All I have time for today is a short blog entry about the 2010 snowmelt contest. I got up-close-and-personal with one of the remaining snowpiles yesterday and found that it is not as big as last year and that the warm weather is melting it fast. I think we could have a May winner this year instead of June. I have tried to upload a video of the remaining snow to give you an idea. I am unsure if the video is in a format that will allow most people to view it. It is MP4. Just click here:VID00007

I am going up there again today to survey more of the hill, some of the typical spots where the snow tends to hang around. I’ll see about getting some video once again, just in case today’s video was not functional.

Have a nice Tuesday! Meteorologist Justin Loew

Posted under Snowmelt 2010

Taking a look at Kristen’s blog post from yesterdayyou will find a list of 2 record high temps that were tied on Sunday and the list of potential records in Northcentral Wisconsin today. Not only is there a potential high temperature here in Wausau today, we most likely will break the record for the warmest low temperature for May 24th. The old record was 63 set back in 1975 and 1991. The record high today for Wausau is 89 set back in 1928. I am forecasting 90.

Feeling the warm weather outside might have you thinking the snow is gone from Rib Mountain but that is not the case. I, of course picked today’s date as the final day for snow on Rib Mountain, as did 68 other people who entered the contest. Unfortunately, they will not be winners of the R-store gift cards. The one remaining big pile of snow is melting fast but will likely last a few more days. If it doesn’t melt early this week with high temps in the 80s and low 90s, it might last into the weekend because some cooler weather is likely by late this week. At least one computer model is forecasting high temps only in the 60s by Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Wouldn’t that just be typical Murphy’s Law for Wisconsin weather – a big cooldown just in time for the big holiday weekend. It is only one computer model (the GFS) predicting such a drastic change, so I am still hedging toward 70 degree weather instead. I’ll keep you up to date on any changes throughout the week.

Usually when we go from hot and humid to cooler and drier weather we end up with a period of thunderstorms – often times severe during this time of year. This time around we will have a 40% chance of thunderstorms Tuesday evening through Wednesday but the chances of severe weather appear fairly low at this time. If we don’t get rain Tuesday night into Wednesday then chances for rain look pretty low until early next week. If you need to water your garden you will want to watch the rain potential closely and slot a little time for watering later this week in case we don’t get much Tuesday evening.

With potential record high temps today, no doubt the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) story will come to the forefront in a few media outlets. It continues to be an interesting story because the evolution of the “crisis” and the counter trends continues as I expected. Every media headline that proclaims devastation, death, and doom-and-gloom can be balanced with headlines describing new cleaner technology and efficient societal operation. Today we can read “Small Mammals Will Have it Tougher in a Warmer Climate” and “2010 the Warmest Year so Far” and on the opposite side, “Tesla Hooks Up With Toyota”, “New Process Creates Cheaper Solar Cells With Compound Semiconductors, (on both sides of the Atlantic)”, “New Airplane Design Could Reduce Fuel Usage by up to 70%“, “Ecomotors Has Designed a Diesel Car That Could Get up to 100 mpg, (and they have gotten a new round of funding)”.

Will progress in “green-tech” and efficiency head off any theoretical future warming of the planet? Will cheap solar panels and long range electric cars arrive soon enough? I tend to think so, and that is why I typically discount the most extreme AGW Armageddon scenarios.

Have a good Monday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under AGW, Alternative Energy, Climate Change, Records, Snowmelt 2010

With apologies to everyone that might be tired of me blogging about the drought, this is the time of week for the latest US Drought Monitor. Not a lot has changed in Wisconsin since last week except the disturbing development of “extreme drought” in the far northeastern corner of the state. What makes it hit home even more for me is that I like to go camping and fishing in the northeastern corner of the state. It isn’t as scenic as many other locations in the state but it is much more wild.

Drought Worsens In WI

If we don’t get significant rain soon, it will be much more brown and dusty this year as well. Is there any hope for improvement over the next week? Not much. There is a slight chance of showers in the area tomorrow and a slight chance of thunderstorms on Wednesday and Thursday of next week. If some thunderstorms do form next week, there will be a potential for heavier rain because it will be more humid as well, but the chances look slim right now. The next significant change in the jet stream pattern will not occur until the end of the month at the earliest. That is when we might have a bit cooler temps and more frequent rain. So keep your fingers crossed for thunderstorms next week. The Drought is worsening in Wisconsin but there is some good news in the Drought Monitor this week. Many states out west are seeing improvement in the drought conditions. This should continue for the next week or so as most of the storminess in the country will be over the mountain states.

The warmer temps might accelerate the melting of snow on Rib Mountain. Earlier this week I mentioned that I was not sure if the “big pile” of snow was up on the slopes again this year. Well, we now have our Dudley tower sky cam view set-up to see that area of the mountain and the “big pile” is there! You can check it out this morning on our weather page. I’ll try to keep the skycam zoomed in on the mountain most mornings until the end of the contest. Since the pile is there, does this mean we have more than 2 weeks to go in the contest? Last year the “pile” lasted about 17 days past the time when most of the other snow had melted. I don’t think it will last that long this year because some very warm air will be moving into the area on Sunday and will stick around for most of next week. High temps should hit the mid to upper 80s from Sunday through Tuesday. Low temps will not even drop below 60.

Have a nice Thursday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Drought, Snowmelt 2010

The time is drawing near. Soon, 5 people will be going on a shopping spree at one of the 22 R-Stores in Northcentral Wisconsin. Why? Because the snowmelt contest is getting close to the end. This morning, I could not see any snow with our zoomed-in skycam view. However, I did drive out there this past weekend saw a large mass of snow on one of the western slopes. Usually, once the snow cannot be seen by our skycam, it means there is about a week left in the contest – which would make next Monday the approximate winning day. Hold on to your horses though. I haven’t yet climbed up Rib Mountain and inspected the snow up close and in person. Last year the final snowmelt would have been on June 7th except for one big pile that had been built as a jump during the ski season. If that jump/pile up there again this year, then we could be talking early June for our winning date in 2010. Good luck to everyone!

One thing that will help melt the remaining snow is sunshine and warmer temps and these are two things we will have in ample supply this week. The only other ingredient that would help is a steady warm rain – and that is not in the cards. I am only calling for a slight chance of sprinkles in the Northwoods for today and a slight chance of rain in the southern half of the area on Friday. Otherwise we will have to wait until next week for some rainfall. Partly or mostly sunny skies and highs in the 70s should prevail this week.

Without any rainfall, our drought situation will not improve all that much. Since I don’t want to seem negative all the time about the drought in the Northwoods, I thought I would share the graphic of the Seasonal Drought Outlook through July(issued by the CPC), which shows “improvement” for northern Wisconsin, and “some improvement” for the UP and Northern Minnesota. Let us hope this outlook is accurate.

Have a good Monday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under CPC Outlook, Drought, Snowmelt 2010

Time for a look at this week’s US Drought Monitor. Overall, there was not much change in the country or individual states, including Wisconsin. The dry areas remained relatively dry while the wet areas got wetter – including Wisconsin. That is the strange part about watching the recent weather pattern – the heavier rain keeps hitting southern Wisconsin and this will probably happen again on Monday. From the most basic perspective – rain missing a particular area time-after-time – of course, leads to a drought.

WI Drought Analysis

However, drought can also happen when storm systems move through an area but do not produce precipitation. This particular drought has developed because of many storms coming close to the Northwoods but not quite making it. The only significant precipitation recently was the heavy snow last Friday night. While the Northwoods has seen a few tenths of an inch this month, southern Wisconsin has seen a few inches. The “rich” get richer. The drought will not get any better over the next week because not much rain is in the works for the Northwoods, or most of Wisconsin. After the 20th, the weather pattern will be more conducive to thunderstorm activity so there is still some hope for relief.

Space News:

An update on the attempt to contact the Mars Phoenix Lander. The last try will occur from May 17th to May 21st. It is near the Summer solstice on Mars so the maximum amount of sunlight should be hitting the Phoenix solar panels. If it hasn’t woken up by now, then it likely suffered a critical electronics failure during the Martian winter.

One spacecraft that outlived its original mission by a great deal is Voyager 2. It began a grand tour of the solar system back in 1977. It is still communicating with earth 33 years later, even as it continues moving far out into the cosmos. It takes over 13 hours to send and receive communication from Voyager 2. By comparison, it only takes light from the sun 8 minutes to reach earth. Finally, it seems Voyager 2 might be showing its age. A change in its data communication pattern happened on April 22nd. This change makes it impossible for mission planners to decode the science data beamed back to earth. They are currently working to fix it, because even though Voyager is out of the solar system, it can still do interesting research about energetic fields in extra-solar space.

It took Voyager 2 33 years to get to the edge of the solar system. Hopefully future spacecraft will make it a lot quicker. That is the purpose of the Project Icarus. The study group will investigate different methods of interstellar space travel. Most of the technology to “get there” is still very speculative, but technology has changed quite a bit since the last study group took on the challenge of evaluating long distance space travel. Who knows what it will come up with. No doubt it will be interesting.

Lastly, no winner yet in the 2010 snowmelt contest yet. Warmer weather is on the way this weekend and next week but it looks like there is enough snow on Rib Mountain to last close to the end of the month.

Have a good weekend! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Drought, Snowmelt 2010, Space

First off, today is Arbor Day and in recognition, how about a nice article from the U.S. Forest Service about the benefits of large urban trees. I have some very large trees in my backyard. As far as I can tell, they are the largest (and maybe the oldest) pine trees in all of Wausau. The trunks are about 4 feet in diameter – maybe a little larger. No doubt they provide a lot of benefits, but unfortunately in my situation, they do cause a little trouble as well. You know I like to garden. Well, the large trees limit the size of the garden space I can create in my backyard because they not only shade much of the yard but also block light rainfall from reaching ground level. Let us not even get into the raking required in the Fall and Spring. If the trees were not so large (and perhaps historic), they would have “gotten the axe” already. So what is a gardener to do? Thankfully I know a fellow in the country who allows me to grow a few things on his farm.

Secondly, this weekend is the BIG fishing opener on Wisconsin waters, or maybe I should say it is kind-of the fishing opener. As most people who enjoy fishing know, the regulations have changed and changed again over the last couple decades and you always have to check specific regulations pertaining to the body of water you are fishing on. For many species of fish and many bodies of water, the fishing opener has either already occurred or will happen at some later date. So if you were wondering why I didn’t make a big fuss about the fishing “opener” on TV or in the blog, this is why. It is also the case (much to the lament of many people who fish) that the number of people who fish has declined as a percentage of the population. It used to be something that everyone I knew did regularly, now it is maybe 50%. It is similar to our hunting heritage which I wrote about previously.

One thing to keep in mind if you are out on the waters tomorrow – wind. The southwest wind on Saturday will be 20 to 30 mph with gusts reaching 35 to 40 mph. This will make it difficult to maneuver or anchor your boat. Stay safe and good luck!

Per usual, I could write another few paragraphs, but time is short. I still have to work on the snowmelt contest. Unknown to many is that we usually end up hundreds of mailed in entries. We have to type them all in by hand. This usually takes a couple weeks, doing maybe 25 to 50 day. If you still haven’t entered, midnight tonight is the cut-off. No entries received after midnight tonight will be accepted. Rules are rules. Also, one entry per person, so if you already made your prediction – disregard the final sentence.

Go here to submit your last minute entry.

Have a good weekend! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Environment, Snowmelt 2010

Since this is the last week to enter the snowmelt contest I want to mention it a couple more times in the blog. The deadline is midnight on April 30th (Friday night). You can submit your guess here. You can do it today, or maybe wait until Friday. I have one of our skycams zoomed in closer on Rib Mountain and will continue to do so throughout the week in order to give you a better look at how much is left. Some additionalinformation: A young fellow Payton and his father were up on Rib Mountain over the weekend to get a close up look at the remaining snow. They took a look at most of the snow piles and came up with an average depth of 16 inches and a maximum of about 44 inches. This is less than what was up there last year at this time (last years snowmelt date was a record late one – June 24th). This year it might be a record early melt. It depends on the weather over the next few weeks. If it is warmer than normal, then the snow will melt pretty quick. If it is cooler (things looks near normal for the next 7 to 10 days) then maybe it will be a more normal melt date, which is usually between June 5th and 10th. Good luck everyone.

Picture By Deb Janko

The snow might melt early this year and there are other signs of Spring coming out earlier this year (Brian covered some of these in an earlier blog post). I see some of the trees are getting leaves and flowers. I also have Spinach up in my garden already which makes it the earliest I have had spinach over the last decade or so. On the wildlife front, Deb Janko from the town of Merrill sent in a nice picture of nesting bluebirds.

What would make this Spring even more spectacular is if we could get some heavier rainfall in more of the area. Most of the viewing area around Marathon county and further north only received one to two tenths of an inch over the weekend – just enough to wet the whistle. In Wausau the official total at the airport was 0.15 inches. A few spots had a lot more rainfall. There was one persistent band of rain that affected east central Wisconsin and stretched into the eastern part of our area on Sunday morning. It produced 1.19 inches of rain in Green Bay. Our StormTrak9 weather watchers also reported some nice amounts.

Marianne in Scandinavia: 1.1″

Paul & Char in Stevens Point: 0.55″

Bruce & Pat in Polonia: 0.77″

Mary & Scott in Almond: 0.68″

Joan in Plainfield: 1.0″

Mary in Whiting: 0.65″

The next chance of rain will come late Thursday and during the day on Friday. If we are lucky, the rain could be a half inch or so. Until then, I’ll have to keep watering.

Since tornadoes proved their deadly nature once again this weekend (in the southeast) and we just ended our severe weather and tornado awareness week in Wisconsin, how about a simple list of tornado facts to peruse. The explanation of how tornadoes form leaves a little bit to be desired but the other facts are fairly interesting. The one thing that most people do not know is that the vast majority of tornadoes that occur in the world – occur in the United States. I once heard a quote (but cannot now find the reference, so don’t quote me as a fact) that over 90% of the world’s tornadoes occur in the U.S.

Lastly, a little eye-candy for your Monday. We now have a satellite monitoring the sun in high definition. Some of the first video released is stunning. Take a look at this one.

Have a nice Monday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Environment, Snowmelt 2010, Spring, Viewer pictures

What was that in the sky last night?! Many viewers who were awake last night shortly after 10pm, saw a glowing streak moving through the sky from north to south. It was also seen in southern Wisconsin and Illinois. What was most likely a large meteor eventually disintegrated in an explosion and flash of light. It is also possible that the object was space junk falling from orbit. Based on the pictures and video of the event, I would estimate the size to be bigger than a softball and maybe even bigger than a basketball (based on similar events in the past). Here are some pictures sent to us by our weather intern Bradley Miller, who was in Madison last night. Picture 1. Picture 2. Luckily, as is the case many times in today’s digital age, some cameras were rolling. Here is a youtube video of the “fireball”.

The only thing falling from the sky later this afternoon will be some rain and perhaps some small hail. The overall severe threat is small but there could be some brief gusty wind – perhaps the type of wind that could blow around some lawn furniture if left outside. After today it looks like drier and cooler weather for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

The last thing for the blog today is the kick-off of the 2010 StormTrak9 snowmelt contest! You can enter the contest by going to this page and filling out the form. If you do not want to fill out the form, you can send an email to weather@waow.com. If you do send an email, be sure to include your first and last name, address (if you win, we will need to mail your prize), and the date when the last bit of snow will melt off of Rib Mountain. Only one entry per person. All entries need to be in by midnight April 30th (so you have a few days to think about it). Judging by the amount of snow on the hill right now, it looks like it might melt earlier than usual, but I am always surprised at how long it lasts. Over the last 5 years, the snow has melted as early as May 25th and as late as June 24th. Good Luck!

Have a nice Thursday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Snowmelt 2010, Space