So what does it look like this year? It looks like there will be a threat of frost this upcoming weekend – Memorial Day weekend. Particularly on Saturday and Sunday morning. How much of a threat? It looks like frost is highly likely in some of the traditional cold spots, such as low lying areas in the northwoods (Eagle River, Land O’ Lakes, Jennings, Parts of Lincoln county, etc.) If you live in these areas and follow the weather, you know if this means your garden.

For central Wisconsin, at this time, it looks like a moderate threat of frost in low lying areas – places like Ringle in Marathon county, or the Stevens Point airport area. In the city or more urban areas, I am not too worried about the threat of frost. Low temps will probably stay in the upper 30s in these areas. I have planted some basil in pots and I plan to plant some tomatoes in pots this week (in the city), because I feel the threat of frost is quite low (in the city). I have planted some pepper and chard SEEDS in my country garden, but I HAVE NOT put pepper, melon, or tomato PLANTS in my country garden yet. I am holding off to see whether the threat of frost (for Memorial Day weekend) will materialize or become more significant. I hope this helps in your garden and planting planning for the next week or so!

(Supplemental info: cranberry farmers – it goes without saying, get ready for frost)

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.

The pattern of extreme changes continues this spring.  Perhaps you heard about the huge ice shoves this past weekend that pushed mega piles of ice off Lake Mille Lacs in Minnesota.  Homes and property on the southeast shore were damaged heavily as 35 mph northwesterly winds piled the floating up onto shore like a moving glacier.   You can watch the ice in action from the following link.  http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-blogs/weathermatrix/ice-needle-shoves-surges-terrorize-great-lakes/12337031

Also a lake west of Winnipeg in Manitoba piled up ice 27 feet deep into some homes.  That is one of the weirdest natural disasters I can think of.  The wind that produced the ice pile ups was part of a deep trough of low pressure north of Lake Superior which drove the very chilly weather down into Wisconsin this past weekend.  Of course we had several record low temperatures Sunday night across Wisconsin.    The cold air is moving east.  In fact frost and freeze advisories were posted Monday night from portions of North Carolina northward to Maine.

Meanwhile red flag warnings have been posted into Tuesday in an area from Montana Iowa and Minnesota.  An intense burst of heat that originated in the Desert Southwest of the U.S. is shooting northeast across the country.  Highs could be close to 100 around Omaha, NE with 90s into southern Minnesota.  This coupled with low humidity, gusty winds, sunshine, and dry fuels will make for dangerous fire conditions.  Burning is prohibited and residents are asked to avoid any activities that could lead to sparks.

Red Flag Warnings are Pink. Frost and Freeze Warnings in Eastern U.S. in blue.

Just maybe the weather patterns will settle into something closer to normal over the next few weeks.  It will be interesting to see how it plays out.  The cold air intrusions have to run out sooner or later.  By the way we are getting to the point where gardeners wonder if we have seen the last frost for the season.  The average last frost date across Wisconsin varies from late April near Lake Michigan to early June in some northern areas.  So we are certainly getting a little safer from the cold with each passing day.

It sure is amazing to think about the vastness and complicated nature of the universe.  Billions and billions of stars, planets, and unknown objects all behaving physical laws that we don’t even come close to fully understanding.  It is definitely cool to get little glimpses into the inner workings of the cosmos from technology such as the Hubble Space Telescope.  Recently it sent back some cool images of the remnants of a star gone supernova.  The information below regarding this event is from NASA’s website.

Credit: ESA / Hubble & NASA. Acknowldegement: Claude Cornen

These delicate wisps of gas make up an object known as SNR B0519-69.0, or SNR 0519 for short. The thin, blood-red shells are actually the remnants from when an unstable progenitor star exploded violently as a supernova around 600 years ago. There are several types of supernovae, but for SNR 0519 the star that exploded is known to have been a white dwarf star — a Sun-like star in the final stages of its life.

SNR 0519 is located over 150 000 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Dorado (The Dolphinfish), a constellation that also contains most of our neighboring galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Because of this, this region of the sky is full of intriguing and beautiful deep sky objects.

The LMC orbits the Milky Way galaxy as a satellite and is the fourth largest in our group of galaxies, the Local Group. SNR 0519 is not alone in the LMC; the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope also came across a similar bauble a few years ago in SNR B0509-67.5, a supernova of the same type as SNR 0519 with a strikingly similar appearance.

You can learn much more about Hubble, its operation, and its missions from the following link.  http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/main/index.html

As greenhouse gas induced warming of the climate continues, the water cycle will be changing across the globe.  This is the conclusion of a recent study led by William Lau of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.  He and his team used 14 different climate models to to simulate 140-year spans that ingested varying levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.  The basic findings are that for every 1 degree F temperature rise across the world, heavy rain events will increase by 3.9%.  Meanwhile moderate rain events will decrease by 1.4%.  Also prolonged droughts will increase by 2.6% for the same 1 degree temperature rise caused by increased carbon dioxide.  Light rain events are projected to climb by 1%.

The heavy rain events are forecast to increase the most in tropical zones especially in the Pacific Basin and Asian monsoon regions.  On the other hand the more prolonged droughts should especially impact the southwest U.S., northern Africa, northwest Australia, coastal Central America, and Brazil.

The decrease in moderate rain events is troubling since that is the type of rain that is most beneficial to crops and other plant life.

You can read more about this study from the following link.  http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/wetter-wet.html

Wisconsin: 10.0″  (new record 14.0″ but potentially as high as 17″)

Minnesota: 12.0″  (new record 15.4″)

Iowa: 10.0″  (new record 11.0″)

These are not officially in “the books” yet, but they look pretty solid. Climatologists will review the reports over the next couple of days and certify them.

And this comes after a very cool April, which was the 8th coldest on record for Wausau. If we had not seen the 5-day warm-up into the 70s and 80s at the end of the month of April, we would have easily set the mark for the 3rd coldest April and might have even challenged for second place. It was quite amazing that from February 1st through April 25th, we only had one day when the temperature hit 50 degrees (April 24th). We did not have any nice stretch of real Spring weather with high temps in the 50s and 60s. We jumped straight into Summer during the last 5 days of April, then we slipped back to Winter in a big way over the last couple of days. Here are the preliminary stats for April in Wausau:

Average High: 46.1  (normal: 54.8)

Average Low: 30.1 (normal: 33.3)

Precipitation: 4.39 inches  (normal: 2.73 inches)

Snowfall: 10.1 inches  (normal: 4.1 inches)

Highest Temp: 82 on the 30th

Lowest Temp: 14 on the 3rd

Have a fine Friday! Meteorologist Justin Loew

With an expected 4 to 10″ of fresh snow by the morning of May 2nd across portions of western Wisconsin, many are asking if this is highly unusual?  Well in short the answer is yes.  One day snowfall records for western Wisconsin and eastern Minnesota are generally just a few inches with some of them going back to the late 1800s.  In general, you might expect a late season snowstorm of this magnitude in the region about every 25 or 30 years.  I’m sure a lot of people will be frustrated when they see the white landscape in the morning out there.  But if they can consider they are living through a situation of record proportions, maybe that will make it more exciting and a bit easier to work through.  Below are top daily May snowfall records for various cities in the storm’s path as put together by the National Weather Service.

TOP SNOWFALL EVENTS IN MAY FOR EAU CLAIRE, WI

After a string of warmer than normal days, the tree pollen is going up fast.  In fact we got word Monday from the Marshfield Clinic-Wausau Center that tree pollen was measured at a level of over 300, which puts it in the high category.  So if you have red, itchy eyes, sneezing, headache, runny nose, and fatigue…this could be your culprit.  We will  be passing on the pollen information throughout the growing season here on WAOW-TV.  We know many of you are impacted by seasonal allergies so we want to help you as much as we can.  The Marshfield Clinic-Wausau Center released a very informative press release on how they measure aeroallergens.  Please take a few minutes to read through it.  You may find it useful.  One key point I saw was that the measurement they report each morning is actually an average for the past 24 hours.

Aeroallergen Counting

Aeroallergen counting involves the measurement of specific allergens or allergen classes in the atmosphere. This is typically performed using volumetric measuring devices. Each device has a range of particle sizes which it counts most efficiently. Counts are reported in particles per cubic meter of air. This value represents the average over the counting period. It does not represent an instantaneous value. Thus 20 hours of high pollen exposure followed by 1 inch of rain in the last 4 hours will still produce a high pollen count for the day. The next 24 hour period will likely be affected though.

Factors which affect the pollen counts include most notably the life cycle of the plant being studied and the weather. Plants progress through the normal pollen producing seasons as follows:

Trees: Late March to early June. The beginning of the tree season is significantly affected by the weather and quite variable.

Grass: June-July, peaks the third-fourth week of June.

Weeds: August-September, peaks near the end of August, gone with frost.

Warm, dry, windy conditions tend to favor higher pollen counts. This tends to be especially true early in the season when it also aids in plant maturation. Favorable weather by itself cannot cause high counts though. An example would be as the normal pollen producing period is winding down, few pollen are being released. In contrast, even significant rain can be overcome by high pollen producing periods.

Pollen counting has been performed by the Marshfield Clinic and the Wausau Medical Center for many years. Following the merger of the two clinics in 1997, it was decided that pollen counting for the system would take place exclusively in Wausau. This service has been supported and managed by the Allergist of the Marshfield Clinic System and performed directly by trained lab technicians. A Rotorod sampler is currently utilized and positioned on the roof of the Marshfield Clinic-Wausau Center. It is very effective for counting pollen. This device is not as efficient for mold spores less than 10 microns and thus mold counts are not performed. Mold spore counting requires a significant increase in technical equipment and labor resources and thus is not routinely performed by most pollen counting stations.

We would be happy to discuss the workings of the Rotorod sampler in more detail if desired. A site visit could also be arranged with our lead lab technician (Ray).

I hope you have found this information useful. I think this service does help educate the public and certainly helps our patients as well as ourselves, the treating physicians.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if there are any questions.

Mark Huftel, M.D.

Allergist

Marshfield Clinic-Wausau Center, 847-3430

Pollen Count Ranges

Low Moderate High Very High

Trees < 15    15-90    91-1500    > 1500

Grasses < 5    5-20    21-200     > 200

Weeds < 10    10-50    51-500    > 500

(Ragweed)

There is still a lot of snow out there on the slopes but it started to melt a little over the weekend and the warm weather has finally given me the chance to get out in my garden. Although, I still found some chunks of frozen ground yesterday when I was digging. This is the latest I can ever remember the ground being frozen. We finally also saw some crocus bloom over the weekend. This is the latest I can ever remember the crocus blooming as well. One would think we would have set some sort-of record for cold or snow, but we haven’t (unless there is some obscure record for fewest 40 degree days in March, or fewest 50 degree days in April). We had been close to setting the record for the coldest April ever until the warm-up hit over the weekend. The coldest April ever in Wausau occurred in 1950 when the average high temperature was just 34.0. Through yesterday, our average high temperature for April of 2013 has now risen up to 36.3. With warm weather continuing today and tomorrow, that average might yet climb up close to 38. At an average of 38.0 we would still be in the top ten for coldest Aprils. The last time we had such cold weather in April was in 1995 (10th coldest) and in 1996 (18th coldest). 1996 was the last time I can remember so much ice being on the lakes so late in the Spring. I talked to some folks from Boulder Junction over the weekend and they said there was close to 30 inches of ice on some of the lakes yet.

Getting out into the country and working on my garden gave me a chance to curse the ethanol mandate (and artificially high price of corn) again. I saw yet another farm (I drive by often) where the trees are being cut down in order to grow corn for someone’s fuel tank, and I am not talking about their stomach. Maybe I am just and “old-timer” now and resisting progress, but I don’t think so. The landscape used to be so much more scenic when I was growing up because there were many more rows of trees lining driveways and dividing fields. Now it is much more open, and this trend has accelerated in the last few years. Through the 1990s and 2000s it seemed that the natural landscape was holding up. Some areas were growing back into forests. With the advent of the ethanol mandate and the artificially high price of corn, that trend has rapidly reversed recently. I lament the habitat that is being lost for birds and other small animals. Trees take a long time to grow back. Does anyone else lament the clearing of so many trees recently? Like I have mentioned before, it is hard to fault farmers or ethanol producers for taking advantage of the market (artificial or not) and making a buck. I can’t say for sure what I would do if I needed extra money and the corn price was artificially high. I might chop down a few trees (but it would be one of the last things on my list). The real fault lies with policy makers in Washington. I doubt anything will change soon unless there is another drought this year and people start to go without food. In that case, I think the ethanol mandate would be dropped pretty quick, like it should have been years ago.

Have a fine Monday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

After the cool spring we’ve had, I’m sure a lot of you are hoping for a warm and sunny May around Wisconsin.  The current 30 day outlook for May from the Climate Prediction Center indicates it may be a near normal May overall for our region.  They actually indicate a zone of potentially colder than normal temperatures from North Dakota through northern Minnesota into far western Upper Michigan.  I suspect they are thinking chilly conditions there because much of that area still has a healthy snow pack on the ground.  Even when the snow melts, the ground will be wet and cold for a week or two.  This could help hold temperatures down a bit.  Otherwise warmer than normal conditions look probable across much of the western U.S. down through the Southern Plains.

As far as precipitation goes, the CPC is projecting most of the country to have equal chances of above, below, and normal precipitation.  This is basically saying there is no reason to believe it won’t be fairly close to normal precipitation.  They have pointed out a trend toward drier than normal conditions from Missouri up through Michigan and Ohio.  Also they suggest it could be drier than normal in the Pacific Northwest.

WHAT ARE TYPICAL MAY CONDITIONS FOR THE WAUSAU AREA?

The average high temperatures in Wausau range from the low 60s in early May to the low 70s in late May.  The average low temperatures in Wausau vary from around 40 at the start of May to near 50 by the end of the month.  The all-time hottest May temperature in Wausau is 104 degrees, set on May 31st, 1934.  The all-time lowest May temperature in Wausau is 20 degrees set on May 4th, 1907 and May 9th, 1947.  Normal rainfall for May in the Wausau area is 3.48″.    However we picked up 3.05″ of rain in just one day (June 16th, 1992).  The heaviest one day snowfall for Wausau in May is 5.5″ from May 2nd, 1935.