In Hawaii, yesterday was the day after tomorrow

Remember the opening of The Day After Tomorrow, the documentary feature film highlighting what could happen if the Earth warmed enough to suddenly shut off the Gulf Stream that's part of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation that keeps the northern latitudes from Ice Age temperatures? Los Angeles was plagued by a sudden outburst of tornadoes, something that is unheard of in the Golden State.

Not what you usually imagine
when you think of Hawaii+ice.

Well, we in Hawaii have been having some wicked winter weather. It's been chilly and we've had some nasty thunderstorms, the cool kind that shake the ground for quite a few seconds (setting off car alarms) after lightning has struck very close to where you live. Meanwhile, the lack of sun and the excess of wind have made daytime conditions quite a bit chillier than usual.

Temperature drops into the low sixties are not that uncommon in January or February (or even March), but we've been getting three-inch hailstones and an actual tornado hitting the northeastern side of Oahu (my island). It started as a water spout (a rarity here) and went inland.

It struck Lanikai, a place where I occasionally go kayaking and biking and not far from where Hawaii-born Barack Hussein Obama often vacations. It was nothing like the horrific and deadly rash of unseasonal tornadoes that recently struck the Midwest, but it did do some damage.

If I start to see a nerdy Jake Gyllenhaal chatting up Emmy Rossum, I'm gonna be real worried.

Still, as far as Hollywood messing with Hawaii goes, I'd rather go with the Day After Tomorrow scenario than that of 2012.

...

China to provide aid to North Korea for flooding that hit both Koreas hard

I'm still doing light posting, but I thought this was a bit newsworthy, even if it is expected. The devastating rains that have pounded Korea and caused massive flooding and mudslides in Seoul have also wreaked havoc on North Korea, apparently, although we don't know the extent.

As usual, Beijing the Benefactor will bail out Pyongyang:

North Korea says China and its Red Cross have decided to give Pyongyang relief aid to help recover from recent flooding.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said Sunday that Chinese President Hu Jintao also expressed “deep sympathy and sincere consolation” in a letter to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

KCNA didn’t reveal the amount of aid. North Korean media said last week that the country was seriously suffering from flooding that had inundated rice fields and destroyed roads, houses and public buildings.

Human casualties haven’t been mentioned. Torrential rain in more developed South Korea has killed dozens over the past week. Forecasts say more rain is expected this week.

Thank you, Beijing. Now the West (i.e., the US, the EU, Japan, and South Korea) can avoid a discussion about whether disaster aid to Pyongyang would be propping up the regime.

Meanwhile, the damage we actually know about in South Korea is mind boggling. By now, my readers have probably also seen this video:



This video freaks me out in part because this major road (the Nambu Beltway) is one I traveled every day to and from work. Frankly, I never imagined that small mountain (or big hill?) could ever have caught enough water to cause this kind of damage, but when half a meter falls in a few days, I guess it's possible.

Above is a view of the mountain after the damage, courtesy of the Chosun Ilbo (whose link includes more video). Below is one of the apartment blocks that were hit.

As one ROK Drop commenter noted, a lot of people assume you're safe on the second floor or higher, but the second floor of this building looks like it was hit as bad as the first, and third floor was probably inundated as well.

My apartment is on the seventh floor of our building, which itself is midway up the slope to Namsan. That would mean we're highly unlikely to be flooded, but susceptible (although probably not by much) to a mudslide from Namsan.

This was indeed something I thought about when I chose homes for lease or purchase. Having gone through a serious up-to-your-chest flood in Kaebong-dong back in the 1990s (which looked as bad as the intersection at Taech'i Subway Station today (see below), when I was an adult on my own later on I chose homes on higher ground.

The Mt Umyŏnsan video toward the top of this post reminds me of the mudslide that buried the California coastal community of La Conchita in January 2005 (more photos here). Both were unexpected, hitting relatively affluent communities that were not built onto the hillsides themselves.

In Southern California, we have a cycle of late summer and early fall brush fires wiping out foliage that holds soil in place, leading to the earth giving way when the rainy season comes in the winter. The rain in turn brings more grass in the spring, which dries up and turns into tinder for the next round of brush fires and then mudslides. If you live in the hillsides, this is a real hazard (along with coyote attacks and occasional mountain lion mailings and killings or even bear visits). Some comedians would joke that wild animal attacks, mudslides, and brush fires were God's way of telling you, "Don't build here," but with most homes on the (relatively) safe coastal plain, Orange County and much of Southern California are low on the death map.

But I'm digressing. I'm concerned that Korea is still in for some more very wet weather. It may or may not be the worst since they started keeping official records in 1907 (that claim seems to be bandied about every time there's severe weather, which means it's either being used as inaccurate hyperbole or the disasters are indeed getting progressively worse), but it's pretty bad. Godspeed and God bless. My prayers go out to everyone affected by this tragedy.

Things to do this Fourth of July: Go skiing in California

That's right, you heard me: Go skiing.

The Sierra Nevada mountains got so much snow this year that it's still possible to go skiing and snowboarding up in Mammoth, not far from Yosemite National Park, where the base is still three to eight feet. I'm still on Oahu, but if I get to California and there's still snow up there, I may consider giving this a shot (though I may stick to sledding if my little relatives come along).

source

The Sierras have peaks reaching to the 14,500-foot level (Mt Whitney, which is 4500 meters), with lots of car-accessible places at 9000 or 10,000 feet, including the pass that brings you into Yosemite National Park's Tuolumne Meadows from the east. Back in August 2001, when we traveled from Death Valley to Tuolumne Meadows, in thirty-six hours we went from scorching daytime temperatures (122°F, or 50°C) at Badwater to freezing overnight temperatures (30°F, or -1°C) at the Tuolumne Meadows campsite. We were hardly prepared for either. (It was on another trip to Yosemite that on the way down from Glacier Point, at around the 7000- to 6000-foot elevation, we saw it snow on a summer day in June.)

Given their high elevation and their position vis-à-vis typical weather patterns, they tend to capture moisture and let it dump right there. It's hardly a surprise that Sierra Nevada means "snowy mountains." And it's apparently not that rare that the snow pack is till around even in developed parts of the Sierras at this time of year.

Snow in Hawaii is weird enough for a lot of people, but snow in June?

The UH Hilo observatory on top of
Mauna Kea after snow fell on June 4-5. 

We've had some vicious rainstorms the past few evenings. Last night, an electrical storm just over the mountains that bisect this part of Oahu kept lighting up the sky off in the distance. No sound, just flashes of light revealing the mountaintops.

Apparently this same storm dumped precipitation on the Big Island, and up at the higher elevations of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa (which reach past 13,000 feet), it was cold enough to fall as snow.

Just over a week ago I was at the 10,000-foot level of Haleakala on Maui, and as the sun went down, the temperature was in the low forties or high thirties, with wind chill bringing it below freezing. Odd weather for late May, or early June, but it does happen.

The view of Mauna Loa from Mauna Kea.

Yeah, I'm one of those weather bores. I remember things like seeing it snow in the summer in California (Yosemite National Park, on June 25 back in the 1990s). The earliest I ever saw snow in Seoul was October 31 one year, and the latest was April 10. If anyone cares.

Yikes!

And just so we're clear, this is Fahrenheit. 10°F would be -12°C. Double yikes.

Ah, that's better.

Seriously, if it makes anyone feel better, skin cancer is through the roof here. (And get used to this kinda of thing now that I've discovered how to do screen capture with my iPhone.)

White Christmas in Hawaii?

Two days ago there were flash flood warnings on Kauai. And then yesterday it rained something fierce here in Oahu. As that wet weather made its way southeastward, it dumped a whole bunch of snow on both Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, the two volcanic peaks reaching 13,796 and 13,679 feet respectively (just over and under 4200 meters) that form the Island of Hawaii, the US's largest island.

This view of Mauna Kea from the National Oceanic and 
Atmospheric Adminstration webcam on top of Mauna Loa 
shows snow on both Big Island mountains this morning. 
A winter storm that moved past the islands overnight 
left several inches of snow on Hawaii's highest peaks.

It's kinda pretty, and if it sticks around, I may be tempted to head back to the Big Island come Christmas (I was there in May), just for the novelty of enjoying a white Christmas in the Aloha State. (Kushibo is too busy with school-related responsibilities to make it to California or Seoul this holiday.)

Stay dry.

Apparently that's quite a storm that hit Korea.

If it makes you feel any better, it's been unbearably hot here in Honolulu.

So this cold is not my imagination

In Southern California, ever since I was a kid, we've typically had unusual late spring and early summer weather that would seem most atypical for Southern California: chilly temperatures owing to cloud cover from the ocean. There's no humidity and the clouds never release any rain. They sometimes, but by no means always, burn off by early afternoon, but when they don't, the chill lasts all day long and into the night. [photo source]

If they leave, the clouds almost always return sometime in the night, but even before then, the evening can be a little windy and even downright cold. Each of the past three summers, I've gone to a Major League Baseball game in Los Angeles, Anaheim (Orange County), or San Diego, and even with a hoodie, I felt uncomfortably cold by the seventh inning.

It is called June Gloom (as well as May Gray), and it starts in April or May and usually lasts until the very beginning of July (the Fourth of July is the day we declare independence from this tyrannical weather). When friends or relatives drop in from back east, they joke that they should demand a refund. It's too cold to go to the beach, or at least get in the water (although even on a hot day, the water off California is pretty danged chilly, which would explain the popularity of sunbathing).

[above: A graph of percent of possible sunshine each month (source)]

I was starting to wonder if it was all my imagination. I don't mind the cold winters of Seoul; in fact, I find them invigorating. But there's heat everywhere. By contrast, when it gets "cold" in Hawaii or California — prolonged temperatures in the 50s or lower — I feel it differently because there's no respite from it, particularly in Hawaii where buildings usually do not even have a heating system.

And the other day, I looked on my iPhone and the temperature in Barrow, Alaska, America's northernmost community, was only five degrees (Celsius) colder than Orange County.

But the Los Angeles Times assures me that it is not my imagination: Los Angeles (LAX, at least) is experiencing record cold high temperatures. And it seems it's been going on for a while. We actually saw snow on the upper reaches of the northern slope of the San Gabriel Mountains (Mt San Antonio, aka Mt Baldy, I think) from a stretch of Interstate 15 called the Mojave Freeway on the trip up to Las Vegas, and even Mt Charleston in Clark County, Nevada, still had some snow... an extreme rarity in June.

Ah, but it will eventually warm up, and then the scorching heat of summer will, in typical skewed-calendar fashion, last until October. Unfortunately, we don't have a nifty little name for that, like "June Gloom." Might I suggest Septemburn and Octoburn?

UPDATE: 
The sun did come out long enough for protestors activists really bored barflies to moon the Amtrak Pacific Surfliner down in Laguna Hills.