The sunshine and dry weather sure hit the spot Tuesday.  I can’ wait for another such day, like Wednesday, to get outside in the yard and work in the garden without being up to my ankles in mud!   It is so odd how different each growing season can be.  This June through the 18th, the Wausau area has had over 3″ of rain already, which is about .40″ above normal.  Since January we are running about 5.0″ above normal for precipitation.  Last year we were already quite dry by this point with some lawns turning brown.  Well take advantage best you can of the current mini-dry spell because a wet period could be building once again.  We will have a feed of deep moisture coming up from the south late this week into early next week.  This combined with a front meandering back and forth in our region and a fairly strong jet stream coming in from the Plains will likely lead to numerous blobs of heavy rain and thunderstorms.  This is the type of pattern where some locations can end up with flooding type moisture.

As a general rule, there should be widespread 1 to 3″ rain amounts total over the seven day period ending next Tuesday all the way from Montana to Michigan according to the Weather Prediction Center of NOAA.  As you’ll notice on their map below, the heaviest bulls-eye is pegged for eastern Minnesota and northwest Wisconsin.  Some of those areas should have around 4.0″.  To be honest I wouldn’t be surprised if localized 6.0″ amounts end up drenching this area.  That heavy load of water falling on already saturated soils and fairly high streams could lead to trouble.  Well, what can you do?  Well certainly keep the raincoat, umbrella, and boots handy.  Make sure your sump pump and rain gutters are in good working conditions.   Make sure you have a good set of windshield wipers on your vehicle.  Otherwise monitor the situation day by day, and stay alert to rapidly changing conditions.   One of the basic rules we all must remind ourselves of is, “turn around, don’t drown.”  Most flooding fatalities occur while people are in automobiles.  We will certainly pass along updates as the situation unfolds.

Posted under Flooding, forecast, Storms, Summer

Parts of Iowa have been drenched with 6 to 10″ of rain in the past few days and the flooding is quite extensive.  Flood watches and warnings are in effect from parts of North Dakota southeast to parts of Illinois and Missouri.  The bad news is that a stormy pattern will continue in the middle of the nation through Saturday.  A strong and slow moving low pressure system in the Rockies and Plains will have a strong southerly flow ahead of it. This will transport ample moisture from the Gulf of Mexico northward.  As this interacts with first a warm front in the region, then a cold front toward the weekend, periods of locally heavy rain and storms will result.

The National Weather Service is projecting additional seven day rainfall totals through next Monday June 3rd to reach as much as six inches in some of the already flooded areas of Iowa.  About 3 to 4″ may fall in the Dakotas and into southern Wisconsin, Illinois and areas east to New York.  Central and northern Wisconsin may get off the hook a bit easier, but still 1 to 2″ may come down.  While the rain will come in spurts intertwined with hours of sun it is still going to be  a soggy mess in many areas.  Please keep this in mind especially if you will be out and about traveling to some of the harder hit areas.

Posted under Ag Weather, Flooding, forecast, Weather NEws

I’m sure you’ve heard a phrase like, that was a 100 year downpour, or a 50 year flood that we just had.  It’s important to know how frequently any one area can expect such rain events because it allows planning of infrastructure, buildings, roads, sewers, and so on to handle it.  The last time these numbers were updated was 1963, (yes 50 years ago).  It’s about time I would say.  Below is a brief article about this topic from the National Weather Service Green Bay website.  There is a link within it to take you directly to the new chart of rainfall frequency in Wisconsin.  For example in Wausau, the frequency of getting 1.30″ of rain in a 10-minute span is once every 100 years.   The frequency of getting 4.5″ of rain in Wausau in a 24-hour span is once every 25 years.   This is very interesting stuff.  Check it out.

Interests in private industry, government and academia have eagerly awaited the publication of new precipitation frequency estimates for Wisconsin as well as sixteen other Midwestern and southeastern states. Those estimates were recently published by the NWS Office of Hydrologic Development as Volumes 8 and 9 of NOAA Atlas 14, a web-based publication available at:
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/oh/hdsc
The Wisconsin precipitation frequency estimates are available directly at:
http://hdsc.nws.noaa.gov/hdsc/pfds/pfds_map_cont.html?bkmrk=wi
The last time that these estimates were updated was in 1963.

Precipitation frequency estimates are estimates of climate variability. They are used as design standards for civil infrastructure built to cope with rainfall and runoff such as storm water drainage systems, roads, bridges, culverts, small dams, roofs, airport runways, stream erosion control, pollution control systems, flood insurance rate maps, and soil conservation, just to name a few. These new estimates directly contribute to the preparation of more cost-effective designs, plans and maps for protecting life and property and preventing pollution.

NWS precipitation frequency estimates–prepared since the 1950s–are cited as design standards in many Federal, State and Local Government regulations. These new NOAA Atlas 14 volumes will result in new design criteria for a large range of engineering and planning projects.

Posted under Education, Flooding, Natural Disasters

With a good 10″ of compacted, hard snow covering the landscape yet in parts of our area you may be wondering what type of weather would make it melt the fastest.  Well the obvious answer is really warm and sunny weather.  However it can also melt at an accelerated rate when the air is mild and humid.  So for example a day where it is foggy and 50 degrees would probably erase somewhat more snow than just a cloudy and 50 degree day.  The reasoning behind this has to do with the energy tied up in the phase changes of water molecules.

On humid days, the flow of water vapor molecules toward the snow on the ground is greater than the flow away from the snow.  In this scenario, extra water vapor molecules get captured on the snow surfaces.  When the water vapor molecules condense upon contact with the colder snow, large amounts of latent heat are released.  In fact each condensing water vapor molecule gives up enough energy to convert seven ice crystal water molecules into liquid water molecules.  This really speeds up the melting process.  So I guess the bottom line is while humid, damp, dreary spring days can be a bummer psychologically, they definitely have a role in helping to melt snow.

According to the NOAA map below, north central Wisconsin still has about 2 to 5″ of liquid water tied up in the snow cover as of April 1st.  The greatest amounts are in the northern portion of the area.  The darker blues indicate amounts over 4″ of liquid from Rib Lake to Crandon, north up toward Eagle River and Minocqua.  There could be up to 6 or 7″ of water in the snow yet around the Hurley area in in portions of Upper Michigan.  That is still quite a bit.  We will definitely have to watch out for any major warmups and heavy rain events coming up.  They both could easily lead to fairly significant flooding.  I know from the rain storm this past Saturday, there is already a fair amount of low-land flooding occurring in rural areas across central Wisconsin.

Posted under Flooding, Science, snow, Spring

March 18th through the 22nd is Flood Safety Awareness Week in the U.S.  Flooding is one of those sneaky things.  It doesn’t seem as dramatic or frightening perhaps as a tornado or blizzard.   However it certainly is one of the main causes of property damage, personal injury, and weather related fatalities each year in our country.  Flooding comes in a variety of forms, speeds, and types.  Of course there is spring snow melt flooding.  There is flash flooding, which is more common during summer thunderstorm episodes, and then general river flooding.  All pose definite hazards and warrant our full attention.  If there is one phrase you will want to remember when it comes to flooding it is….”turn around don’t drown”.

NOAA has put together a very comprehensive flood page.  It has great information regarding the Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Services, the United States Geological Survey, River Gauges and River Forecasts, Flood Insurance, and Flood Safety.  Please take advantage of the wealth of information at http://www.floodsafety.noaa.gov/

Posted under Education, Flooding, Severe Weather, Spring, Weather Safety

There is a lot of talk recently about how “extreme” the weather is now, and how it will get so much more “extreme” in the future (even more specualtion here). There are certainly some robust theories as to why this will happen – why the frequency of severe weather events might increase (like all time heat records) - and we should of course be sure to keep our eyes open and do what we can to survive extreme weather events (like burying electrical lines, also see Superstorm Risks). However, we should remember that some unbelievably ”extreme” weather has happened in the past.

There has been much talk about how the desert southwest of the U.S. is going to suffer from more heat and drought in the future. The odds are fairly good that this will happen, not only if the global climate continues to warm, but also for the plain fact that there are millions and millions more people living in, and moving to, the southwest, creating greater stress on the water supply and adding more to the urban heat island effect. However, a “mega-drought” in the southwest should not come as too much of a surprise to blog readers here because I have detailed the climate history of the southwest a couple of times in the past. As new research also shows, multi-year and multi-DECADE droughts were common a few hundred years ago. So there is a fairly good chance we could see some “extreme” stress on rivers such as the Colorado, but it will probably not as extreme as what happened during past mega-droughts. The 20th century might turn out to be an anonymously wet period – and the “extreme” drought might be just “getting back to normal”.

Citicorp Center had to be reinforced in 1978

Even as extreme as Superstorm Sandy appeared, it was known that such a storm was possible decades before, and that infrastructure would be in trouble. La Guardia airport had flooded before and Sandy-type storm surges had been modeled. The Citicorp building was even vulnerable at one point if a “big storm” ever created high winds in New York. Around other coastal areas of the U.S. there have been many periods where stronger hurricanes have struck the coast, well before Katrina entered our collective memory.

One would think receiving 50 inches of rain over just a few days would be pretty extreme as well, but looking at today’s date in weather history we find that it happened in southern California way back in 1969:

On this day in 1969, a spate of heavy rain begins in Southern California that results in a tragic series of landslides and floods that kills nearly 100 people. This was the worst weather-related disaster in California in the 20th century.

Although January typically features relatively high precipitation in Southern California, the first month of 1969 saw an extraordinary amount of rain throughout the region. Mt. Baldy, east of Los Angeles, received more than 50 inches in the nine-day period beginning January 18. By January 26, the Federal Emergency Management Association (FEMA) had declared it a federal disaster area.

The worst part of the remarkable rainfall was that it caused a series of landslides in the hills of Southern California. In Glendora, 1 million cubic meters of rock and mud slid down a hillside, destroying 200 homes and killing dozens of people. Although there was only one fatality, the plight of Mandeville Canyon, north of Sunset Boulevard in L.A.’s Brentwood section, during the disaster was heavily publicized due to the wealth and fame of its residents….read the full story here.

I can’t imagine all of the press and “hyperventilating” that would occur if 50 inches of rain fell in the mountains around Los Angeles in the present day, but it is certainly possible again. The oceans are a bit warmer and that means more moisture will typically be available for Pacific storm slamming into California. By the way, on the topic of landslides, a recent report found that it is a more dangerous “weather event” than most people realize.

We might have different types of extreme weather or more frequent severe weather in the future, but a lot of it has occurred before. Our short memories need a refresher once in a while.

Have a nice Friday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under AGW, Climate Change, Drought, Flooding, Heat, Severe Weather

2012 certainly did not have any shortage of extreme weather events across the United States.  In fact according to NOAA, there were 11 weather disasters that caused at least one billion dollars worth of damage.  Hurricanes, fires, droughts, floods, and tornadoes all made the list.  I suspect the greater our population becomes, and the more people that live along the coasts and in fire prone areas of the west and southwest, the greater the disaster potential will be in upcoming years.  The news article from NOAA printed below is a good summary with additional links if you want to dig in deeper to what happenned in 2012 and even prior years.  Keep in mind the NOAA article was written before the destructive storm that hit the southern and eastern U.S. on December 25th and 26th.

Preliminary Info on 2012 U.S. Billion-Dollar Extreme Weather/Climate Events

(source:  NOAA)

 

Today, NOAA released preliminary information on extreme weather and climate events in the U.S. for 2012 that are known to have reached the $1 billion threshold in losses. As of December 20, NOAA estimates that the nation experienced 11 such events, to include seven severe weather/tornado events, two tropical storm/hurricane events, and the yearlong drought and associated wildfires.

These eleven events combined are believed to have caused 349 deaths, with the most significant losses of life occurring during Sandy (131) and the summer-long heat wave and associated drought, which caused over 123 direct deaths (though an estimate of the excess mortality due to heat stress is still unknown).

The eleven events include:

• Southeast/Ohio Valley Tornadoes — March 2–3 2012
• Texas Tornadoes — April 2–3 2012
• Great Plains Tornadoes — April 13–14 2012
• Midwest/Ohio Valley Severe Weather — April 28–May 1 2012
• Southern Plains/Midwest/Northeast Severe Weather — May 25–30 2012
• Rockies/Southwest Severe Weather — June 6–12 2012
• Plains/East/Northeast Severe Weather (“Derecho”) — June 29–July 2 2012
• Hurricane Isaac — August 26–31 2012
• Western Wildfires — Summer–Fall, 2012
• Hurricane Sandy — October 29–31 2012
• U.S. Drought/Heatwave — throughout 2012

Economic losses for two events, Sandy and the yearlong drought, are the big drivers this year in terms of costs and are still being calculated. It will take months to develop a final, reliable estimate for each. Given how big these events are likely to be, NOAA estimates 2012 will surpass 2011 (exceeding $60 billion, CPI-adjusted to 2012 dollars) in terms of aggregate costs for annual billion-dollar disasters, even with fewer number of billion-dollar disasters. The greatest annual loss to date was 2005 when Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Wilma and Dennis struck Florida and the Gulf Coast states (costs exceeded $187 billion, CPI-adjusted to 2012 dollars).

Further information about each of these eleven events can be found at http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/events.

The impacts of natural disasters, as seen this year, are a stark reminder of how deadly and destructive weather can be and how important it is to be prepared. Through NOAA’s Weather-Ready Nation initiative, we are taking steps to lessen the impacts of extreme weather on our communities and our nation’s economy. To learn more, visit http://www.nws.noaa.gov/com/weatherreadynation/.

Posted under Flooding, Hurricanes, Natural Disasters, Severe Weather, Storms, Tornadoes, Weather NEws

Before getting into the heart of this blog post, I need to mention that there is an increasing likelihood that tomorrow could be the winning date for the First Snowfall Contest. The latest weather data indicates that an “inch or so” is likely in much of the area tomorrow. Earlier this morning I was forecasting a slight chance that we could get up to an inch. I would put the odds closer to 50/50 now. So if you predicted November 6th for the First Snowfall Contest, keep your fingers crossed and you might be one of the big winners of the R-store gift cards. Keep checking in with StormTrack9, Newsline9, and Wake-up Wisconsin to find out if we will have our winning snowfall date on Tuesday.

Note: The following is an article I had written already on Tuesday of last week, just one day after Sandy hit the east coast. I didn’t want to publish it right away due to the recovery efforts underway. I figured people did not want to think about infrastructure resilience so soon after the storm struck. I see Newscientist has now come out with an article along the same lines, so I assume it is now ok for this article as well.

_______________________________ 

How do you prepare for a “black swan” event? You don’t. By definition, a highly improbable event is the last thing anyone prepares for.

Was “Superstorm Sandy” a black swan event? I would say maybe. Hurricane and storm surge potentials along the east coast have been modeled many times over. It is certainly true that Sandy brought together some unlikely scenarios, such as a hurricane being absorbed into a Nor’easter type storm, coming in at high tide, and under a full moon, but risk analysts and insurance companies had run through the scenario because hurricanes have struck New York/New Jersey in the past. Once an area is hit by a bad storm, and sets a new record for storm surge (or any other weather parameter) risk analysts survey the impacts and then model what would happen if a bigger storm surge hit in the future. 

One of the reasons New York officials were confident in ordering evacuations is because they knew what effects would happen during a big storm surge and what areas would be hardest hit. Things such as the flooding of LaGuardia airport were certain to occur. The airport flooded as far back as 1950 from a regular Nor’Easter that produced winds up 62 mph, not that much less than Sandy, which had 70 to 80 mph gusts.

So why was there so much damage (in New Jersey) and flooding (in New York) when the effects of a large storm were well known? Because hardly anybody prepares for the most extreme weather events. It is not just New York or New Jersey, it is very similar here in Wisconsin. In Wausau, we are not prepared for an F5 tornado. If an F5 tornado strikes Wausau, people will die. It could be me. It is sad, but it is the reality. We are probably not even well prepared for an F3 tornado (from an infrastructure standpoint). The Merrill tornado last year was only a weak F3 and it wiped out an entire neighborhood. In the sense that no one died during that tornado, citizens of Merrill were “prepared”. The infrastructure was not. Residential and commercial structures were heavily damaged. Power and communication lines didn’t stand a chance. If an F5 tornado struck Wausau, there would be utter devastation. Power and wire/cable-based communication would be almost completely knocked out (for days). Most houses would be wiped away. The only buildings left standing might be a couple of the older designated nuclear fallout shelters, the county courthouse, and maybe a few of the other brick/steel buildings. For most people, the only hope would be underground shelters, like a basement. So why don’t we prepare better?

It is a cost/benefit analysis. The chance of an F5 tornado striking the heart of the city is low enough that we don’t see the need to spend money “hardening” the infrastructure. If we wanted the power to remain on after an F5 tornado, then we should be spending a lot of money (right now) to bury ALL of our power lines (ditto for cable lines). By the way, I have contacted WPS to get their opinion on burying more powerlines, so hopefully I will have some additional information later this week. 

If we wanted all the houses to remain standing then we should pass a building code that all homes need be made of steel with specially designed safe areas in all the basements. We could even trim the urban trees to make them less likely to be blown over. We don’t do this because it costs too much money and the risk is low. More of our “assets” are put into warning systems and emergency services so that people can be warned ahead of time and so that we can (hopefully) get to the disaster scene quickly afterward to save people.

The same calculations are made in other parts of the country. There is no question that cities on the New Jersey shore and various boardwalks would be heavily damaged if a strong hurricane (with a high storm surge) hit. It was not a surprise that some subways in New York were flooded/closed when the water flowed into lower Manhattan. The subways are not built to keep water out. There is no way to seal them during an impending storm. The best that can be done is to pump the water out as quickly as possible after a storm hits. About the only pro-active thing that could be done (for the future) is build higher sea-walls (or build big dikes – such as in the Netherlands), but these would be very expensive undertakings. Storms such as Sandy do not happen very often, so how would one justify spending so much money? Maybe it would be more cost effective just to improve evacuations and thus minimize the loss of life. Damage from flooding would be very hard to minimize in New York. Much of the infrastructure is below sea level. The area is large. The city cannot be moved. In New Jersey, the boardwalks and houses near the sea will be rebuilt, knowing full well that another storm in the future could wash it all away again. People place a high value on living and playing by the ocean, and ultimately the risks are low.

In the end, even though it is the beginning of the 21st century, we are all still at the mercy of the weather. Many improvements in infrastructure and emergency services have been made, but there are legacy effects that make it nearly impossible to prevent widespread damage in vulnerable areas when an extreme storm hits. I expect we will continue to improve services and structures as the years go by, and in the far future we might be able to control the weather to some extent, but until that point be sure to heed the warnings and save your life.

Have a fine Monday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Flooding, Hurricanes, Natural Disasters, Severe Weather, Storms, Weather NEws, Weather Safety

For the first time in four years, the Northern Plains will not experience major to record spring snowmelt flooding.  Of course the reason being is that there was very little snowpack in that part of the country throughout the winter.  Most of the major winter storms either missed that area, or it was warm enough that the snow melted off and on over the winter months.  The record warmth in March took care of the rest of any remaining snow pack in the Upper Midwest as well.  This is certainly great news for residents in Fargo and Grand Forks along the Red River as well as folks along the Mississippi River.

There is also a lower than normal risk of spring flooding in the southwest quadrant of the county as well as an area from Florida to parts of Virginia.  Only a few spots in Louisiana, Mississippi, Kentucky, and southern Indiana, and southeast Illinois have an above normal chance of spring floods according to NOAA.

The bad side of lower than normal spring flood risk in the Northern Plains and Midwest is the fact that this usually means the ground will dry out sooner than normal.  Thus there is a somewhat increased chance of growing season drought, unless frequent rains start to show up.

You can read NOAA’s full spring hydrologic assessment at this link.  http://www.nws.noaa.gov/hic/nho/

Posted under Flooding, forecast, Natural Disasters, Seasonal Items, Storms, Weather NEws

Photo from the Associated Press

A boat that was part of the five million tons of “stuff” thrown into the Pacific Ocean during the massive Japanese earthquake and tsunami has been spotted off the Canadian Coast. 

The Associated Press is reporting that the 65-meter long boat is moving toward land, 160 miles off the coastline of British Columbia. 

To put that in perspective, if you were driving down Interstate 39, that’s about 20 miles farther than the distance between Wausau and Madison!

The horrific earthquake and tsunami struck Japan just over one year ago on March 11, 2011.  More than 15,000 people died and it brought about one of the biggest nuclear power plant scares in years.    

According to The Toronto Star, there is no environmental concerns over the abandoned ship, but mariners in the Pacific Ocean need to take warning because “the vessel poses a potential navigational hazard.”

Photo from National Geographic

Posted under Earthquake, Environment, Flooding, Geology, Natural Disasters, Nature, Oceans, Tsunami, Uncategorized, Weather History, Weather NEws