Hawaii's equivalent of a snow day

Today is supposed to be the last day of class for me. Yesterday (Wednesday) I did a mini-presentation (which the cool texters in Korea would no doubt call a minipu, while the day before (Tuesday) I did my major fifteen-minute presentation on the social origins of the Korean health insurance system and how it affects the economic model that has been chosen. Sound exciting? You, too, could become a grad student and have the same kind of fun day in and day out! Ask me how!

My major presentation (mejŏpu?) turned into twenty-five minutes. I thought it was brilliantly laid out, replete with pictures of Korea's first Western hospital, Korea's first imperial hospital, royal Japanese troops marching through Inchon, Park Chunghee talking about setting up the first health insurance system, Korean labor unionists marching through the streets demanding health insurance (or demanding that the non-taxpaying self-employed not be included in their plan), etc.

When it was all done, there was thunderous applause, but that might have been because it was finally over. 

So now I must spend the next several days finishing up the paper that goes along with these presentations. A daunting task I might be able to get done were I not blogging and reading other blogs.

But blogging is not the only time-consumer or annoyance today. For the first time in a while, the weather here in Honolulu is a factor in my daytime troubles. 

We are under a severe weather warning. Here's Yahoo! Weather's take on it. The University of Hawaii warning system that's supposed to tell us if a Virginia Tech-type incident is taking place also tells us if we should expect severe weather (not a small concern, since there are a lot of commuters). 

Flash flooding is a big problem here, where typical terrain is steep mountains with only small stream beds for drainage. In heavy rain, water quickly rushes down into the populated areas. The University of Hawaii was severely flooded in 2004 when the adjoining Manoa Stream overflowed.

Here's what they said yesterday:

FYI: FLOOD WATCH AND HIGH WINDS Update from 

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HONOLULU HI

300 PM HST WED DEC 10 2008

FLASH FLOOD WATCH FOR NIIHAU KAUAI AND OAHU...
HEAVY RAINS ARE EXPECTED TO REACH OAHU ON THURSDAY MORNING.

..FLASH FLOOD WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 6 PM HST THIS EVENING
THROUGH LATE THURSDAY NIGHT... 

WIND ADVISORY IN EFFECT FROM 6 PM THIS EVENING TO 6 PM HST THURSDAY...
SOUTH WINDS OF 20 TO 35 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 50 MPH WILL DEVELOP TONIGHT OVER NIIHAU...KAUAI AND OAHU.

THESE WINDS WILL CONTINUE THROUGH THURSDAY...THEN GRADUALLY TAPER OFF THURSDAY NIGHT.

It's in all caps because they have to yell: the winds are up to 50 mph and thus quite noisy (see video below). Last night it was bad enough that I had trouble sleeping. 

Then this morning my smoke alarm goes off—four times! Apparently all the wind coming in through the lower vent in my room kicked up enough dust that it keeps on triggering the smoke alarm. Nice. I'm sitting in my room wearing earplugs, which make it tolerable, but I'm slowly getting very cranky and irritable. Not quite bite-the-head-off-a-live-chicken irritable, but enough that I might bark at someone.

The rain has created some horizontally traveling wind, which made it all the way across our large kitchen. In the picture at left, I'm standing only a third of the way into the kitchen, so you can see how far it traveled. A good question might be: Um, close a window?

You see, in Hawaii where they tend to use natural air conditioning (i.e., the open air), a lot of buildings have an open plan with no walls, or at least giant open windows, just overhead cover that is extends far enough out that regular vertically dropping rain won't get into your home. I think this is called a lanai. 

I don't think a whole heck of a lot of people will be in class today. For me, now, the question is whether to do my typical daily 5K run or not. This is one of those days when—with the sun absent from the sky—it is actually chilly for the first five minutes or so of the run.

Anyway, just to give you an idea of how loud and rainy it is, this is the first homemade video I have ever linked to this blogged. I took it with my Olympus Stylus 770, which is an underwater point-and-shoot. The video capability is passable, and when you're swimming behind a sea turtle, it's pretty much the only way I'll ever capture it.

By the way, Hawaii doesn't quite get snow days per se, but it does get snow in the high elevations of Maui and especially the Big Island, where all the telescopes are. It can get bad enough that the people there have trouble getting in or out. 

And, yes, people really do ski and snowboard there, but it's totally impromptu and disorganized; there aren't any ski resorts or lifts or anything. In fact, I think people do it for bragging rights more than anything else. Must hurt when you fall on a jagged volcanic rock poking through the snow.