Calm and windy

The trade winds were strong enough last week to reach summit level and in fact were much stronger than at sea level. We found ourselves dealing with 30 mph winds with much higher gusts at times. Not only did the winds do their best to turn the telescope into a sail whenever we looked into the east, they created a local turbulence which destroyed any chance of obtaining decent image quality.

The shot above, of the setting sun, looks calm enough but I was standing in the lee of UKIRT. Even then the gusty winds made taking a a picture difficult. Below, a picture of Hualalai and the clouds in the saddle between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa taken an hour or so earlier. The winds were even stronger there as they were channeled between the two huge volcanoes and driven upslope. The cloud tops were literally being torn to pieces.