Distant and expensive

Not my best photo by far but a nice one of Haleakala on the island of Maui from Mauna Kea's summit - bracketed by Keck 2 and the NASA IRTF.

I'm back on the mountain again and preparing for the sleep problems it always gives me. The circadian rhythm never likes switching from day to night shifts nor does anyone's body enjoy going from sea level to 14,000 feet. It's the job though and a pretty good one when you think about all the problems in the world right now.

In the distance is Maui. I want to go there again. It's about 80 miles away so not far but of course Hawai`i is an island state so you either sail or fly to another island and that's rarely cheap. Maui is also incredibly expensive itself and why shouldn't it be? Many famous people either visit or live there!

In 1994 I took a couple of friends to Maui as a thank you for helping me through some troubled times - all the way from the UK. That was the last time I visited Maui and would love to go back - without those friends this time.

Upgraded

The storm that affected the Hawaiian islands over the past few days has finally departed, the low has drifted well off to the west now. Fortunately the thunderstorms on the Big Island weren't too bad and the most intense one remained just off the east coast on Saturday morning - the forecasters were saying it would move onshore and the radar images looked ominous, but it stood still for a few hours before moving south. The rainfall was tremendous though, sometimes at rates of well over two inches per hour and deafening on a tin roof!

Some time ago I'd planned to work in the yard Saturday morning before going out for the day but the rain put a stop to that - the yard flooded again which is unusual but seems to have come more of an issue over the last 2 or 3 years - but in any case I wasn't going anywhere until the rain subsided a little. So I spent a couple of hours upgrading software on my PC using my new broadband service which included one or two of the photo processing programmes I use. To test the upgrades, I reprocessed some pictures I took last May at the summit of Mauna Kea as well as one or two I found that I'd forgotten about. I think the results are certainly a lot better although some of this may be due to the fact I understand this photography thing a little better than six months ago!

The top picture is of Mauna Kea's shadow at sunset complete with anticrepuscular rays and the eastern slopes of the mountain. In order to get anticrepuscular rays you need cloud in the west that blocks some of the sunlight and sets up the rays in the first place (below). Although you can't see those rays overhead, they become visible towards the horizon in the east and always look beautiful from the summit.

Lightning phobia

The shuttle being struck by lightning. Image courtesy of NASA.

I've promised once or twice in my blog to tell the story about why I'm a little afraid of thunderstorms. The rather intense storms of the last couple of days, and the promise of more to come reminded me to tell the story.

My first experience of the tremendous amount of energy the atmosphere could dump on us was in early November 2000. For those of us that experienced the great storm of 2000 it was a truly unforgettable 24-hours. The rain started in mid-afternoon and by mid-evening Hilo bayfront was experiencing flooding. Despite the thunder and lightning I slept normally only to awake at sunrise with even heavier rain. Every major highway on the island had been taken out with parts of some roads simply gone - washed away into the ocean. An unbelievable 37-inches of rain fell at Kapapala Ranch in Ka`u in 24-hours and most of Hilo got well over 20-inches. Power was out everywhere and all major roads closed and certainly no chance of going to work for the day!

Roll on a few years to February 2004, at home around sunset and an approaching storm. The lightning looked spectacular so I went outside on the top-floor lanai to watch. Within a minute I witnessed one of my ohia trees get struck by lightning and explode. It was an utterly amazing sight, the tree, about fifty yards away, simply turned into a huge firework and was gone. It happened so close I thought it best not to stay on the lanai and head indoors and that's when all hell broke out.

It's hard to describe the next thirty minutes. A friend and colleague who could see Kaloli Point in the distance said this to me a couple of days later: "I looked over your way, I could see Kaloli Point was getting hammered!".

No exaggeration, for the next half an hour lightning was striking everything within a few hundred yards every few seconds. The noise was unbelievable and even though I thought about evacuating it meant a few seconds out in the open to get to my car and I considered it too risky. Better to stay inside than risk getting struck by lightning. Things were about to get worse though.

About 15 minutes after the tree exploded the lightning started to take aim at my house. Now, I know many of you have experienced intense thunderstorms, but have you ever been in a house that was struck by lightning? And not just once, at least three or four times. The first strike was the worst. No warning, just the loudest explosion you could imagine. The house shook and of course all the power went off. A minute later, another strike and another mini-earthquake. A few more followed and when the storm finally moved away after pausing overhead my house for half an hour I was sitting in the middle of the living room floor shaking. It felt as though I'd been under an artillery barrage.

Verizon came by the next day because I'd lost all my electronics including the phone and they found a what was left of a vaporized phone line lying at the edge of my yard. My roof-top TV antenna had turned black and I'd lost four palm trees in the front yard, all struck by lightning.

Move on another two years, February again and another tremendous thunderstorm sat over Kaloli. The rain was more of a problem this time and my lower lanai was flooding. The power had gone off, as usual, so to check how much water was collecting in the lanai I took a flashlight and looked through the screen door. I put my hand on the screen just to help me balance as I took a closer look and then zzzzzfffttt-BANG!

I saw the lightning - it struck about 10-yards away. I was thrown away from the screen door, my arm moving much quicker than the rest of my body! Another 30-minutes sat on the floor in sheer terror and my hand and arm tingling like mad. The tingling didn't stop in my hand until much later the next day.

2006 again but late in the year. On October 15th we had a large earthquake, magnitude 6.7, which caused an awful lot of damage. The next day another one of those thunderstorms that just love to sit over Kaloli Point. The house was struck again - I didn't hide under the bed with the cats but I thought about it.

The next day I was out inspecting the damage and saw my new neighbour doing the same thing. I shouted over to her and asked if she was OK. Her response was something I'll not forget - "I'm just glad I'm still alive!".

I used to love thunderstorms, in fact that was my father's main job at the Met Office in the UK and as a small kid I used to "help" him track and locate lightning strikes. Now they just scare me.

Postscript: The oddest thing about that storm in 2004 is that all of my expensive electronic equipment survived. OK, the TV displayed some really odd colours for the next month or two but I had an amplifying device on the antenna cable which took the brunt of the lightning strike. I wish I had kept it because it really didn't look anything like it used to before the storm. My telephones obviously blew up, the strike on the phone line took them out along with my computer's modem (but the rest of the computer was just fine). The weirdest one was my alarm clock radio. It would tell the time perfectly if it was between twelve and one o'clock but wouldn't work at any other time.

Surrounded

The weather forecasts have been pretty dire for the last few days but where I live there's been hardly a drop of rain. On Highway 130 late this afternoon though, the only way in or out of this place, the rain became really heavy and visibility was reduced to almost zero. As usual, many of the Puna drivers didn't think this was a problem and left their headlights turned off on a busy and fast highway. In front of me, about a hundred yards away, I could make out a few cars all tailgating each other and in the mirror, behind me, an idiot that was just a few yards away. I really do wonder what goes through their minds, if anything. I suspect half of them were on their cell phones as well.

The island is surrounded, not just by idiots but by bad weather. The only way out seems to be to the south-west. The infrared satellite image above shows clouds and temperatures: red colours indicate high cold clouds and in this case the tops of thunderstorms whereas the green colours are lower and warmer clouds, but they still hold a lot of water. You really wouldn't believe how much water they contain until you've lived in the Hilo and Puna districts for a few months!

My old home, England, regularly issues flood warnings when there's an inch or two of rain in a day and for good reason, it causes flooding. Here rain can fall at one or two inches per hour, sometimes more, and it's not a problem - unless it goes on for more than a few hours, and it often does!

Goodbye Tim

This news hit me hard. Tim Hawarden, on the left, passed away today. He was my mentor when I arrived to work here in Hawai`i 13 years ago. I first met him in the early 90s on one of my first trips out here to use UKIRT and it was clear to me then what a brilliant mind he had.

He was a special guy: incredibly intelligent, knowledgeable and fun to be with - I will never forget the snowball fight we had outside UKIRT a few winters ago!

Tim and I had a long chat just a couple of months ago while I was in the UK. He was semi-retired but still spent a lot of time at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh and still had an office - you don't get rid of people with the knowledge Tim had. I tried to extract as much information as I could in the belief he might go into full retirement but as usual with Tim there was no need to try. Tim was a real fountain of knowledge and I just sat there taking it all in.

I learned so much from him, as did all the scientists at the JAC, and now he's gone. It's hard to believe; he was the life of UKIRT.

Winter's approach

It looks as though we're about to experience the first storm of the season. The state will be under a flash flood watch from tomorrow evening and the Big Island summits will likely be issued a winter storm watch from Wednesday morning. Given current conditions these might occur a little earlier, especially for the summit if the MKWC forecast is correct.

The snowfall will likely not be too significant, it's early in the season and temperatures tend to be a little too warm for ice and snow to last long at the summit (although it has happened in the past) but Mauna Kea should see its first dusting of snow in the next few days.

I'll be at the summit early next week so may miss the fun, but if there's snow still up there I'll be sure to take a couple of pictures!

Puna's ocean and sky

Having a few hours to spare this weekend I thought I'd take the chance to experiment a little with my camera. After the trip to Monterey I really liked the idea of slowing down the movement of water using long exposures, it worked quite well in Monterey in the pre-dawn sky and wanted to try something similar nearer to home. Not always being an early riser I used an ND filter to reduce the light in the pictures above and below and waited for the sun to set in the last two.

I'm sure the pictures could be improved and I'm still not that great when it comes to composition, that's something I'm working on. Anyway, the above picture was taken from my favourite place on the island, the wonderful drive along the coast between Isaac Hale Beach Park (in Pohoiki Bay) and Kalapana. It's such a beautiful road and now the whales are coming back for the winter I'm sure I'll be down there a lot more in the next few months!

Same place, but zoomed in a little with an ND filter - I was trying to smooth out the waves on the rocks.

Much nearer home this evening - the coastline of Hawaiian Paradise Park at the end of Paradise Drive. This is another of my favourite whale watching spots although so far I don't think the whales have reached this side of the island yet. It won't be long though.

Same place but taken on Saturday evening. I don't think it's as nice a shot as the one above, but I really liked the way the red clouds changed the colour of the water. Both these last two used pretty long exposures in an attempt to make the water look interesting - both are blends of 2, 4 and 8 second exposures. Click on the pictures if you want to see larger versions.

Maybe this year I'll actually be able to photograph some whales - I tried last year but never had much luck.

This broadband thing is bad!

What album should I listen to next? I keep coming back to Dylan even though I'm not a fan but also revisited my past - The Cult, The Cure, The Smiths and then thought I need to pick a band that didn't start with "The".

The problem is I'm still up late at night because I rediscovered "The The". Uncertain Smile - what a song that was with Jules Holland on the piano. Now all I need to do is find the extended version which I used to dance to in the old disco days.

Don't laugh over there, I can hear you!

I'm stuck, what to do?

This may turn out to be a bad idea, or not, but today I went to the Verizon shop in Hilo and bought myself mobile broadband for $60 a month. It was a real suck up moment - do I really want to spend that amount of money each month for fast internet access when I've managed to get by on a dial up for well over a decade?

First results indicate I've been a bloody idiot not to go down the broadband route before. I'm listening to Bob Dylan's(1) latest albums while uploading photos and reading email with attached pictures all at the same time while also making a nice cup of tea and reading photo book reviews. I could have checked my bank balance as well but I didn't want to spoil the day.

This rocks! But it's expensive. The really bad thing about this is I can't use ridiculously slow dial up speeds to make excuses anymore. Coupled with that, I've run out of photographs. I think I may have a few more really nice ones lying around but all I can find right now are a couple of photos of birds. Both were taken in the UK in September and one's a Nottingham heron (above) and the other is a goose, I think, taken in Bracknell where I grew up.

Sorry, I'll try to get back to the Mauna Kea sunsets and sunrises as soon as I can - after I've listened to a couple more online albums...

(1) I've never been a Dylan fan but "Dreamin' of you" and "If you ever go to Houston" seem to have hit the right nerve with me!

A photo book?

Protege over at "Life Through Reflections" very kindly suggested I publish a book with the pictures in my blog. In fact I did try this exact thing a few months ago, a simple photo book using Blurb but the result wasn't what I'd hoped for. I don't think it was anything to do with Blurb, but the quality of the photos in the book were quite poor which I'm sure was down to the pictures I used.

Since then I think my photography skills have improved a little bit so I'm willing to give things another try. One of the problems, though, is that I'm on a dialup at home so using a web-based photo book publisher is a little tricky. In fact it's hair-pullingly frustrating. If possible, I'd prefer to download the software in a one-off painful experience, edit the book the way I want and then upload the result, again painfully, once I'm done.

It seems most of the top-rated photo book publishers only offer online publishing software which is horrendous to use over a dialup. If anyone has any suggestions or recommendations I'm listening!

What's the picture above? It's a view from just outside the CFHT at sunset. Cinder cones to the left, a hint of the earth's shadow above the cones (and also to the extreme right), cloud tops at around the typical inversion layer and the shadow of Mauna Kea's summit to the right. I hope you like it and the picture gets bigger if you click on it!