never happened before, has it? No, not in the available records, despite a long list of close calls. Are these emergency managers wasting their time?

The reason that their time is well spent is that there is no meteorological reason why the core of a major hurricane cannot directly strike Honolulu. Iniki in 1992 made a direct hit on Kauai, only about 100 miles west of Honolulu, at major hurricane strength. Ten years earlier, Hurricane Iwa struck Kauai in late November. A number of other major hurricanes have passed just south of Honolulu during the past several decades.

The prospect of a major hurricane striking Honolulu is scary, especially if the center of the eye passes just west of the city and places the strongest, onshore winds where the most people and infrastructures are located. The winds alone would be bad enough, with most homes not built to withstand hurricane-force winds, many of them perilously perched on mountain slopes, and numerous high-rises that would lose windows especially on upper floors. Add to that the flooding because of waves and storm surge that would occur near the coast as the ocean moves inland, plus rainfall-induced flooding that could send water rushing down the mountains from the opposite direction.

I myself live inland enough and high enough to avoid an ocean surge (you may recall that from the posts about tsunami warnings here, here, and here), but the flooding from runoff coming down the mountains is a danger to anyone living near one of the ubiquitous streams. And I do live on the ninth floor of a building that is built lanai-style, meaning the kitchen floor is completely open air. It would be downright dangerous to be there during hurricane-force wins.

By the way, San Diego was #2 on the Weather Channel's list (and Orange County and Los Angeles would be runner-ups for that).

Lantern floating at Magic Island

This is an event I had planned to go to in 2009 but didn't make it. Like two years ago, there were some forty thousand people here, but we managed to get very close to the water's edge.

Actually, I ended up in the water (at least my feet). Next year I'm going to just head out in my kayak and get the best pictures ever. (I'm guessing that's somehow not permitted.)

UPDATE:
This photo with my entry-level Nikon DLSR's telephoto lens is a bit nicer (and less crooked) than the iPhone4 photo above.

Lightning strike over Waikiki

I knew it would be difficult to snap a photo of a lightning strike, so I just switched to video and took a still from that.

In the background is Waikiki, which somehow has power.

It's like living in a dang third-world country sometimes

If I'd known the electricity would go out so often in Honolulu, I would have bought one of those hand-crank radios way back, right after the earthquake in September 2006, when the whole island lost electricity from morning until well into the evening.

This seems to happen a couple times each year. Geez, it's not like we live in the countryside somewhere.

Today we have been having a mild electrical storm (well, maybe not so mild: "M" and her neighbors believe they saw a tornado hovering over Waikiki... we'll have to see if any tourists are missing), but somehow the electricity has gone out all over this area. And it's getting dark. Zombies.

Okay, I should get back to my paper and my presentation, both due tomorrow. Except all the materials for those are both on my desktop, which doesn't work without juice. So on my laptop, with fifteen minutes of battery left, I can connect to the Internet, which mysteriously works. So does the landline. If this keeps up, if I want to finish my paper I may have to literally phone it in.

Sigh.

UPDATE:
The Honolulu Star-Advertiser has finally gotten around to explaining what's going on. And what "M" saw was a water spout, a funnel cloud over water. Cool. Hope no one got hurt.

Earthquake in Japan, tsunami watch warning in Hawaii

Hawaii State Civil Defense information site HERE

A tsunami carries boats across waters in Kamaishi city
port in this still image taken from NHK video footage.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the people of northern Japan, which was struck by a powerful 8.9-magnitude earthquake earlier today, followed by a massive ten-meter high tsunami that swept away cars, boats, and even buildings [update: more tsunami video here]. I have not seen any reports of casualties, but there undoubtedly are many [update: At least 32 deaths].

NHK footage shows a ship upturned by a tsunami in Aomori Prefecture.

Here in Hawaii, the tsunami sirens have just gone off (9:57 to 10:00 p.m.). Immediately after news of the earthquake, there was a tsunami watch for the Hawaiian Islands, but it was just now upgraded to a tsunami warning (the difference between a tsunami watch and a tsunami warning is here). They are saying that all shores in the state are vulnerable, no matter which direction they face.

[Please note that Hawaii is not the only place threatened by tsunamis. The American territories of Guam and the Mariana Islands are also under threat, as are a number of other places in other countries ringing the Pacific Ocean.]

Any possible tsunami event would hit Oahu at around 2:59 3:07 a.m., four and a half hours from now. The western side of the island is most vulnerable. Judging by the last tsunami warning we had (which I live-blogged about here, here, and here), I'm on high enough ground (i.e., outside the evacuation zone), but tourists in Waikiki and especially residents of Waianae or Ewa Beach have got to be nervous.

Stay safe, everyone.

UPDATE 4 (the following morning):
With little news from Japan last night and with the coastal evacuation being a very big deal right here in Honolulu, updates to this post inevitably became more about Hawaii than Japan. I have since made a post exclusively about Japan's devastating earthquake and tsunami here.



UPDATE 1 (10:30 p.m. HST):
All coastal areas are to be evacuated immediately. Honolulu Mayor Carlisle is announcing this. Waikiki visitors and residents may have to do a "vertical evacuation."

They are expecting wave amplitudes of two meters (about six feet).

Here is the Honolulu Star-Advertiser's handy-dandy list of refuge centers (outside the evacuation zone, of course).

More precise maps of the evacuation zones can be found here. The Hawaii State Civil Defense site at the top also has a link where you can input your address and see if you're okay or not. (This is something all residents should know before a tsunami watch or warning is issued... just sayin'.)

UPDATE 2 (11:15 p.m. HST):
It's 11:15 p.m. and those eerie sirens have gone off again. I'm out of the evacuation zone, but I suspect I'll be kept up all night from that. I guess that's a small price to pay for not getting killed.

UPDATE 3 (12:30 a.m. HST):
Long lines are being reported at gas stations, convenience stores, and supermarkets like Safeway. Okay, the food and water I get, but why gas? I mean, where ya gonna go? It's an island?

My dad always taught me to be prepared for anything by having as full a tank of gas as possible. That helped him evade the Feds for twenty-seven years.

UPDATE 5 (about 9 a.m. the following morning):
Update 4 deserved to be higher up than this. Anyway, I woke up this morning and everything feels fine here. I guess we're all okay, unless we're in a flash-sideways à la Lost.

The all-clear has been sounded and people can now return to the coast. Some damage from the tsunami was reported here on Oahu and on other islands, but I haven't seen any reports of death.

Schools across the state have been closed for Friday, including the universities and junior colleges. Even though most were not in evacuation zones, enough of their students were, such that it would have been disruptive to force them to go to class after evacuating their homes in the middle of the night.

From the Star-Advertiser:

Honolulu Mayor Peter Carlisle has issued an all clear for Oahu residents after tsunami waves overnight caused a mass evacuation of coastal areas statewide.

Carlisle said city officials waited until after daybreak to assess the situation before declaring it is safe to return to the coast. No injuries have been reported from the waves, but damage is reported on three islands.

The surges caused extensive damage to piers and boats at Keehi Small Boat Harbor near Sand Island. The King Kamehameha Kona Beach Hotel got a foot of water in the lobby and canoes in the harbor were destroyed. Flooding was also reported in Kahului.

Tsunami waves from a massive Japanese earthquake began hitting Hawaii just after 3 a.m. today after an hours-long statewide coastal evacuation.

The waters continued to surge in some harbors hours after the intial wave hit.

Indeed, one witness reported a surge at Keehi Lagoon about 5:40 a.m.

Kauai also issued an all clear.

Gerard Fryer, a scientist with the Tsunami Warning Center, said an initial 6-foot surge was detected in Kahului Harbor, and Fryer said a second surge was more than 7 feet at Kahului Harbor.

"There's little question that there was some damage at that level," he said.

At Napoopoo at Kealakekua Bay on the Big Island, one wave reached at least 100 feet inland and an elevation of 11 or 12 feet, Fryer said.

"It could have been more than that," he said.

Here's a report on the damage at Keehi Lagoon. Flooding was reported in Maui, and damage was reported in Kailua-Kona on the Big Island.

As I've noted before, Hawaii takes tsunami danger very seriously ever since the devastation at Hilo in 1960 (sixty-one killed), and I imagine had they not cleared people from the coast there would have been at least a few fatalities.

Of course, with such disasters and potential disasters, there are often looky-loos:

Off Diamond Head lookout, the water receded twice — once about 3:43 a.m. and again at 3:55 a.m. — exposing reef, before waves rushed back to the high water line.

More than 100 spectators gathered at the lookout to see the waves come in, and many 'oohed' and 'ahhed' when the near-shore reef was fully exposed in seconds.

"It was creepy," said Mike Moylan, 42, who had to evacuate his home on Kuhio Avenue and so decided to watch the waves at Diamond Head. "Seeing the water recede that much, it's scary."

Chana Dudoit, 28, of Kaimuki, saw the waves receding on TV and decided to rush out to see them in person. "I thought it was crazy," she said. "Where did all the fish go?"

Maybe the fish knew enough to get the heck out of harm's way, unlike the humans who rushed to the coast to watch a tsunami come in. Fish are smart. After all, they're always in school.

Anyway, everything seems to be okay on the island, yeah? Tsunami reporting pau.

UPDATE 6 (10:20 a.m.):
When am I going to learn that nothing is ever really pau?

California also suffered millions of dollars of damage from the tsunami that hit. This includes the northern California city of Eureka, which was hit hard by a tsunami in 1964, with eleven deaths, after the 9.2-magnitude Seward earthquake in Alaska.

Would-be candidates for the Darwin Award at Surfrider Beach in Malibu
checking out the surf at the time the tsunami was to hit California. Duh, winning.

I forgot to mention that local hospitals back here in Hawaii had problems during the coastal evacuation because people who were not sick or injured were crowding the hospitals to seek shelter.

The Civil Defense folks offered tsunami information in other languages, including Japanese, Korean, Tagalog, Cantonese, and a number of Pacific Island languages. It's something worth noting for the next tsunami advisory. Also, get a hand-crank emergency radio if you don't have one.

Now pau.

UPDATE 7 (5:00 p.m.):
While Hawaii escaped any casualties, California was not so lucky. One man in the northern California community of Crescent City was killed:

The Coast Guard is searching for a man swept out to sea in Northern California while taking pictures of tsunami waves.

Nearby, authorities in Brookings, Ore., say four people have survived after a tsunami surge swept them off a beach in Curry County and into the sea.

The five were on the beach Friday to watch the waves generated by a massive earthquake in Japan. The Curry County sheriff's department says two were able to get out of the water on their own, and two were rescued by law enforcement and fire officials.

Let's give thanks to the civil defense workers, including law enforcement, who were out in force to save idiots from themselves. I'd be furious if some of the police or firefighters got killed because of these mooks.

Happy third-world new year from Honolulu

Kushibo is turning into an old fogey, I guess. This is my first New Years in Honolulu and I'm starting to regret it already. Apparently the good people of Honolulu celebrate the new year by taking illegal fireworks — noisy and dangerous illegal fireworks — and light them off for hours and hours before the clock strikes midnight (and who knows how long afterward).

The picture above is the thirtieth firework in a row that the neighbors decided to light in the middle of the street, usually just blocking traffic but occasionally causing a driver turning the corner and not expecting sparks flying in the middle of the street to have to swerve and nearly hit parked cars.

It's only 10 p.m., but this has already been going on for hours. And if it were only just like Fourth of July in Orange County, I wouldn't complain, but the noise is non-stop and I can't even work. Various people keep lighting off minor explosives with enough concussion to set off car alarms nearby. I'm not joking about that; it has happened at least ten times on this street since 7 p.m. This is a residential area, not some busy party zone (we are thinking of heading to Waikiki for the seaside fireworks).

Mind you, all of this is illegal, yet nobody is doing anything about it, and apparently a lot of people think it's perfectly okay. It has prompted a study partner, "M," who is from Japan, to remark that, "New Years is an excuse for Americans to do whatever they want."

Perhaps. I guess at twenty-four, she's an old fogey as well. In Japan (or at least her part of Japan), the new year is rung in somewhat quietly. In Korea, too, if you want the noise and excitement, you go and find it. Here in Honolulu, it finds you.

Maybe I'm being too sensitive to this, but it has really gotten on my nerves. I can't work anymore. Loud explosions keep going off overhead and up and down the street. There is a thick layer of smoke hovering in the air, with a chemical stink. It's like a war zone, minus the dead bodies (but there are a few crying babies and shell-shocked kids and adults).

Oh, look, someone has lit a fire and launched it from a balloon. It's now heading over Interstate H1.

UPDATE (January 1, 2011 Hawaii time):
I was a bit wrong about all the fireworks being illegal now. The sweeping ban starts January 1, 2011, so some apparently were still legal before midnight last night (but the loud booming ones were illegal then as well, according to the police I talked to). Much of the craziness last night with all the neighborhood pyrotechnics was because it was a last hurrah. Having never been in Honolulu for New Years, I had no idea if last night's shenanigans was typical, but a few told me it was a bit more than usual. But only a bit.

Total lunar eclipse

Cool, huh?

UPDATE:
It was raining something fierce the day before and most of today was wet and cloudy (bad enough to turn off the electricity* at upscale Ala Moana Shopping Center), but we saw a few glimpses of open sky in Honolulu, so we went with the original plan to head out to Sandy Beach (about ten miles east of the city, toward the eastern edge of Oahu), where the city lights are very faint and it's a nice place to view any full moon.

When we got to Sandy Beach, we couldn't see anything, hence the picture above. We wuz robbed, I thought, since we got none of the red moon they had talked about in the papers. In fact, when we arrived at just after 10 p.m., in the middle of the full eclipse, we couldn't see the moon at all, though we didn't know if it was because of cloud cover or that's just the way the lunar eclipse is supposed to work. When a sliver of the moon finally showed up, it was it's usual white color, but with an obvious dark shadow over it.

AP got a better photo than I did (my partial solar eclipse camera work was more impressive). What you see above is pretty much what we saw at one point, though the moving clouds obscured our view half the time.

Still, it's not the reddish moon I was anticipating. While I wasn't expecting a biblical moon turned to blood from Revelations 6:12, I thought it would be the red-orangeish color I've seen in California where a full moon just over the horizon sometimes has a light rusty tint due to impurities in the air (e.g., light smog).

* The Honolulu Star-Advertiser says that the power outage was due to Hawaiian Electric Co (HECO) "substation fire," which was itself "apparently caused by the heavy rains." When there's no lightning to speak of, I find it quite comical that heavy rain is causing fires.

Honolulu sunset

Ho hum. Another beautiful evening on Oahu.

Breakfast for dinner

I'm at Eggs & Things, enjoying fluffy pancakes with coconut and guava syrup (that's two different syrups).

This Waikiki place is famous with Japanese tourists, and the waiter was about six Japanese sentences into getting us seated before I finally told him, "Eigo hanashimasu" (i.e., "We speak English").

The food here is great, by the way. That is, if you like breakfast. The one thing I generally missed in Seoul was a good Western breakfast, and I've spent the last four years in Honolulu making up for the prior decade or so in Seoul.

Full moon

I heard it will hit freezing in Seoul tonight, so I'll just rub it in that right now I'm standing in my shorts at Sandy Beach.

Those are clouds illuminated by the Moon.

HIFF film recommendations?

I'm thinking of going to the Hawaii International Film Festival. I wonder if anybody has seen any of the following South Korean films and can suggest ones that are must-sees or must-not-sees. I think The Housemaid, Dooman River, and The Actresses are the only ones I've heard of.

• 71: Into the Fire (포화속으로)

• The Actresses (여배우들)

• Carancho (까란초)

• Dooman River (두만강)

• The Housemaid (하녀)

• The Man From Nowhere (아저씨)

• The Monster (괴물)

• Poetry (시)

• Woochi (전우치)

• Yogurt Lady (요쿠르트 아줌마)

There may be some good Japanese films, too, as well as Chinese, Taiwanese, etc. Again, any recommendations are welcome. There's a documentary on Chiune Sugihara I may want to see, too.

Taeborŭm, NK-style, Hawaiian-style

[above: This is me at Sandy Beach on Taeborŭm.]

So Saturday was Taeborŭm, the first full moon of the new year on the lunar calendar. If you're not familiar with Taeborŭm (대보름, also spelled Daeboreum), this is how North Korea's KCNA describes it:

The Korean people have celebrated the January 15th of the lunar calendar as a holiday from ancient times.

According to old records, it began to be observed as a holiday in the period of the three kingdoms.

Usually they celebrated the holiday from the January 14th of the lunar calendar.

The holiday's typical amusements are standing poles with grain stalks on the 14th and enjoying the first full moon on the 15th to wish for everything going well that year.

Kite-flying, toy pinwheel, tug of war and other folk games and amusements also give a zest to the holiday.

Holiday dishes are boiled rice admixed with four other staple cereals, sweet rice, dishes made of nine kinds of dried edible herbs and other tasty and nutritive food good for health.

Good to see the DPRK so concerned about North Koreans' good health and nutrition. Other than that, this was about as propaganda-free a piece by the KCNA you'll ever find, so I thought I'd reprint it, just to encourage them to keep at it.

Now Kushibo did not spend his Taeborŭm traipsing around in the freezing cold. This is Hawaii and we have no cold... except for tippy tippy top of a few mountains off to the east. And the library. God, do I hate the library. But we do have a full moon, perfect for Taeborŭm moon-viewing, which is what I set out to do (especially since there was no five-grain ogok rice and we had to settle for white-and-brown hapa rice).

If you're in the Honolulu area on a full moon, Sandy Beach is an idea place to go and see the full moon. It lights up the night sky, and its reflection glistens on the foam of the waves. Because of the geographic features of Pacific islands, clouds often accumulate over land (this is how the Polynesians found them) and the light of a full moon (which is over the ocean) radiates off the clouds (skirting the land), bringing even more light to night sky.

This time we were walking along the beach and, guided only by the moonlight, walked right past some warning signs that usually aren't there. Lo and behold, about five short steps away, the big rock turned out to be a large Hawaiian monk seal.

The HMS is an endangered species, but I suspect if we'd gotten too much closer we might also have become an endangered species. We quickly got back, beyond the perimeter formed by the warning signs, and observed the darkened blob laying out on the white sand of Sandy Beach (which, despite its name, is full of rocks, making me suspect it was named by Vikings).

Lest you think I'm blind or stupid, the warning signs were not lit up by camera flashes as in the photo above.

We stood there for a while, observing the HMS Motionless, wondering if in fact it was dead. That was a thought we all had. Did I forget to mention? This was the day of the tsunami warning (that's right, Kushibo does things like heading for the beach hours after a tsunami was expected), and while the tsunami warning was the H1N1 of tsunami warnings — a whole lot of preparation for a whole lot of nothing — it did cause swells large enough that it could have caused a monk seal just swimming around peacefully looking for a shellfish to bang on a rock (oh, wait, that's otters; I don't know what monk seals do) to end up crashing on the sharp outcrops of the inaptly named Sandy Beach.

But it would seem odd, we thought, for the HMS protection services to cordon off a dead animal; were it to have died, I think they would take it away for study to make sure some pestilence isn't being visited upon these gentle or not gentle creatures.

Cordoning them off is what they do when one of them lands on the beach. These protected behemoths pick a spot, lay themselves out, and someone puts out signs saying don't touch them, don't make loud noises around them, don't disturb them in any way, shape, or form. When I eventually have kids, I'm going to adopt this model for myself: Stay the holy frack away from Dad; don't even think about moving beyond those signs. And for good measure, I will occasionally bark at them in the manner of giant marine mammals.

Eventually, one of us saw the HMS lift its head. Or its tail — it was dark. We were relieved that it wasn't to be carrion, and so we ourselves decided to carry on.

It was 72°F that evening. I hope you also had an enjoyable Taeborŭm, wherever you were.

Açaí bowl at Blue Hawaiian

The latest in my breakfast series is the "açaí bowl" at Ala Moana's Blue Hawaii Life Style shop, which includes a café.

Apparently, this place is all the rage with Japanese tourists. This concoction includes bananas, granola, açaí (apparently pronounced ah-sah-ee), other berries, and honey.

Totemo oishikatta desu. I shall be back.

Bring a friend and share a regular, twice as big as a small, but only 30% more expensive. (I never stop being in frugal grad student mode.)

Honolulu or Seoul?

It's sort of eerie. I often pass by these apartments that are just off Interstate H1, a bit east of downtown Honolulu. What's weird is that the apartment to the left looks almost exactly like the apartment I own in central Seoul. Same color and everything. Probably just as ridiculously expensive, too.

Oahu has some beautiful places, but Honolulu itself has some drab, cookie-cutter apartment blocks that are not all that attractive. Many parts of the city are a veritable concrete jungle, à la Seoul and many other East Asian cities. Not that I dislike Seoul or Honolulu, but they could do a little better to make high-density housing look a little more attractive. Well, actually, South Korean cities are doing a lot better lately with that: it would be better if they look more like Fukuoka than, say, Taipei (no offense, Taipei). 

And plant more trees!