July will go down in the record books as one of warmer and wetter than normal conditions in our area. 

Here are the stats for the Wausau Downtown Airport.

• Average high temp 84 (3.2 degrees above normal)
• Average low temp 63.6 (4.3 degrees above normal)
• Rainfall 5.53″ (1.41″ above normal)
• Lowest temp, 52 and highest temp, 94
• It reached 80 degrees or higher on all but 6 days
• 15 days with highs of 85 degrees or higher
• 4 days with highs of 90 degrees or higher

Interestingly enough, 94 degrees so far has been the ceiling for how hot it gets in Wausau this summer.  We hit that twice in July, and once in early June.  For the whole summer so far, we’ve had 7 days of 90 degrees or higher.   We had about 4 days where the heat index reached into the 105-110 degree range.  We had many days with dew points in the 70s and several where low 80 degree dew points were observed in central Wisconsin.  In fact on my home weather station, I had a dew point of 81 registered on four separate days.  That’s incredible.  I think that is what I will remember most about this July, the intense humidity.  There are summers around here where the dew point never gets above 75.  So to have 4 days in July with the dew point at 80 degrees or more, is certainly remarkable.

July Statistics From Around the State

Location                # of 90+ deg. days          Total Rainfall

La Crosse               9                                              4.6″

Madison                 8                                              1.85″

Wis. Rapids           6                                             7.00″

Eau Claire              6                                             7.43″

Marshfield             4                                             7.18″

Green Bay              4                                             5.30″

Rhinelander          3                                             2.36″

As you can see, there were a few drier pockets.  Rhinelander was below average on rainfall as was Madison.  Actually a good chunk of far south and southeast Wisconsin was on the dry side.

Well it appears August will start out above normal for temperatures and we could see some heavy rain Tuesday in parts of the area.  We’ll see what happens after that!  My hunch is that we will rack up another 90 degree day or two in August.  Stay cool.

Best regards,

Tony Schumacher, StormTrack9 Meteorologist

Posted under Heat, Monthly Recap, Summer

Yesterday here at StormTrak9 we were forecasting a 30% chance of showers or isolated thunderstorms in the southern half of the area in the late afternoon and early evening. Everything turned out almost exactly as forecast, except for the fact that the rain ended up being very heavy around Wood and Portage counties. It goes to show that when the air is very sticky in the middle of summer, any thunderstorms that do form, have the potential to create torrential downpours. How much rain fell. Take a look at the graphic I have posted in the blog today. The areas in red are where StormTrak9 radar estimated that up to 4.5 inches of rain fell along the Wisconsin River between Stevens Point and Wisconsin Rapids. Officially, there were at least two record rainfalls in our area. Wisconsin Rapids set a new record with a rainfall of 3.20 inches at Alexander Field. Stevens Point set a record with 2.45 inches marked at the airport on the northeast side of town. Green Bay also had a record rainfall of 2.25 inches. Our weather watcher from Scandinavia reported 3 inches last night and that brings her July total up to 10.75 inches. Back in June she recorded 9 inches of rain so it is getting pretty soggy down there. Here in Wausau the rain total yesterday was only 0.06 inches. Our total for the year is now 20.43 inches which is 2.26 inches above normal.

I am very happy to see the recent rainfall because here in town and at my garden out in the country there has been enough rainfall but not too much this Summer. I am sure a few other people would say it has been waaaaay too much. In any case, it is getting to that time of year when I can say with confidence that even if we did not receive another drop of rain, we are not going to starve. There is probably enough moisture in the ground around northcentral Wisconsin to “finish out” most of the crops. It wouldn’t be ideal, of course, but we have probably crossed the threshold to where there would not be a complete crop failure, even if a drought developed. Even southern Wisconsin got in the rainfall action earlier this week, which should help out with the extra dryness down there. The U.S. Drought Monitor this week shows abnormally dry conditions in the southern third of the state and a little now in the northeastern corner. I doubt these areas of dryness will expand much over the next couple of weeks and will most likely contract if we end up with rain as expected late Saturday into Sunday and again late Monday night into Tuesday of next week.

______________________

As you know, I often blog about alternative energy solutions and breakthroughs here in the blog. I have also stated several times that inventors and entrepreneurs have a great opportunity in coming years because of the high price of oil. Any invention that can conserve energy and/or generate energy cheaply and cleanly has a great chance of making the next millionaire among us. Most of the breakthroughs I highlight are from university research centers or from large corporations in some far corners of the country. Little did I know, there was a start-up right here in Wausau developing some new technology to make air conditioning (and a few other things in the near future) much more efficient.

Rob Duns and I traveled to PDM solar yesterday to speak with the founder and CEO – David Baker. He is a mechanical engineer who has set his sites on making your air conditioner much more efficient, green, and off the grid. His invention uses old technology (heat engines and compressors) in new ways in order to chill liquid refrigerant (for air conditioning) and possibly generate electricity in the future. You can see a little video of Mr. Baker and the device in today’s weather showand you can catch a little more in depth presentation on newsline 9 at 10 tonight.

In the world of inventions and green energy solutions there is often quite a bit of hype. Many times, either the invention does not work as well as it was laid out “on paper”, or the inventors were never able to bring the cost down (through economies of scale) to where it was competitive with other products. In this case, even though I was there in person, I was not able to actually test the machine and see if it did live up to its claims – that would take quite a bit more time. However, the people we talked to at the company seemed honest, knowledgeable, and sincere. The one thing I think would help them a great deal in promoting the invention would be during the next iteration (they are on the 3rd prototype right now) to engineer a more compact and stylish package. Given the number of parts, valves, tubes, and pistons, it will still have some bulk, but if they could get it into the size and packaging similar to that of a large air conditioner, I think they could turn a few heads. This of course wouldtake more time and money, which most entrepreneurs know is not always in abundant supply. I wish them luck. It would be great to see a new green technology company flourish here in Wausau.

Have a fun weekend. Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Alternative Energy, Drought, Records, Technology

At least three rainfall records have been broken in Wisconsin thanks to Thursday’s band of slow-moving showers and thunderstorms. 

Portions of Wood and Portage County were hit particuarily hard with the rain where many communities reported flooded streets and soggy basements.  According to the National Weather Service records Wisconsin Rapids recorded a hefty 3.2″ of rain at the airport.  That beat the city’s previous record for July 28th of 2.38″ set in 1990.  

Stevens Point had many reports of urban street flooding when 2.45″ inches fell on Thursday, demolishing the city’s previous rain record for July 28th.  The old record was just 1.82″ set 35 years ago in 1976.   

Though the record that will be in the books stands at 2.45″, many people received far more rain.  Several Stevens Point area residents recorded nearly 4″ in their backyards.  A storm spotter in Plover reported 1.92” falling in just 55 minutes!

After the band of rain cleared Portage County it headed towards Green Bay.  While there it poured 2.25″  on Austin Straubel International Airport.  That knocked off the previous record of 2.18″ which had stood for 58 years since 1953!

Posted under Community, Nature, Records, Severe Weather, Storms, Weather History, Weather NEws

Last month someone commented in the weather blog, wondering if there was a link between La Nina and the strong tornadoes that were occurring in our area and the nation this Spring. Without spending many days searching all the weather records to confirm a link between the two, I speculated that there was a meteorological reason to expect more stormy weather during a La Nina Spring. The reason is that the temperature contrast between the northern and southern part of the country during a La Nina is often stronger and the clash of warm and cold air is the basic driver of most weather systems around the world. Here is the blog entry from last month. Here is Tony’s blog entry on fairly significant link between the strong La Nina and tornadoes in the U.S. – data courtesy of the NWS of La Crosse.
________________________________
Now to follow up on yesterday’s blog entryand the very difficult to achieve transition from dirty fossil fuels to a cleaner energy future. There are certainly a lot of options for the future and there is a big push right now to try out more wind power, solar farms, geothermal energy, and biofuels, but there are many roadblocks in the way. None of the future alternatives are as easy to use as fossil fuels, they are more expensive (generally), and there are some significant drawbacks (such as wind turbines blowing up the lungs of birds and bats).
Even with all of these drawbacks, a growing number people continue to choose alternative energy and it is showing up in the statistics. In a very eye opening report, REN21 claims that 20% of the world’s energy consumption is now from renewable sources. If I had asked anyone just a couple days ago, how much of the world’s power comes from renewable sources, I doubt anyone would have guessed over 10%. 20% is an amazing number and I hope it continues to climb. With the high price of oil and rising cost of other fossil fuels, the future looks rosy.
The best part of the report is that solar power doubled in capacity from the year before. I think solar has the best upside potential as a future energy source. Also, I have remarked in the blog before about the trend in solar, especially about Ray Kurzweil’s analysis. If solar energy production keeps doubling every year, we could have all of our electricity coming from solar sources as soon as 2016. That is right around the corner.
The worst part about the report is that ethanol production continues to increase (especially in the U.S.) I know that it is considered a renewable energy source, but it just doesn’t have much upside potential and in the critical area of air pollution, it is not going to help out that much.
What would help is the adoption of more electric vehicles (EVs). The big problem here is that they still cost too much. Also, they have drawn criticism that they are “coal cars”, meaning that they get their electricity from a coal power plant. Well, forward-looking people are dealing with this as well. SolarCity says the market for their solar EV chargers is growing (they also do home solar electric installations).
And finishing up on the topic of EVs, you can find an electric airplane at AirVenture ongoing in Oshkosh right now. PC-Aero is showing off their Elektra One. If you are heading over there, let us know what it looks like close up.
Have a nice Thursday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Alternative Energy, ENSO Update, Pollution, Technology

The Meteorologist-In-Charge at the National Weather Service Office, Glenn Lussky shared some interesting data with us regarding the historic relationship between La Nina and severe weather patterns in the world.

Here are the most important findings.

1. The three strongest December – April La Ninas since 1950 were in 1971, 1974, and 2011.
2. Since 1960, 1974 and 2011 were the two worst years for tornadoes in terms of tornado strength, damage, and fatalities in the U.S.  By the way, 1971 was also in the top 10.
3. Since 1960, the worst floods in Queensland, Australia were also in 1974 and 2011.  Severe floods also occurred in 1971, just south of Queensland.

This relationships are too consistent to be just random chance.  Several studies over the years back this up.  You can read one such study at this link, http://www.nws.noaa.gov/ost/climate/STIP/33CDPW/Mayes_33cdpw.htm So, the next time we have a strong La Nina over the winter into the spring, the Central Plains to the Tennessee and Ohio Valleys better be prepared for a very active and dangerous tornado season.

The reason the tornado season is so robust in portions of the U.S. during strong La Nina springs is the fact that a pocket of colder than normal air stays parked over the north central U.S. while at the same time warmer than normal conditions remain in the southcentral and southeast U.S.   The La Nina favored a consistent jet stream flowing over this battleground from the Southern Rockies through the Mid-Atlantic States.  As such, numerous intense low pressure system spin up in that zone, feeding off the energy from the big temperature contrast.  The low pressure systems pull  moisture north from the Gulf of Mexico and easily developed violent thunderstorms.  The strong winds aloft provid the necessary shear and turning in the atmosphere for strong tornadoes.

Perhaps you recall that there is a strong relationship between moderate to strong El Ninos and our winters in the Upper Midwest and Northern Plains.  The winters are almost always warmer and drier than normal with strong El Ninos.  As it turns out, there is increased chance of below normal tornado activity in our part of the country coming off of El Nino winters as well.

Some of the long term computer models indicate a La Nina may try to form again as we head toward winter.  We will see, a lot can change between now and then.

Posted under Natural Disasters, Spring, Storms, Tornadoes

We apologize to all the blog readers for the recent outage. We haven’t been updating the content for the last 6 days because of some software/technical problems that developed outside of our control. Those nameless faceless IT people in a building far away figured it out and we should be updating the blog more often now.

What happened during the last few days? Not too much in the weather. Even though we did have major heat wave across most of the nation and here in Wisconsin, we did not end up setting any new records in our area, but it was close. The only record I found was a daily record tied in Wisconsin Rapids on the 20th when the high was 96. A record of a different sort was broken in Wausau on the 19th. It was a record precipitation of 1.57 inches. A precipitation record might be the next one to fall as well because today we could see another round of rain and thunderstorms this afternoon in to early evening. We have already received a half inch of rain at the time of this writing and the record precipitation for today is only 1.39 inches (set in 1983). That being said, the highest chance for an additional inch or two of rain this afternoon or evening will be south of Wausau. There is also a slight risk of severe weather, mainly in the form of high winds with any thunderstorms that do form later today.

________________________

Other than the warm and humid Summer weather withless than expected records, one of the more interesting environmental stories from the past week was “carmageddon” in Los Angeles. The highway department in Los Angeles shut down the 405 freeway for one day and everyone was warned to stay off the roads for fear of congestion. It turns out that most everyone did heed the warning. The streets and highways were extremely quiet. It was a revelation. It has gotten Angelenos talking (at least a little) about ways to keep the traffic down a bit - which is a great thing.

I have driven in Los Angeles several times and I write about the problem of sprawl quite often. Most of our environmental pollution is due to the fact that most of American society is built around the autmobile. It was not designed for humans – not directly anyway. Los Angeles and most metropolitan areas in the U.S. are grand monuments to the automobile. Ameliorating the problems due to sprawl has proved quite intractable. I have written about this in the past and I haven’t seen much change in policies. Even here in Wausau, the roads keep expanding. Right now there is construction on County Highway X (Camp Phillips Road) to make it a 4 lane road. I am unsure the reason for the expansion except that the county expected an increase in traffic along the road in coming years so it MUST be expanded now. I haven’t heard if the accident rate has gone up on that stretch of road or that people were complaining about traffic jams. If neither was a problem then perhaps it didn’t need to be expanded. At some point someone has to stand up and say no. To say we aren’t going to pave over another 1,000 acres of land for a new highway – we are going to find a better solution. A similar situation is in the works for the new national guard building in Wausau. Instead of remaining in the city center and using up some old dilpidated space right next to the original National Guard building, they are going to pave over 40 acres of green space at the edge of town. This of course will require an expansion of roads and other services out into the country, while the old space remains unused (most likely).

The problems we face here are miniscule compared to Los Angeles, so maybe I shouldn’t complain to much. It is a shame that Los Angeles is choked in smog and noise pollution because they have great weather and a great location. Imagine what the Pacific looked like before the automobile haze obscured the view.

What if any solutions are there? Conservation ALWAYS helps (intelligent street lighting could cut electricity cost by 80%), but is not the ultimate solution. Seeing as so much of the country is paved over already, the easiest way to clean up the air would be the adoption of electric cars fueled by cleaner energy sources. Bullet trains and other mass transit would be harder because the cost is so much more and people are creatures of habit. We do love our cars.

Have a nice Wednesday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Alternative Energy, Pollution, Records

I was expecting that yesterday would be the hottest day of the year. Even though we had quite a bit of moisture in the ground to prevent temps from rising up to 100, I thought we would at least reach 96. Here in Wausau the official high temperature was 94 which makes it a tie for the hottest day of the year. It is also the 4th time this Summer we have hit 94 degrees. There is still a chance we could see temps a little warmer than 94 but the odds go down every day as we now head toward Fall, especially if we continue to have adequate rainfall. If we would happen to have a dry spell in early to mid August, then that would enhance our chance of seeing middle or upper 90s for high temps – not that anyone would really want that. The latest we have ever had 94 degrees or warmer was September 22nd of 1937. The only city in our area that had a record yesterday was Wisconsin Rapids – which ties the old record of 96.

The current hot weather might have you wondering if it will continue into the second half of Summer. For some quidance on the query we can turn to the Climate Prediction Center long range monthly outlooks which were just released yesterday. For August, the computer models are indicating “EC” or equal chances that temps or precipitation will be above or below normal. It doesn’t mean that temps and precipitation will be normal, just that there isn’t any definite trend the models have latched onto to lend confidence to an above or below normal forecast.

The situation is different for the August-September-October 3-month outlook. For this period, the computer models are predicting a greater chance of above normal temps than below normal temps. It is not a guarantee that temps will be above normal, just that the chances are greater for above normal temps. As far as I am concerned, above normal temps during the Fall, especially the early Fall (September and October) is something to really hope for. Fall is my favorite time of year and if 70 degree temps hang on in the football season and Fall color season, it would be awesome.

Another weather tracking update was released today and that is the U.S. Drought Monitor. Almost all year Wisconsin has been 100% drought free…until now. Our area had plenty of rain during the last 10 days but southern Wisconsin has been left out a bit. For the first time this year, part of the state is now indicated as “abnormally dry”. The fraction of the state experiencing dry weather is only 10.03% so that is good news. It is a whole lot better than Texas and Louisiana where some form of drought covers 100% of those states.

With all the talk about heat there is also a lot of talk about anthropogenic global warming (AGW) recently. Here is one of those stories which seems to report common sense – warmer oceans will melt ice faster. The key to this story is that some parts of the ocean might warm up faster than previously thought. Some people are wondering if the warming of the antarctic ocean is leading to the decline in krill populations and thus stress upon Penguin colonies. In this instance, the loss of sea ice might be having an indirect affect on krill populations but more likely explanations are that people are harvesting more krill out of the oceans for supplements and that large krill-eaters like whales are not hunted as much as in the past and are thus putting more pressure upon krill numbers.

Melting ice near the poles of the earth would of course cause ocean’s to rise and many people say it is too late to stop huge impacts  from occurring. The main negative impacts would be along coastal land areas. As I have mentioned before, the rise in ocean levels is not all that bad per se except for the fact that people have built some very expensive assets (houses all the way up to cities) very near the coasts over the last 100 years. As far as other environmental problems go, I am not as worried as some. During the last interglacial period of the earth’s climate the water levels were over 8 meters (over 24 feet) higher than today and the ecosystem survived.

Part of the ecosystem that might be working against any efforts to reduce greenhouse gases from building up in the atmosphere is soil microbes. Recent research reveals that soil microbes might produce more methane and nitrous oxide as the carbon dioxide level of the atmosphere goes up.

Of course, during any discussion of AGW, the subject of reducing emissions always comes up and I often cover alternative energy strategies here in the blog. One particular technology/process I have followed over the last couple of years is that of carbon sequestration. This is where a power plant would send all of its CO2 gas effluent under ground where it would stay “safely” tucked away for years and years. Some pilot programs have begun to determine the viability of carbon capture and storage but it is not looking too good at this point. The problem is that it is not very cost effective. The companies that hhave been involved in the pilot programs suggest that more government money is needed if they are to continue or expand what they have started.

A couple more radical proposals to cut down on carbon dioxide emissions would be to use more wood when building things and to eat lab-grown meat. Building more things with wood would keep more carbon locked up on the surface for many decades. It is a good idea that could take a very small percentage of carbon out of the air. The main problem is that there are not too many applications for wooden structures except homes. With regards to lab-grown meat, yes it would likely be more energy efficient than growing cows, but I am unsure many people would eat it. I don’t think I would have any reservations, as long as the price was right and it was a reasonable facsimile of the real stuff. I think it would be hard to replicate the flavor of natural meat, but the nutrition would still be there.

Have a good Thursday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under AGW, Alternative Energy, Climate Change, CPC Outlook, Drought, Heat, Records

If you like big weather numbers, the past few days have not disappointed.  High temperatures Wednesday in Wisconsin included:  100 in Janesville, Racine, and Necedah, 99 in Watertown, 98 in Milwaukee, 97 in La Crosse and Stevens Point, 96 in Madison, and 95 in Superior and Green Bay for some of the hottest.

The storms that rolled through Tuesday evening brought wind gusts to 60 mph in numerous spots from Taylor and Clark Counties in a swath southeast to the Waupaca County.  Stevens Point was especially hard hit with 75 mph winds estimated by the National Weather Service.  They did a storm survey damage and believe it was not a tornado because all the trees down were laying in the same direction, to the east or southeast.  That means it was a straightline thunderstorm wind event.  The National Weather Service says the damage occurred mainly from 10:00 to 10:15 p.m. with the core of damage from downtown Stevens Point into the Whiting area.

We did have reports of a few funnel clouds in the region however.  Below you’ll see one of those sent in from the Abbotsford area.

Tom Danen, Abbotsford, evening of July 19th

Rainfall was the other notable feature of the storms Tuesday night.  I guess that shouldn’t be surprising given how much moisture was hanging in the air with the tropical dew points pushing 80 degrees.  There were several bands that had over 4.0″ of rain from western into central Wisconsin.  See the precipitation estimate map from the La Crosse National Weather Service below.  The oranges and reds are the heaviest amounts.

Some rainfall reports include:  4.56″ Lublin (Taylor Co.), 4.0″ Gilman and Spencer, 3.93″ Owen, , 3.5″ Polonia, 3.25″ Scandinavia, 3.12″ Rib Mountain, 2.45″ 1 mile NE of Wausau, 2.25″ Stevens Point.

Here’s hoping for some less impressive weather over the next few days!

Posted under Heat, Natural Disasters, Severe Weather, Storms, Summer, Tornadoes, Weather NEws

Some wild storms moved through the area last night, producing torrential downpours, high wind, and frequent lightning. The wind and lightning caused many power outages, some of which were still being fixed at the time of this writing. Hardest hit was Stevens Point. Trees and power lines down were blocking many roadways early this morning and many businesses were running on emergency back-up power. There was so much damage that the mayor of Stevens Point implored people to stay off the roads until 5am.

With such high humidity, heavy rain was always a possibility this week. It rained enough in Wausau to set a new record. The old record for July 19th was 1.54 inches. Last night, the downtown airport recorded 1.57 inches. This recent rainfall puts us above normal for the month of July and keeps us safely above normal for the year. At this juncture the precipitation total for the year in Wausau is 2.30 inches above normal. I realize some folks have probably gotten TOO much rain, but I am still happy to see above normal precipitation because prior to 2010, we had gone 7 years in a row with below normal precipitation.

Bruce, our weather watcher in Polonia, had a whopping 3.50 inches of rain. Marianne in Scandinavia ended up with 3.25 inches. Some of the other high rain totals around Northcentral Wisconsin included 3.88″ in Stratford and 4.56 inches in Lublin. Lastly, here are a couple pictures of the dramatic shelf cloud at the leading edge of the thunderstorms that moved through the area last night.

Picture from Brittany & Shawn in Spencer

From Wes Jannusch of Stratford

Have a good Wednesday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Flooding, Records, Severe Weather, Viewer pictures

Before I delve into anything else, I just wanted to share the photograph, that I tried unsuccessfully to upload yesterday. It was a spectacular picture of a retreating thunderstorm (with mammatus clouds) illuminated by the setting sun on Sunday evening. It was taken by Debi Oswald of Park Falls. It is not often we get so much color and so many interesting features in one picture. Many other lucky people saw and snapped pictures of that sunset. I would like to put a lot more pictures in the blog at this point but I have not yet figured out how to get them all to line up nicely and not ruin the format of the post. I guess I will just put them at the end of the text, so check the bottom.

Staying on the subject of cool pictures, how about that Space Shuttle launch from last week! Nice to see that it went off without a hitch. As I have mentioned in the past, I side with those who decided to shut down the program. It was too expensive, too dangerous, and too old to continue. The program was fabulous when it began and there were some great advances and discoveries made during the shuttle era, but now it is way past time for something new. I think the private-public partnership for space exploration in the future is a good thing to try. In any case, here is a great picture of the last shuttle launch heading off into the wild blue (or black) yonder. It is amazing how huge the space shuttle and its booster rockets are, yet how tiny they seem against the vastness of space.

Outside of shuttle news, the most interesting space exploration news is that the robotic spaceship ”Dawn” has arrived at the large asteroid (or proto-planet) Vesta. It will orbit and study the object for the next year. Read about it and view pictures here. 

Have a pleasant Tuesday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Picture by Chris Wypij

Picture by Laurie Zondlo

Posted under Space, Viewer pictures