April was no March, that’s for sure.  We had hugely warm temperature departures in March to the tune of 15 degrees across the area.  April still turned out modestly warmer than normal however. 

In Wausau, the average high was 57.5 degrees, 2.7 degrees above normal.  The average low was 34.5 degrees, 1.2 degrees above normal.  We had a good 15 nights of frost in central and northern Wisconsin which is nothing unusual for April around here.  However it was of great concern this year because plant development was much ahead of normal due to the warm March.  That’s why Freeze Warnings were issued on so many nights.  The National Weather Service usually doesn’t issue them until May 1st or so in our area.  By the way the highest temperature this April in Wausau was 75 degrees on the 15th.  The coldest was 26 degrees on the 6th.  We had several nights with lows in the 10s in the TV-9 viewing area.

As far as precipitaton goes, we picked up 2.44″ of moisture.  That’s about .29″ less than usual.  We also had 1.5″ of snow in Wausau, which is 2.6″ below normal.    The snow primarily fell on the evening of the 19th into the morning of the 20th.  There were some isolated 3 to 5″ reports with that storm over in parts of Langlade, Menomonee, and Shawano Counties.

Unlike April of 2011, there was virtually no severe thunderstorm activity in the region.  Well, I hope you enjoyed April.  Let’s see what May has up her sleeve!

Posted under Monthly Recap, Spring

Last week I wrote one of my periodic “things-might-look-bad-but-progress-continues” blog posts about economic malaise alongside an innovation explosion in the solar industry. In it I mentioned a German company Heliatek making a new organic tinted solar panel. Now they have achieved a record efficiency for dye-sensitized solar cells at 10.7 percent. They are planning a roll-to-roll manufacturing process that will hopefully lead to economically competitive production in the near future. Way to go Heliatek!

In another very recent nugget, and new transparent graphene material dubbed “GraphExeter” (according to this article), could help improve solar panels even further by be a transparent conductor of electricity. The material could go near the top layer of solar panels, let the light through, and conduct more electricity. Could it increase solar panel efficiency by up to 30? We will wait and see.

Ford Focus Electric

If you are an early adopter and are looking for an EV to hook up to your solar panels, check out these recent reviews of the Ford Focus and the Nissan Leaf. One option for charging might be the GE Wattstation. It is certainly stylish, but I always wonder, is it cheap? I suppose, most people that can afford and electric car can also probably afford a Wattstation.

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Just a reminder that the entry period for the snowmelt contest is done. No more entries will be accepted. We are now in the stage of watching and waiting to see when the snow will melt. From what I could see from this weekend, we still have a few days to go. Six people predicted today’s date. Way to take a chance and go out on a limb, but the winning date will not be today.

Have a fine Monday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Alternative Energy, Technology

Photo from the National Weather Service

Five tornadoes tore through parts of southeast Colorado yesterday, leaving several injured and causing considerable damage to farming communities. 

According to the National Weather Service two tornadoes hit Prowers County, two tore through Kiowa County,  and one went through parts of Bent County in the early morning hours of April 27th.

According to the Denver office of the National Weather Service, overnight twisters in Colorado are rare.  The last time an overnight tornado hit the state was April 30th, 1942.  Ironically it hit the same two counties of Bent and Kiowa, the same areas hit this year.

For a look at the damage from the National Weather Service Survey team, follow this link: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/news/display_cmsstory.php?wfo=pub&storyid=82413&source=0.

Posted under Environment, Natural Disasters, Nature, Seasonal Items, Severe Weather, Spring, Tornadoes, Weather History, Weather NEws, Weather Safety

Just a short blog post today to remind everyone that tonight at midnight is the cut-off for entering the Snowmelt Contest this year. Any entries that come in after midnight tonight will be disqualified. Go here to enter and good luck. More great prizes from the R-stores of Northcentral Wisconsin are up for grabs.

Over the next few days and weeks I will be providing you with updates on how the snowmelt is progressing. Considering the warm March and the lack of snow this year, will it be a record early snowmelt? If the weather turns cold, will the snow last into June like most years?

Snow on Rib Mountain, Friday April 27

Stay tuned to find out. I have included a picture of the snow today (Friday) as seen from our skycam view. Not too much up there right now.

Have a pleasant weekend, Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Snowmelt 2012

Yesterday I made the case that natural gas is by far the best choice for a bridge fuel during the next few years while we continue to invent a cleaner energy future, after lamenting the fact of the solar industry’s current swoon. It is interesting to note that even though the economic foundation for widescale solar power adoption is shaky (propped up to a big degree by government subsidies) the solar story is still a bright on. Research into improving the efficiency and output of solar panels continues at a fast pace and it is likely that the price of panels will continue to fall in coming years. Even if natural gas is plentiful and cheaper than dirt, there are many reasons for the continued adoption of solar power for our increasingly electrified economic and transportation infrastructure.

Here are some recent stories that caught my eye:

At the University of Tokyo scientists have developed extremely thin solar cells - thinner than spider silk. Such cells, while not being as efficient as their crystalline brethren, could fins their way into many of our small modern day gadgets and sensors.

Other thin solar cell research ongoing at Rice and Tsinghua Universities has created a dye-sensitized solar cell that could theoretically be mass-produced at a fraction of the cost of current cells. This is great news, but the efficiency of these cells is quite low. High efficiency AND low cost is of course the “holy grail”.

Theoretically boosting the efficiency up to a whopping 40% is what is claimed in this recent article about Australian Scientist’s efforts to get more out of every photon. The article is a bit light on details which usually means it is a breakthrough that is years away from mass-production – if ever (in some cases).

The University of California at Berkeley is a bit better at describing their recent developments in an effort to boost the efficiency of solar cells. The key to their finding is that solar cells should emit light as easily as they absorb light in order to reach peak efficiency.

Heliatek Flexible Panels

In the arena of coating plastic or glass with solar cell material, Heliatek in Germany has developed a new technique similar to the technique used to make OLED flat screen display panels. The panels, which could possibly be used to make tinted electricity-generating windows, are rather expensive but they think they can develop a market.

Twin Creeks Solar continues to steam ahead with their vapor deposition method of producing thin solar cells. Their equipment should lower the cost of manufacturing solar cells thus keeping downward pressure on the end-user price. Remember that you read about Twin Creeks solar previously here in the blog.

Japan continues to push hard into renewable energy in order to replace the power they lost after the earth-quake and Fukushima nuclear disaster. Maybe their increased demand will blunt the loss of subsidies out of Europe (at least a little). One of their projects includes a floating solar power plant. I know they do not have a lot of space on the islands, but a floating solar power plant seems to be begging for damage from wind and waves. Hopefully Japan will have better luck with their renewable investments than here in the U.S. It is interesting to note that the U.S. now leads the world in renewable energy investments, but I wonder if we lead in renewable energy installation or even production in recent years due to the bankruptcy of several major government sponsored projects to the tune of billions of dollars.

In a not so revolutionary but still interesting development, Naked Energy of the UK plans to offer a combined solar power and solar water heating device. Heating water with solar power is one of the projects I have been interested in for my own house.

Taken all together, there is certainly still some progress in the solar industry, even as the government funding dries up.

Have a nice Thursday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Alternative Energy

There are 2 main ways floating ice sheets melt, from warm air above and from warm ocean currents attacking the underside of the sheets.  Results of a recent study using NASA’s Ice, Cloud, & Land Elevation Satellite indicate the warm ocean current process has been the main culprit in recent years. 

A group of international scientists conducted the study from 2003 to 2008 using the special NASA satellite with lasar altimetry and specialized computer models to process melt and runoff data.   It showed 20 of 54 ice shelves in Antarctica showed substantial melting from below due to warm water currents eating into them.  Many of these are on the west side of Antarctica. 

This new satellite altimetry technology, combined with information from aircraft,  satellite radar, and other projects will give researchers the best view yet of how the ice and oceans of the world are changing.  Numerous climate models predict that sea level could rise anywhere from 6 to 18″ on average worldwide in the next 50 years.  Some project an even more extreme rise.

You can read the full article here.   http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/currents-ice-loss.html

Posted under AGW, Arctic climate, Climate Change, World Weather

While covering alternative energy stories over the years I have mentioned many different innovations and the companies who develop them into products. Often times the companies are start-ups with big plans for the future. It has now been long enough that this blog roll contains a history of some companies from inception, to going public, to mass production, and then….decline.

Solyndra (and its scandal) went from boom to bust fairly quick. For First Solar the process has been a bit longer and they are certainly not busted…yet. I have followed the company since it went public and even cheered when their stock price rose above $160 dollars back in 2007. Here was a U.S. company using a fairly new technology (thin film solar panels) becoming a world leaders. The future looked bright. Unfortunately the future was built upon a house of cards. The housing crisis hit in the and revealed that much of the world’s economy was running on a mountain of debt, not the production of real goods and services. The debt crisis has been slow to unfold over the last 2 or 3 years but it is now hitting home in Europe where First Solar (FSLR) had traditionally been quite strong. FSLR is closing its plant in Germany – story here (use google translate to read it in English). The gist of the article is that European Nations are ending most of their alternative energy subsidies and this means the solar market is kaput. I knew that solar production was somewhat dependent on government subsidies but I didn’t realize it meant nearly everything in Europe. FSLR is also laying off some employees in Malaysia. The stock price today, $18 and change.

It is a sad turn of events for those of us who are optimistic for a clean energy future. It just shows once again that central planning does not work out very often. It is very difficult to force things into the market that are not cost competitive. The one bright spot is that so many solar panels have been  produced in the last couple of years (a lot in China) that there is an over-supply on the market and the prices are the cheapest they have ever been in relationship to the price of oil. I have been saving up some money to buy an electric car, but I might use that money on some dirt cheap (relatively speaking) solar panels instead. I was thinking about starting simple and just installing enough capacity to run the water heater, or maybe get a new solar water heater.

Then again, natural gas is also dirt cheap right now, and I mean really dirt cheap! Running the water heater with natural gas is barely costing anything. Natural gas is so cheap that I was thinking about buying a conversion kit for my car. According to a TV report I viewed a couple weeks ago, the cost of running your car on natural gas is less than half of running it on regular gasoline. At that rate, and $4 per gallon gasoline, it would not take too long to pay for itself. But I would need to fuel it up somewhere.

Kulps' Stratford CNG Station

Thankfully some forward-thinking business people in the area are already planning for more compressed natural gas (CNG) usage. Kulps of Stratford have already installed a fueling station. Maybe more will follow. Many truck fleets around the U.S. are already converting completely over to CNG, and saving A LOT of money in the process. It is a good thing.

At this point you might be thinking it is not such a ”good” thing, after all, CNG is a fossil fuel. And what about the fracking problems? First of all, the fracking problems, according to many scientists, are overblown. Second of all, CNG is the cleanest realistic fossil fuel we could use in order to clean up the air and environment, while we continue to develop better technologies (like solar and nuclear) for the future. Forget biofuels, most of which are beset with environmental and financial problems. CNG is where it is at for the short term to clean up the environment AND act as a bridge to a cleaner alternative energy future. I think environmentalists are making a HUGE strategic mistake by battening down the hatches and giving it all they got to shut down natural gas production.

Considering AGW, natural gas would not seem like a good solution until you compare it with coal, oil, and biofuels. If developed nations switched most of their energy production and transportation infrastructure over to natural gas for the next decade we would emit a lot less carbon dioxide. Not only that, it burns sooooooo much cleaner that we would simultaneously clean up the air land and water. Not only that, we would save a lot of money and stimulate the economy! Not only that, the government wouldn’t be wasting billions of dollars in loan scandals like Solyndra. In fact, the government would receive a mountain of money from drilling royalties. And the biggest “not only that” – maybe there would be less support for destructive bloody wars in the Middle East. They could keep their oil because the U.S. is literally drowning in natural gas. Did I mention that natural gas can be made from waste material as well? Natural gas seems like the ideal bridge fuel. Now if only the government would get out of the way.

Have a pleasant Wednesday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under AGW, Alternative Energy, Climate Change, Pollution

It has felt fairly cool at times this April.  How much of that is perception versus reality?  Well in reality, it has been warmer than normal overall.  In fact through April 23rd temperatures have averaged about 4 degrees above normal in the Wausau area.  I suppose it has felt cooler mostly because we are comparing it to the record smashing warmth of March, when we had so many days in the 70s around here.    But if you compare it to April 2011, you really get a feel for how it stacks up.  The chart below takes into account data through April 23rd of each year.

Number of Days with Highs in The:

                             30s        40s         50s        60s        70s

April 2011                       4            10             6                2              1

April 2012                       0            3              10              8                2

Photo from Marlene DuPuis, Mosinee

Up to this point in April 2011 about 6.6″ of snow had fallen around Wausau, while so far in April 2012, we’ve had 1.5″ snow.    Rainfall in April 2011 thorugh the 23rd was around 2.83″ while only 2.08″ has been reported in April 2012.  So April 2011 was quite a bit cooler and wetter than this April.  So I guess the moral is, before complaining about the frosty mornings and cool breeze we have been having, keep in mind that it could be a lot worse!

Posted under Monthly Recap, Seasonal Items, Spring

To being today, I would like to take a trip back to last Friday when I mentioned the new monthly outlooks released by the CPC. The outlook maps indicate EC for our area or “equal chances”. I normally explain this as the monthly forecast having an equal chance of being above normal or below normal with regards to temperature (and precipitation). This gives you a good idea of what we are looking at in the maps, but there is a different, subtle, and yet important statistical meaning to the EC on those maps. A climate expert from the NWS in La Crosse pointed out the difference in the comment section of the blog.

What the CPC does is look at the last 3 decades and divides the years up into the 10 warmest, the 10 coolest, and the 10 that lie in between. After the long range forecast is complete, they compare the result to those 3 categories. The EC means that there is an equal chance that the month in question (or 3-month period) could fall into on of those three categories (warmest, coolest, or in between). Thanks to Mr. Boyne for pointing that out. I am looking for a CPC link that explains the statistical formulation of the long range outlooks, as I know I have read it before, but I haven’t come up with anything yet. I’ll share it when I find it – for all you climate buffs.

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Another topic that needs repeating is the odd frequency of fireballs falling from space during the Spring. We had one streak through the sky a couple of weeks ago. One has also been seen in New Zealand and Texas in the past month, and now one of the more dramatic events might have occurred this past weekend in Nevada and California. I say might because as of now, there is no video or picture of the event even though hundreds of thousands of people claimed to have heard the booming noise throughout the Sierra Nevada mountain range on both the California and Nevada side. There are so many security cameras, cell phone cameras, wildlife cameras, etc., that one would think there would be some evidence that turns up sooner or later, but none so far. For all the conspiracy theorists out there, no doubt this brings up thoughts of military ”tests” out in the Nevada Desert. Has anyone read or seen any of the more “wilder” speculation? Nothing has crossed my “radar screen”.

On the topic of things coming from and going to space, one topic I follow quite closely is private space exploration.

Asteroid Mine, Artists Depiction

The biggest news coming out of this arena in recent days is that several corporate and entertainment moguls are planning a joint economic venture in space. The early buzz is that they are proposing to mine and build outposts on asteroids. Some say it is a quixotic (foolish) quest. I wish them all the luck and success in the world. I am thrilled that a private venture is taking this risk (and they should reap the rewards). It is better than the government spending billions of dollars of taxpayer money per year on such an effort.

Besides the possibility of fame and riches, these space entrepreneurs are performing another function for the human species as a whole. They are providing a method of survival. I have mentioned before a few times that anthropogenic global warming might turn out to be a significant problem in a few decades, there are much greater existential risks that could engulf this planet tomorrow or within a matter of years. In order to avoid extinction, it would be best if we were not a one planet species. That is the reason another entrepreneur – Elon Musk – founded SpaceX, to make sure we have the possibility of surviving a planet-wide catastrophe.

Have a good Monday! Meteorologist Justin Loew

Posted under CPC Outlook, Space

I asked a couple of days ago about June snow in Wisconsin and I am surprised no one had a story to share. Ray did bring up some old winter folklore which I have heard as well – that the “snow drifts were up to the top of the telephone poles” – and “every winter it got down to 40 below”. These stories do have a basis of truth but are also a bit exaggerated. Colder winter-time temps were a reality in the latter part of the 1800s and the first half of the 1900s, but we did not have 40 below every winter. In fact, the temperature has only officially reached -40 in Wausau on 3 different occasions, once in 1899, once in 1948, and once in 1951. Now, if you were living around the area in the late 1940s through the 1950s, it probably seemed like the temperature got that cold every winter, but it didn’t. We tend to remember the most extreme and emotional things from our past and forget the less exciting stuff. So there were more occasions with bitter cold in the past, but it did not occur every year.

As far as the blizzards go, there were some doozies in the past, but again, the snow was not up to the telephone poles every winter. At least with a couple of the past snowstorms we do have some photographic evidence of the events. At the historical society of Marathon county they have some pictures of drifts as high as railroad cars. As for the telephone poles, we should remember that the poles were a bit shorter back in the day.

Overall, I am sure most people are happy with the more mild Winters we have experienced in the last 2 or 3 decades. The last time we had -30 in Wausau was in February of 1996. Most winters lately have some stretches of cold weather but in the city it seems we only get down to around -20 or so. Some of that has to do with the urban heat island effect, but some is due to the climate getting a bit warmer as well.

We might not have any stories about snow in June but we have a new story about snow in April. Just last night 1 to 3 inches of the white stuff fell in parts of the area. I measured just over an inch on my car this morning. The snowfall made it look like Granite Peak might be open for business again soon. The slopes were all white this morning – perhaps making people re-think their predictions for the 2012 Snowmelt Contest (with prizes provided by the R-stores of NorthCentral Wisconsin). Not to worry. After the inch or so of snow melts off the slopes today, the patches that remain are quite small. You still have until next Friday (the 27th) to get your entry in. Whenever you feel like entering, the easiest way is to use the entry form here: http://www.waow.com/category/236274/2012-snow-melt-contest Don’t post your prediction here in the blog. I see a couple predictions have come in to the comment section so far and I will enter them into the contest manually (no worries) but it is much better if you use our website form for the contest.

I usually do not make my prediction until the entry period has closed in order to not influence things too much, but I will make a guarantee. The snow will not last until June 24th – the latest snowmelt date we have ever had with the contest. That might not help a whole lot but it is the most you will get out of me for now.

CPC Temp Trend For May

What would help the snow stick around a while longer would be some colder weather – which I know a lot of you are NOT hoping for. The weather will stay colder than normal this weekend but should rise a little above normal (highs in the 60s) for the middle of next week. What about May? Well, the CPC has released the latest monthly outlooks and Wisconsin finds itself in the “equal chances” (or EQ) category, meaning an equal chance of having above or below normal precipitation or temperatures. No major trend is being picked up by the computer models. If you click through the other months in the outlook you will find that it stays that way for temps and precip through the Summer, then a greater chance of above normal temperatures develops for the Fall and into the Winter. So for those of you who might be worried that it is going to be a long, hot, humid, Summer because the temps started out so warm in March, at least the computer models are not picking up on anything like that so far. It doesn’t mean it won’t happen, just that we don’t have any good indications whether temps will skew warmer or cooler this Summer.

Have a nice Friday, Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under CPC Outlook, Snow Totals, Snowmelt 2012, Weather History, Winter Weather