Is it cold?

Aloha no! Guess what? Yes, I forgot to change the title of yesterday's blog. Today I have put a title on before I started to write. I got a note from my sister in North Kohala asking if this has been the coldest winter since I moved to Volcano about 30 years ago. She has said that this has been the coldest winter in North Kohala since she moved there, maybe, 40 years ago?. The answer for Volcano is this has not been the coldest winter. The first year I lived here it got down to 28 for 3 mornings in a row. Ice all over the place. The ground "crunched" when you walked around. Since then we have had several years with the temperature in the mid 30s. I think the coldest it has gotten this winter is the mid 40s. This morning it was 48 at about 7a. Now at 10a it is 51 on the "sunny" side of the house. However, I think this winter we have had more days of 50 degree weather than ever before. Usually the temp get above 60 during the day, but not this year. Hey, the sun just poked through the clouds.

I just remembered.... When it got down to 28 I asked my neighbor, a very old time resident of Volcano, about the freezing of the water pipes. He told me that it had gotten a lot colder before and he did not have any trouble as it has to be below freezing for longer that a few hours for the pipes to freeze.

If the sun wins the battle with the clouds we will go pick tree fern shoots, kakuma, as my wife's side of the family likes it cooked with pork. I remember, as a kid, the neighbor across the street trying to get my mom interested in kakuma. We had fern trees in the back yard, but my mom was not very adventurous when it came to food. The first time I ate kakuma was after I got married.

The volcano update is SOS. The lava in the new crater in the floor of Halema'uma'u goes up and down, like a piston. Tremor increases, the lava goes up; tremor decreases, the lava goes down. Today's report does not mention tephra.

Looks like the sun is losing. God bless all of you and God bless America!