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To help you further, we also display "sponsored links" to other related sites. Trust you will appreciate the ease of access to such information. West and south of California, 2,100 miles away, lies Hawaii. Among the 50 states it is the only one surrounded by the ocean. It is the only state within the tropics. Both of these facts contribute significantly to its climate, as do also its division into separate, widely spaced islands and its topographic diversity. The islands of the State are the eastern-most members of the Hawaiian island Chain. This Chain extends for a distance of 2,000 miles from Kure and Midway Islands at the northwest to the Island of Hawaii at the extreme southeast end. There are six major islands in the State which occupy a narrow zone 430 miles long. From west to east these are Kauai, Oahu, Molokai, Lanai, Maui, and Hawaii. Taken together with the much smaller islands of Niihau and Kahoolawe, their total area is 6,424 square miles, about 30 percent greater than that of Connecticut. The areas and approximate linear dimensions of the major islands are estimated as follows:
The islands of the State of Hawaii are terrestrial, summit portions of the long range of volcanic mountains that comprise the Hawaiian Chain. Kauai, in the west, is geologically the oldest of the six major islands and is therefore most strongly eroded, as is evidenced by the deeply cut Waimea Canyon in the western half of the island and by the broadly eroded valley lands in the eastern half. Hawaii, in the east, is geologically the youngest. Its dominant physiographic features are the large mountain masses of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, both of which rise to over 13,000 feet above mean sea level and both of which have suffered only slight erosion. The four major islands lying between Kauai and Hawaii are intermediate in age and in the amount of erosion to which they have been subjected. All the islands are bordered by coral reefs and all have coasts that consist in part of cliffs, some of which are 300 to 3,000 feet in height. The mountainous nature of Hawaii is indicated by the fact that 50 percent of the State lies above an elevation of 2,000 feet and 10 percent lies above 7,000 feet. However, the heights of the mountains vary greatly from island to island, as is shown in the following table:
almost half of the area of Hawaii lies within five miles of the coast. Because of this extreme insularity the marine influence upon the climate is very great, yet the mountains, especially the massive ones on Hawaii and Maui, strongly modify the marine effect and result in conditions that are semi-continental in some localities. This results in climatic conditions of great diversity. |
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Nature & Climate
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