First to get you updated…. clear skies, and calm winds are the perfect ingredients for you guessed it, very cold temperatures.  Tonight we will be dropping down into the 20′s in some areas! I wouldn’t be surprised if we do see records broke around the area.  Because of the cold we have a Freeze Warning in effect for most of the area and a Frost Advisory in effect for our southern counties.   The only ones not included in the warning or advisory is Ashland, Iron and Price.  This is because, as Brian blogged about a few days ago, their last freeze occurs in the beginning of June so it is normal for them to see a below 32 degree night through the end of May.  I wanted to share a few websites I found about plants and freezing temperatures.  This is the main reason we have the warnings is because people have already begun to plant.  This being said it is very important to cover your plants so that they don’t get damaged from the cold.  

http://www.thegardenhelper.com/frost.html

http://www.learn2grow.com/gardeningguides/generalgardening/growingconditions/springfrostprotection.aspx

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-best-way-to-protect-plants-from-frost.htm

http://www.gardeningknowhow.com/problems/frost-how-to-protect-your-plants.htm

Hope these tips help!

Have a great night and bundle up! It would be a nice night to get the fire place going.

Meteorologist Kristen Connolly

Posted under Freeze, Spring, Uncategorized

Sorry, I forgot to include the link to the US Drought Monitor in yesterday’s blog post. Here it is. Also here is the Wisconsin image. Notice the severe drought area shrinking, leaving most of our area in moderate drought. With another chance of rain late today and a couple chances next week, hopefully we will see these areas of drought shrink even more. One thing I am hopeful for is full streams, rivers, and reservoirs. So many wetland areas have been so dry over the last few years. It is about time water levels start returning to normal. Maybe this is the year. I am also looking forward to more moisture this year in order to produce a better crop of berries. Blackberry picking has been rough lately. I haven’t seen a bumper crop since 2002.

Other than a slight risk of severe storms this evening, the only threat from mother nature over the next few days will be frost Sunday morning. Temps could even drop below freezing in town. I will be taking my sensitive plants inside.

Space News:

A couple more news items I was unable to get to yesterday: While all the news in on the repair of Hubble, Herschel and Planck launched on Wednesday without much fanfare. It was a risky launch because both satellites were launched on the same rocket. Could you imagine the disappointment if the rocket crashed. Both of these satellites are important instruments for science, studying the early origins of the universe and galaxies. Another satellite that has begun operation is Kepler. It could bring some very exciting news in coming months as it is searching for extrasolar planets. Here is Kepler’s first image.

Hubble, Kepler, Herschel, and Planck will likely deliver exciting data and new insights over the next few years. The successful launches (and repairs) are a bright spot for space enthusiasts and hopefully dull the pain of hearing that NASA might abandon plans for a moon base. This was not too much of a surprise to me considering the US debt and budget deficit. Human space exploration is fairly low on the budget totem pole right now.

Despite declining space budgets, you’ll be happy to know that scientists have devised several ways to protect the earth from a deadly asteroid strike. The top 6 proposals are listed here.  Ultimately, the only way for humans to survive existential threats is to spread out through space. Remaining on the planet earth is a precarious situation for society as a whole.

Lastly in the space category, another Lunar X-Prize competitor I forgot to mention earlier in the week – Astrobiotic. They have much bigger plans than winning the Lunar X-Prize. They plan future exploration elsewhere in the solar system.

I was planning on a big AGW post today, but there is just too much to cover, so it will have to wait until next week. Instead, how about an update on LED lighting. If you remember back to early 2008, I was quite excited to hear about a potential product offering from Polybrite. It was an LED lightbulb that fit in a regular light socket. I titled a blog post about it: “A True Revolution in Lighting”. It would have been a revolution if the price would have come down. I tried to contact the CEO of the company to find out what happened but I got no answer. All I can figure is that they could not find a partner to mass-manufacture the bulb and thus the price ended up too high for the retail market. They wanted to sell the bulb for $15. Instead, you can buy it online for $50. Yikes! No wonder it is not in Menards or Walmart. Despite this failure to deliver by Polybrite, the industry as a whole continues to make advancements.

- LEDs built with a shroud of quantum dots emit light that is much closer to real sunlight. The bulb looks great, but costs about $100. The manufacturers want to get it down to $65, but that is still probably not viable in today’s economy.

- Non-blinking nanocrystals could make for brighter LED lighting.

- Exciton polaritons show promisein making cheaper and more efficient lasers and LEDs.

Have a good weekend. Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Alternative Energy, Drought, Science, Space

A Frost Advisory has been issued for the Northwoods Thursday night.  Low temperatures will fall to around freezing.  A heavy frost can be expected, so you should cover or bring in any sensitive plants and flowers.  Frosty nights are not uncommon this late into the spring.  That raises the question…When do we typically see our last freeze or killing frost??  Well the answer varies greatly across the area.

The southeastern portions of the forecast area typically see the last freeze during the first week in May, while northeast Vilas, and northern Forest counties average a last freeze in the second week of June!!

Now this map is really just a general picture, and your last freeze really depends on if you are in a low or high spot.  If your house is located in a low-lying area, then your average last freeze could be much later than shown here.

Now tonight will be a chilly night, with frost across the north, but everyone could see frost and possibly freezing temperatures with another blast of chilly air Saturday night.

Meteorologist Brian Niznansky

Posted under Freeze, Spring

A nice little rain of 0.51 inches fell in Wausau yesterday bringing our monthly total closer to one inch and bringing us closer to end our our drought. Check out the latest US Drought Monitor here. Another chance of showers and thunderstorms will develop on Friday evening with a quarter to half inch of rain possible. At this point the threat of severe weather looks fairly minimal. A greater threat for all of the gardeners out there is frost. A frost advisory is in effect tonight for Oneida, Vilas, Forest, Florence, Lincoln and Langlade counties. A more widespread frost is likely Sunday morning. I am holding off planting any sensitive plants in my garden until next week, although I might plant a few seeds today or tomorrow. They won’t be susceptible to the frost.

Space News:

Fro those of you following the lunar X-prize (website here), here is another profile of one of the 17 teamsthat have entered thus far. It is a team from Italy that intends too land a swarm of smalll robots that resemble spiders. It is an interesting approach but it seems there are a couple other teams that are way ahead at this point. Teams can win up to 30 million dollars for landing a robot on the moon, sending back pictures and video, and driving the bot 500 meters. They can win extra money for traveling all the way to previous moon landing sites. It could be an interesting competition because there is no guarantee the first bot to arrive on the moon will be able to travel 500 meters. That would leave the prize open for teams that follow. It will be interesting to see if one of them travels to the previous (Apollo) landing sites. I don’t know if you are aware of this but there is a rather vocal moon-landing-conspiracy-industry out there on the web. A wikipedia article about it here. I wonder what the conspiracy theorists will say if a bot finds the old equipment (or not).

Posted under Space, Spring

Most places picked up some very nice rainfall this evening, and the severe weather was minimal…a big ++.  Now lets hope for some nice weather ahead.  I’m sure plans are already being made and many of you are already looking forward to the Memorial Day Weekend.  I thought we could take a quick look at a long range computer model to see what’s on the horizon for the unofficial opening to summer.  Here is the GFSx Forecast Model for Friday night and into Saturday.

Now keep in mind this is so far away but right now it looks like we could have a dominant area of high pressure, which would mean dry and sunny weather.  To make things even better…it looks warm!!  We shall see!!!

Meteorologist Brian Niznansky

Posted under Spring

My father mentioned to me something about this tape and when I saw an article about I knew it was something I wanted to blog about on here.  As most of you probably know I am from Florida and have went through over 4hurricanes and even more tropical storms.  Making houses “hurricane proof” is something people are constantly doing.  I know the Florida government actually had a a program where you could get renovations done to your house at reduced prices for example adding hurricane shutters and hurricane proof glass to your windows. 

Although we are constantly trying to improve hurricane forecasting and accuracy on target areas nothing can change the fact that they are going to hit.  We can though be more prepared.  A new tape will be out within the next year that actually might improve structures from shattering more during storms.  According to the article “X Flex tape, a clear, Kevlar-reinforced tape tested and developed in conjunction with the U.S. military, is set to become available to civilians within the next year.”

X Flew is made up of three layers put together.  The outer two are normal plastic wrap but inside they add Kevlar, which is a clear synthetic fabric used in body armor.  This extra layer allows the tape to bend and be flexible without breaking.  The tape will help the military to protect soldiers from incoming debris or shrapnel from a bomb, it has also been used to protect from air pressure of an explosion which can rupture ear drums or have other affects on the soldiers. 

The tape has been proven in labs but has not been actually used in Iraq or Afghanistan.  Although specifics of the testing are secret the manufacturer says the X Flex can stop a wood 2 by 4 from puncturing a home wall at 85 mph to 100 mph ( hurricane strength). 

The other good news….it’s easy to install.  This will be another product we will have to wait and see how well it works!

Have a good night! Meteorologist Kristen Connolly

Here are also super cute Fox cubs sent from Amanda & Andy Fritsche from Stevens Point. They were taken at Round Lake in Waupaca.

Posted under Storms, Tropics, Viewer pictures

I got an email from a farmer near Spencer who says enough with the rain. His fields are wet in low lying areas. He can’t plow/plant. He has heavy soil (a higher percentage of clay). That is unfortunate. For the other 99% of us, I hope we get more rain as we are still in a moderate drought and it is severe in some areas. We did receive a little bit of rain this morning and there is a chance of thunderstorms this afternoon. Another chance of thunderstorms will develop on Friday evening, then the weather should be dry for the weekend. Dry but cool. It will not be as cool as last weekend, but it will still feel more like early Spring than early Summer with high temps in the upper 50s to around 60.

That is it for today. I have to head off to a school visit. Have a good Wednesday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Drought, Storms

It has been a week since we have seen any significant storms around the area but don’t get to used to the break because some active weather is heading our way tonight.  The bulk of the activity should push in mainly overnight with showers and storms continuing through morning.  Althoguh there may be some heavy downpours in some of the storms we should see minimal severe threat in the overnight or morning hours.

The real threat for strong to severe storms will come tomorrow afternoon.  It looks like we could see a lull in the activity between late morning or early afternoon allowing for even the slightest bit of sunshine.  If we get any instability in here the parameters are right that thunderstorms will pop up again by late afternoon.  So right now the biggest thing to watch tomorrow is if we see any breaks in the clouds after the precip in the morning and if we do how much does the temperature rise.  This is obviously something we will be watching closely.  We are in a slight risk right now from the Storm Prediction Center and will probably stay in the risk.

In other news doctors are waiting to see if they will see a baby boom from Hurricane Ike  that hit last fall.   The storm devastated the Houston area on Sept 13th, 2008.  Since people were without power and electricity for days, local hospitals are waiting to see the effects that it may have had.  One local doctor is saying that he usually delivers 15-20 babies but is expecting over 25 in June.  Guess we will have to wait and see for the final numbers!

Have a good night and stay dry! Meteorologist Kristen Connolly

Posted under Science, Severe Weather, Spring, Storms, Uncategorized

If you are keeping track of the Snowmelt Contest, take a look here: Corporate Cove Skycam. (it will be focused on Rib Mountain through midday). As you can see, today will not be the last day of snow on Rib Mountain in 2009. Eight people predicted today’s date. Good try. Way to go out on a limb and take a chance. To me it still looks like there is a little less snow up there than the last couple of years. I have a sneaky feeling it will melt before the end of May. Of course, it depends somewhat on the weather. If we have a heat wave with a lot of rain (not gonna happen this week) then it could be gone by the 20th of May. If it remains cool and relatively dry (I hope not), then the snow could last through the middle of June.

Thankfully this week we will have a couple good chances of rainfall. On Wednesday it looks like a 70% chance of showers and thunderstorms with a slight risk of severe storms in the southern half of the area (south of Marathon county). On Friday afternoon and evening there will be a 60% chance. The rain on Friday night should clear up just in time for the weekend, but that doesn’t not mean the weather will be perfect. High temps on Saturday will only be around 60 – a little cool for this time of year but not quite as cool as last weekend.

Energy News:

“Lasting longer than the logical expiration date”. I have talked about this topic before in regards to other science topics and it rears its head again with regard to biofuel. In my opinion, the time for discussing biofuel as a legitimate liquid fuel replacement for gasoline has come and gone.You can look back in my blog posts over the last few years and find my enthusiasm for the exploratory effort to develop biofuels, test them out, calculate the production efficiency, and EROI. I even have close friends involved in the industry and I do not want to spoil their lifeblood, but the verdict is very close to being in. Could biofuels provide an emergency stop-gap fill in for times of disrupted oil supply? Probably. Could new methods of producing biofuels and different types of biofuels find important niche markets? Definitely. Is biofuel a realistic alternative to oil and gasoline? No. The train has left the station on that last question and it is chasing after electric vehicles and other proposals. Is electric ready for prime time? No. But it is looking more promising than the alternatives. This is the general opinion of many people in the transportation and energy fields.

Yet biofuels continue to make news. Companies like Mascoma are developing cheaper waysto produce cellulosic ethanol. OriginOil is making biofuel from algae. It is a unique process to produce the biofuel but the current average cost of algea biofuels between $400 to $1,600 per barrel! They have a long way to go before becoming competitive with fossil fuels.

So biofuels currently cost more, but that is not the only drawback. The biggest hurdle is that there is not enough biomass or land to grow it on in order to replace more than a single digit percentage of our current fossil fuel. Using biofuels instead of underground sources of fossil fuels is theoreticallycarbon neutral but you still have the problem of air pollution. Using biofuels to produce electricity is more efficient that burning it in a car engine. Another problem is that producing biofuels takes too much water.

Methanol

A more positive research development in biofuel production is a new more energy efficient process to take carbon dioxide out of the air and make methanol. This process could have some “legs” because if it can be perfected it will appease the AGW and biofuel groups at the same time.

Even though there are plenty of people still promoting biofuels and a lot of money pouring into the industry (my friends will have a job for a while yet), the bloom might be off the biofuel judging by this recent web poll. It list the top ten alternative energy bets for the future. Biofuels are not on it. It is nice to see nuclear near the top. I wonder if people were thinking about nuclear fusion or cold fusion when voting, because current nuclear energy production (nuclear fission) has a bad rap. Other highlights of the poll – different versions of solar make the list at number 3 and number 1. The only drawback to solar is the tremendous amount of space needed for large scale replacement of our current energy production methods. That is the same drawback for wind power. (Aside, speaking of wind power it is amazing to see more environmentalist backlash against wind farms, first it was the hypocrites in Nantucket sound, now coastal Oregon environmentalists are balking at the idea. They want the electricity but they don’t want the wind mills in their backyard.) Also, making the list is hydrogen vehicles (#8), but I get the feeling that if this poll is taken again next year, hydrogen might not be on the list. Geothermal was ranked pretty high, perhaps because of its simplicity, however, there was a recent setback (underground explosion) for a big Australian geothermal production facility. Hopefully the engineering problems can be solved.

Have a nice Tuesday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Alternative Energy

I wanted to direct you guys to a great article in today’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.  The article features a woman who has served as a fire spotter for over 9 years.  The un-matched efficiency the human spotters have over the technology of today is the most important thing to take from the story.  In the state of Wisconsin, there are 86 staffed DNR towers watching over every square mile of the countryside.  According to the DNR, so far this spring there have been 744 wild fires.  Many of which were first reported by tower spotters.

Once you read through the article I think you will appreciate the work and effort to protect us. 

As far as our current fire danger… the fire threat is low to moderate.  Spring has sprung and things are greening up nicely.  Plus, we have more rain on the way by Tuesday night. 

Meteorologist Brian Niznansky

Posted under Fire