The latest Fall Color report for Wisconsin is out and it depicts most of our area over 50% turned and a handful of counties near the peak. The only counties below 50% are Clark, Jackson, Juneau, Adams, and Waushara. The only problem with this year’s color season is that the weather has not been very nice. We have had more clouds than sunshine and plenty of rainfall. What makes the color season better is sunny weather to illuminate the red, orange, and yellow.

WI drought a little better this week.

Warm weather could be an additional bonus, making for nice walks out in the woods or around town. Unfortunately this October we have not even hit 60 degrees yet and it doesn’t look like we will see 60 degrees anytime soon, at least not until late next week at the earliest. The best weather for viewing colors will be on Friday, Sunday, and Tuesday when we should have partly sunny skies. High temps will only be in the mid or upper 40s but we have to take what we can get. Click here for the latest Fall Color report.

The drought situation in Wisconsin might have hastened the Fall Color show by a day or two, but it doesn’t seem to be a dramatic effect. The latest US Drought Monitorshows the drought situation in Wisconsin improving slightly in the last week. The all-day soaking we received on Tuesday the 6th should also lead to improving drought conditions in coming weeks. The Texas drought continues to get better as well. The drought in another hard hit state – California – has not changed recently.

Space News:

If you have been anxiously awaiting the LCROSS lunar impact experiment, you don’t have to wait much longer. The impact is expected to occur at 6:30 a.m. (central time) tomorrow. Read about it here. While reading, you will notice that NASA intends to broadcast the impact live on this web channel. Slooh will also broadcast the impact for free. LCROSS will release a spent fuel tank that will crash into one of the craters of the moon. A plume of debris is expected to rise about 6 miles above the lunar surface, making it visible to large telescopes. That is what is supposed to happen. Who knows how well the ejecta will be illuminated. Also, since this is being widely publicized, don’t be surprised if the web pages offering the impact live end up crashing due to traffic overload. I will try to watch the impact, but I might be on the air at the time and thus would miss it. I might have to watch the replay later on. One thing I find amazing about this event is that there is a flourishing side movement/commentary from people hysterically against this experiment. They are saying that it is an imperialist act of aggression and/or that this “bombing” is going to destroy the moon, it’s magnetic field, or something similar. And of course, this is going to cause a great catastrophe on earth as well. Some of the confusion has arisen because the phrase “bombing the moon” has been tossed around the web. The “bomb” is a substantially empty fuel tank. The people getting hysterical seem to forget that multi-multi-megaton asteroid/meteor impacts have been hitting the moon for millions of years and nothing terrible has happened with it’s structure. This impact will be less than a pin prick as compared to meteor strikes. They must have also forgotten that past Apollo landers were crashed onto the moon and just a couple months ago the Japanese Kayuga probe crashed into the moon and the impact was visible from earth. Nothing bad happened and it is highly highly unlikely anything “bad” will happen this time.

Have a good Thursday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Drought, Fall Color, Science, Space