In the distance, the tropical Pacific boundary layer hosts placid, warm cumulus clouds, while in the Hawaiian foreground: snow! A few times during any given winter, with the passage of a midlatitude middle-level trough, the freezing levels lower well below its 13,803-foot summit while precipitation rolls over, and the top few hundred to couple thousand feet of Mauna Kea wears a snow cap. Even more than a week after the snowfall, a few inches remained, mainly in depressions, gullies, and north-facing slopes where wintertime solar influence is weakest. Some of the rain and snow upon this highest of Hawaiian volcanoes percolate through the porous lava, supplying most of the few known groundwater aquifers on the Big Island.
12 SW Umikoa, HI (4 Jan 18) Looking SE
19.8226, -155.4693Hawaiian Snow Slope
In the distance, the tropical Pacific boundary layer hosts placid, warm cumulus clouds, while in the Hawaiian foreground: snow! A few times during any given winter, with the passage of a midlatitude middle-level trough, the freezing levels lower well below its 13,803-foot summit while precipitation rolls over, and the top few hundred to couple thousand feet of Mauna Kea wears a snow cap. Even more than a week after the snowfall, a few inches remained, mainly in depressions, gullies, and north-facing slopes where wintertime solar influence is weakest. Some of the rain and snow upon this highest of Hawaiian volcanoes percolate through the porous lava, supplying most of the few known groundwater aquifers on the Big Island.
12 SW Umikoa, HI (4 Jan 18) Looking SE
19.8226, -155.4693