As I write, the first hurricane of the Atlantic season is making landfall south of Brownsville, Tx into Mexico.   Alex has started what is expected to be a very active tropical season off with a bang.  Alex is now a powerful and very well organize Category 2 hurricane, packing sustained winds of 100 mph.  Alex is one of the strongest June storms on record. 

Alex’s current satellite imagery is very impressive.  The storm has a well defined eye with strong convection around.   Also check out Alex’s radar loop.  The eye-wall is just coming onshore as of 8:30p.m. Wednesday evening. 

For all sorts of Alex tracking tools…check out this link

Alex’s track well to the south of the oil spill is certainly great news.  Rough seas have still reached the spill zone, hampering the containment.  It’s almost certain this won’t be the only storm to affect the massive spill.

Meteorologist Brian Niznansky

Posted under Tropics

We have heard about the Gulf Oil spill for over 2 months now and it really is devastating.

Last night while I watched poor brown pelicans covered with oil try to flap their wings I really felt the emotion of how bad the spill really is.  It is amazing how the oil affects them.  If you watch this video you will get a better understanding on what it does and how wildlife experts are trying to save the pelicans.  The brown pelicans are the state bird of Louisiana and were just taken off the endangered species last year. 

The good news is they have saved over 100 of the birds, they have intensely cleaned them and then they release them in an area away from the oil spill.  The ones on the video were released in Corpus Christi.  This is also an article of pelicans released in Georgia. 

They get the birds from the cleaning area in a large dog crate, which can fit two birds.  They are using Coast Guard planes to transfer the crates. Hopefully they can continue to save the birds and clean them, and hopefully we can somehow contain the spill in due time. 

At home….

We are going to continue to see beautiful days for the next three.  We could see a few more clouds thanks to a warm front overnight but we should stay dry.  If we see a sprinkle it would likely occur in Ashland and Iron counties.  But I am really doubting that we could get any precip to hit the grown.  We are also going to begin to increase the humidity mainly Thursday into our weekend.  The next chance of rain should occur on the 4th of July.  We could see our own fireworks if this does pan out.  We of course will watch it and if you are going to be out on your boat or having a cook out you may just want to stay tuned to make sure you and your family are safe.

Alex is now a hurricane and begining to make its way closer to the Mexican coast it should make landfall tonight.  For the US it will cause storm surge issues and flooding  for the Texas coast.

Have a great weekend! See you in a few days! Meteorologist Kristen Connolly

Posted under Environment, forecast, Natural Disasters, Science, Summer, Tropics

I used the term “Sunsational” today for the first time this year. It is a word that I can’t say for sure that I “invented”, but that I first started using almost 15 years ago to describe a perfect day – weatherwise. There were many candidate days earlier in the year but I just couldn’t use the term because we were in the midst of a drought. I couldn’t be happy with the sunshine while knowing nothing much was growing because of the drought. Now that we have picked up some very nice rain amounts in June and the countryside is lush and green – it is time for a sunsational day – today! Tomorrow will be quite nice as well and then it will turn a bit hotter over the weekend. It still looks like the next chance of rain will come late in the day on Sunday – at which point we could receive some heavy rainfall due to some extra moisture in the air from the remnants of hurricane Alex (or at least the tropical moisture brought on land by Alex).

Today didn’t start out all that sunsational because it was quite cool around daybreak. Low temps flirted with record territory in many locations. Here in Wausau the low was 45 which was only 5 degrees above the record of 40 set back in 1943. The low in Merrill and Eagle River was 37. In Antigo the mercury dipped to 39. Tomahawk had a low of 35 and Land O’ Lakes was the coldest at a frosty 32.

AGW News:

I thought this was an interesting article about anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Arctic Climate May Be More Sensitive to Warming Than Thought, Says New Study. Researchers found that Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic was much warmer 2.6 to 5.3 million years ago than it is today, during a time when carbon dioxide levels were higher than today. The island had some trees a likely no permanent ice-cover. This is much different than today, as Ellesmere is covered by tundra and ice/snow. According to the authors of the article, this a reason for alarm because they expect that if carbon dioxide levels continue going up, the Ellesmere will become more like it was a couple million years ago. I have to wonder if there is a big case for alarm here. Whatever warm spell the planet and the arctic went through in the past, it seems life survived (and one could say even thrived). The big problem for life in the arctic was the advent of the ice ages. Another point I can’t help but belabor is a pet-peeve of mine. It is when writers and researchers use the term “irreversible” when talking about AGW. Ellesmere Island was much warmer with higher levels of carbon dioxide a couple million years ago and that situation was most certainly reversible as the island we know today is a harsh tundra environment and frozen over most of the year.

Space News:

Here is a little update on the Mars rover Opportunity. It is now close enough to its next target – the Endeavor crater – to get a higher resolution image. Check it out here. It is nothing too exciting yet but it should be interesting if Opportunity makes it all the way because clay has been detected in the new crater. Opportunity could end up performing the first up-close analysis of clay deposits (created by water) on Mars.

No word yet on whether JAXA’s Hayabusa picked up any material from the asteroid it visited, but JAXA is applying to be enteredinto the Guinness Book of World Records. They want Hayabusa to be recognized for being the first spacecraft to land on and return from a celestial body other than the moon.

Maybe they could also get an entry into the World Book of Records for the first successful deployment of a solar sail. Take a look at the shimmering solar sail craft IKAROS here. The picture was taken by a self-deployed camera. What a cool spacecraft! One thing I give JAXA credit for is that they put some thought into getting quality pictures and video from their experimental spacecraft. Remember that their lunar probe had a high definition video camera.

Have a fine Wednesday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under AGW, Climate Change, forecast, Records, Space

I was looking at Justin blog and noticed he put in the drought monitor.  I was also surprised that we had not improved in Northern Wisconsin since we have seen rainfall in that area the past month.  The map is actually from last week, the 22nd.  The newest map will come out on Thursday morning and will be even more interesting to see if we actually make in an improvement from last weeks rains.  Justin made a really good point, they go off certain sites that calculate rainfall, its like saying it could have rain a half an inch more, but the airport only received a tenth so that is what is recorded and figured in when preparing data like the drought monitor.  I can say this weekend I got caught in a downpour in downtown Wausau but I am sure people in western part of the city didn’t see anything.  When it was recorded it was .01″ although I would have to say it was over a tenth.  It is crazy how within a few miles rain totals can be so drastically different. 

Since there isn’t a whole lot to talk about in our area I wanted to do a quick blog about our first storm in the Atlantic, Alex.  He was a tropical storm in the Caribbean was then downgraded to a tropical depression when he went over the Yucatan Peninsula and now is a tropical storm again! 

 He is currently spinning in the Bay of Camphece and will likely increase to a hurricane some time tonight before making landfall later tomorrow.  The track of the storms is looking to make landfall near the Tex Mex border, right now south of Brownsville, Texas.  As of the 4 pm advisory winds are at 70 mph.  That means he is just shy of the 74 mph to make it a hurricane.  Here is his current path:

  Here is also a link to a pretty cool tracker that one news site uses.

This is also a neat visible satellite imagery of the storm. 

They are saying that besides the border towns the area is sparsely populated which of course is good to hear since that will hopefully limit the amount of people impacted by the likely Hurricane  that will hit.

The big issue with this hurricane is going to be the storm surge.  The beaches are all closed now.  Many of the meteorologists in the area and local law enforcement are comparing this hurricane to Dolly.  One meteorologist blog that I read often did a great job explaining why the storm surge could impact the southern coast of Texas is hit 50 to 100 miles south of the border. 

Tonight is going to get cold in some areas…it is possible we could break records! Here are the record lows for the 30th of June:

Rhinelander 40 1925

Stevens Point 32 1900

Marshfield 41  1940, 1943

Merrill  35  1923

Antigo  35 1900

Wisconsin Rapids   37  1943

Wausau   40  1943

Have a good night! Meteorologist Kristen Connolly

Posted under Drought, forecast, Hurricanes, Severe Weather, Storms, Tropics

As a follow-up to the Rhinelander Flood I mentioned in yesterday’s blog entry, here are a couple of pictures taken by Brad Conklin while he was fishing on a Vilas county lake last Friday night (June 25th). The first pictures shows some ominous looking clouds and the second picture shows what appears to be a funnel cloud and could have been a tornado if it actually touched down (can’t tell for sure by the photograph). I asked the fellow who took the picture if he could see rotation when the picture was taken and he said it did look like the clouds were rotating and that smaller clouds were being sucked-up toward the eventual funnel. Later, Brad said that it rained like he had never seen before, creating rivers of water through the campsite. Once again, I am disappointed I was out of town and did not see the storm on radar, or in person. It sounds like one of the heaviest rain events in the northwoods in several years. The last time I heard of more than 5 inches of rain in one storm was in Price county in 2007 (might have been 2008) and also in Florence county in the mid 1990s (96 or 97 I think).

One would imagine that with such heavy rain, the Drought Monitor issued Thursday would show a much decreased severity of drought in northeast Wisconsin but that is not necessarily the case. Remember that the Rhinelander airport only showed 0.84 inches of precitpitation. The Drought Monitor most likely only incorporates precipitation from major reporting sites like the airport, so the “several inches” might be relatively un-accounted for in the drought calculation.

Lastly, a little late, but here is a picture of me playing basketball at the Gus Macker basketball tournament a couple weeks ago. Newsline 9 finished 3rd in the media division. I like the picture because it makes me look more athletic and like more of a basketball pro than I really am, lol. One nice thing about the Macker this year is that the weather turned out great. No rain, and the  temperatures were in the 70s. There was a bit of a breeze on Saturday but not enough to affect shooting too much.

Have a nice Tuesday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Flooding, Records, Severe Weather, Viewer pictures

Instead of chasing the weather, the weather chased me over the weekend. 

On Sunday, I went down to Racine to visit my family.  Mom mom and I went to visit my grandma who is living in a near-by nursing home.  Grandma is doing good, she is just getting up there in age though.  She is a lucky 91 year old who hasn’t had any major health issues.  Grandma also lived a very simple life so the nursing home is almost like a 4 star resort to her…..I’m serious ..she loves it!

Ok back to the storms..

While driving to see grandma I noticed the skies starting to darken quite a bit.  When we got out of the car in the parking lot, I noticed an impressive lowering in the clouds which was also rotating rapidly not even a mile away.   With in a minute or two, all of a sudden we could see branches and leaves being kicked up in the woods behind the parking lot.  Sure enough a weak tornado was on the ground!!!!!  From our vantage point we never saw a well defined funnel, just a rapid rotation above, along with the intense swirl of air below, which was only visible because of the debris inside.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a tornado.   But this was a little different than on a storm chase trip.  When chasing a storm, you know everything there is to know about that storm your chasing from it’s location to strength.  You litterally follow the elements all day long.  Let’s just say Sunday afternoon in Racine I wasn’t  “Traking” the storm and was caught a little off guard.

After an additional survey of the damage on Monday, the NWS has upgraded the tornado to EF-1 strength.  The tornado traveled at least 3 miles, toppling many trees and caused mostly minor damage to homes and businesses.  This was a lower end tornado, but it hit a fairly populated area.  Thankfully no one was hurt.

Hey I happened to even make the local news!!! I’m a TV star!!  check this out…

WISN Milwaukee Coverage

The story also includes cell phone video I took.

Here are a number of pictures I took after the tornado hit…

Here is a latest NWS write up on the event, including some impressive radar imagery…click here

Meteorologist Brian Niznansky

Posted under Severe Weather, Storms

Over my 3-day weekend I took the opportunity to go fishing and visit some family in western Wisconsin. The fish were biting and the weather cooperated. The weather was dry during the day and then rained at night. I was extremely happy about the rain in June because that meant the streams all had adequate water, in fact, there were a few streams that we too full for me to fish. General speaking, any streams that had headwaters in Sawyer county we too high to fish on Friday and Saturday. Not only did the streams have a good amount of water, the country-side was green and lush. Travelling through the Wisconsin farmland was sublime. I should’ve have taken some pictures to remind me in the future of how it is supposed to look in June – green, not brown.

The rainy June weather pattern has been quite beneficial, but it has been a little much in some spots. Over the weekend, parts of southern Minnesota had to deal with flooding and we also apparently had some heavy rain in our area. I heard two reports of several inches of rain Friday night into Saturday morning in Rhinelander. One fellow emailed a report of 8.15 inches!! He said that the rain ended up submerging 2 of their boats. The other report mentioned 6 to 7 inches of rain and some roads washed out near the Hodag festival grounds. The airport in Rhinelander only had 0.84 inches. I was just wondering if there was anyone else who experienced the heavy rain in Rhinelander on Friday night? If so, feel free to leave a comment here in the blog or email StormTrak9 at weather@waow.com

Alternative Energy:

The Deep Water Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has focused more attention on alternative energy (see how this spill compares to other oil-based disasters). I hope it also gets people thinking about the challenges of adopting “cleaner energy”. Politicians like to say “we are going to stop using oil and have a cleaner future” as if just waving a hand will make things all better. Remember what professor Hirsch said in my blog entry “Hirsch Interview“. He has tried to estimate the value of the amount of equipment/vehicles in the world that run on liquid fossil fuels and has come up with a figure of $50 to 100 trillion. That is a lot of critical equipment that would need to be replaced if we are going to switch to newer fuels. It won’t, it can’t happen overnight. It will take a few more years of dedicated research, investment, and early adoption. I have been toying with the idea of getting solar panels for my house but get squeamish about the cost. A lot of the cost (often over half) comes from installation and additional electronic equipment (inverters and batteries). A couple good articles covering some of the issues – the promise and problems – of solar power recently appeared in technology review. They are a good read if you are interested in the subject.

Germany adopts solar power, but at what cost? Can others duplicate their success?

China leads the world in low cost silicon-based solar. Can they produce “parity panels”?

In the world of plastic photovoltaics (stuff used for lower power applications) a new manufacturing process has been developed by the University of Michigan that could make them much cheaper.

Lastly, every blog needs some random eye-candy from time-to-time, so here is a neat picture of the recent space shuttle launch – as taken from a jet fighter. 

Have a nice Monday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Alternative Energy, Environment, Flooding, Space

Just wanted to share some of the rain totals from our weather watchers, most areas in the south received over an inch of rain from the storms that moved through.  Besides Monroe county reporting thunderstorm wind damage of trees down and a gust of 50mph we lucked out with the severe weather staying mainly to the south. 

Nekoosa   2.25″

Plainfield 1.80″

Whiting 1.38″

Stevens Point 1.32″

Lindsey 1.20″

Scandinavia 1.00″

Antigo 0.83″

Merrill 0.76″

Almond 0.70″

Elton 0.62″

Looks like we finally get a break this week! Meteorologist Kristen Connolly

Posted under Storms

One more round…yep that its.  We are going to deal with storms overnight again but then we will see a break. The greatest threat will be flooding from heavy rains and strong winds.  A ridge will build in this week and it looks like sunshine but cooler temps are in our forecast! We have only seen 6 dry days in June but it looks like we will really add to that through this week.

It is amazing to me that the grass count is so low for pollen.  I have to say that I have had the worst allergies of the year today.  I try to avoid taking medication that will make me drowsy but I had no choice because I could stop sniffling and sneezing.  I know alot of people have complained about allergies this year, it was one of the worst years we have seen, but until recently I hadn’t been sick at all.  Wow, now do I understand what people were going through!

Alright now I have a game for anyone who wants to take a stab at it!  This is actually a really neat tool from the National Weather Service office in Peachtree, GA.  They call it the HotSeat… I don’t want to give to many details away but it will put you in charge. See how good you can do.  If anything it is a great learning tool and will show you what we look at.

Last but not least…Say hello to Alex, he is our first named storm of the Atlantic season. 

Here are also some pictures from the library talk I did in Nekoosa.

Have a great night! Meteorologsit Kristen Connolly  

Posted under Allergies, Flooding, Severe Weather, Storms, Summer, Tropics, Weather History, Weather NEws, Weather Safety

I am going to be heading to another school talk today so just a short post. 

First things first…we are watching the possibility of severe storms again tonight.  We are in a moderate risk from the storm prediction center, mainly for our western counties.  Storms should fire up for all of us by the evening and continue into the overnight.  The biggest threat will be straight line winds and heavy rain in the thunderstorms.  We have the potential to see over an inch of rain.  This will be just the first round of two this weekend.  The second round of storms should move in by late Saturday through Sunday.  If you have outdoor plans or just want to enjoy some of the weekend right now Saturday afternoon is looking fairly decent. 

It seems that we have seen nothing but storms and more storms.  We need a break somewhere and our luck may have arrived.  Next week a strong ridge should build in here and that would mean high pressure taking over our pattern.  This means we could see 4 plus days of sunshine! Ironically along with the sunshine will come cooler temperatures.  Highs will range from the mid to upper 70′s.  This is just below normal for this time of year.  The reason is a cold front will move through Sunday bringing the cooler and drier air in.  This also one of the features that will produce the storms. 

I will be working all weekend and make sure to keep you informed of any severe weather heading our way.  As Brian mentioned, we have seen more this week then we did all last year! And as Justin mentioned, if we pick up decent rain totals we could go down as one of the wettest Junes possible.

Have a fantastic Friday!

Meteorologist Kristen Connolly

Posted under Severe Weather, Storms, Summer