47 Inches of Rain

The total rain that I measured for the month of March in my backyard rain gauge was 47.04 inches (119.5 cm). That’s more rain than the 44.68 inches (113.5 cm) I measured for the entire year in 2005. Since I never posted that graph, here it is:

The number of sunny days in March could be counted on one hand. On the other hand, we had 4 days with 4 inches (10 cm) of rain, and 2 days with over 7 inches (almost 20 cm) in less than 8 hours. One of those times, the rain gauge overflowed, so the total could be low by an inch or two.

Spring is in the Air

Another time for one of those change in season moments. A few days before the actual start of spring, the blue sky and warmer temperatures over the weekend made it seem as if spring had finally arrived. You could smell the exuberance of nature in the air, people were walking outside again. We didn’t go far, but Nounou, our neighborhood mountain looked beautiful in green under a blue sky:

But now it’s raining again.

Wetter Than Waialeale

After several days that each received more than 4 inches (10 cm) of rain last week, everyone was waiting for the sunshine to come back. Finally, the weather forecast called for a break in the clouds over the weekend. But before the storm was done, it had the final say: 7 inches (18 cm) of rain at my house from noon to 7 pm on Thursday (March 16th).

I looked up the rain gauge records online and found we received more than Waialeale that day, indeed all of Kapaa got drenched with more than 6 inches (15cm):

Source: National Weather Service Honolulu Forecast Office

Nounou once again had its temporary waterfalls, and with the clouds blowing over, looked like a misty Chinese mountain painting (well, not quite):

A Good Morning

This cloudy weather really makes for the occasional spectacular sunrise. This one last week was a double-feature. First, the sun lit up the high clouds with fiery orange colors which could be seen through breaks in the low clouds. Here are two photos glued together:

About 10 minutes later, the high clouds had turned white but the low clouds were lit up transparently with orange light.

Nounou Waterfalls

The waterfalls on Nounou mountain, the Sleeping Giant, are so ephemeral because there is so little area on the upper slopes to catch and funnel the rain. It takes a lot of rain and a quick break in the clouds to see them. We had another four inches of rain last night, there were a few showers in the morning, and so I was lucky to see them when I went out around noon today. And they lasted long enough for me to go get my camera and tripod. Here are the very rare Nounou waterfalls:

There are actually two waterfalls, the taller one of about 200′ (60 m) on the large black cliff face, and a shorter one of about 40′ (12 m) on the smaller cliff above to the left. In this picture, the lower one is falling straight, and the upper one is being blown almost upwards by the wind. There is so little water flowing that the wind would sometimes blow both of them sideways.

I bet Nounou has memories of many larger waterfalls, when it was a bigger mountain. When clouds obscure the peak, as they have often recently, the cliffs looked like those of the Na Pali coast or maybe Hanalei, reaching up into the rainy forested uplands. According to Chuck Blay’s book “Kauai’s Geologic History,” Nounou mountain is about 5 million years old and part of the original volcanic island-building stage of Kauai. Long ago, the Sleeping Giant was one of the pali, large cliff or escarpment, with streams from the uplands plunging over his shoulders, perhaps into the sea below.