Weather Blogs

The first Eastern Pacific tropical storm of the 2012 hurricane season is Tropical Storm Aletta, located about 650 mi south-southwest of Manzanillo Mexico. Aletta was named at 03 UTC May 15, right at the official May 15 beginning of the Eastern Pacific hurricane season. The storm is headed west-northwest away from Mexico, and will not trouble any land areas. The formation of Aletta ends a 41-day streak without a tropical storm anywhere in the world, the longest such streak in at least 70 years.

A team of scientists from the University of Hawai’i’-Manoa Geography Department has recently published a rainfall atlas to the state and may have discovered a new ‘wettest spot’ in the islands and thus for the entire United States. In 1992 they set up a rain gauge at a location known as the ‘Big Bog’ on the edge of Haleakala National Park on Maui Island. They had originally estimated the rainfall at this site to be on the order of 180” per annum, but the second year of data (1994) saw an amazing 560” of precipitation fall (176" more than Mt. Waialeale). The 30-year (1978-2007) average annual rainfall was 404" at Big Bog (estimated from 1992-2007 data) vs. 393" at Mt. Waialeale."