Since I know the cool and wet weather is on everyone’s mind, let me start out by saying it isn’t going to end anytime soon (the next couple of weeks). If you are hoping for a 5 or 6 day stretch of dry weather with high temps in the 60s and 70s (I know I am), it looks like you will be out of luck. This doesn’t mean there will be no nice weather, just that it will be few and far between. Just be thankful that the heavy rain rain today is not falling as snow. Remember that just one week ago we had a Winter Storm Warning for much of the area and 5 to 8 inches of snow fell south of Marathon county. This time around there is only a Winter Weather Advisory for Iron and Ashland counties later tonight through Wednesday. It is looking unlikely that central Wisconsin (and much of the northwoods south of highway 70) will see much snow over the next couple of days.

The only remaining wild card is a second part of this storm system that will be moving over lake Michigan Wednesday night and Thursday morning. If it tracks a little farther west, it could bring a short burst of snow to the eastern part of the viewing area, east of Marathon county.

If you are trying to plan some outdoor activities, Friday looks to be the day. We should have more sunshine and high temps in the 60s. Over the weekend more rain and cooler temps are likely.

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And now for a cool time-wasting nature video (what else are you going to do on your lunch break?). This courtesy of Terje Sorgjerd filming in the Canary Islands. My favorite parts are the scenes of the stars and the Milky Way moving through the night sky and the undulation of the fog as it forms and dissipates.

Have a good Tuesday! Meteorologist Justin Loew

Posted under Nature

As promised, on the morning show today we completed our long journey of the 2009 Snowmelt Contest – randomly drawing 3 people from the pool of 15 who predicted the correct date of June 24th for the final day of snow on Rib Mountain. You can watch the video of the drawing at waow.com, just click on the video icon in the story. These three people win gift cards from the R-stores of Northcentral Wisconsin. The top three winners were:

1. Judy Kingston – $250
2. Jared Anderson – $150
3. Joyce Karpinski – $100

The other 12 winners will not go home empty-handed. They will each receive 2 coupons for car washes at R-store car wash locations valued at $6 a piece. The other 12 winners are:

1. Sydni Gburek
2. Shellee Sabatke
3. Doreen Bradley
4. Jeannie Henaman
5. Beth Sturgul
6. Mary Borowczyk
7. Tina Schmidt
8. Mandy Kissinger
9. Cheryl Zimmermann
10. Linda Filtzkowski
11. Lori Janke
12. Braiden Hall

The winners will receive their prizes by mail later this week.

If you know any of the winners, give the a pat on the back. Good job predicting the correct snowmelt date for 2009, which was a record late melt. I doubt we will see such a late snowmelt again next year. It normally occurs between June 5th an June 10th. As we saw this year, it depends on the weather as well as the amount of snow that is piled up by the ski resort during the winter. It would take some very heavy winter snow and highly unusual cold weather during the Spring next year in order to surpass June 24th for the final snoiwmelt date.

It is a good thing the snow melted last week because it will be so cool through the beginning of this week that it would not have melted very fast this week. After a week of hot and humid weather it has turned more Fall-like once again. High temps will only be in the 60s from today through Wednesday. Some spots in the northwoods will only reach the 50s – a good 20 degrees below normal for this time of year. It look like we are ending the month of June very similar to the way we started. By the end of the work week and into the upcoming holiday weekend temps should rebound back into the 70s. What about rain? We have a chance of scattered light showers today and tomorrow then a slight chance of thunderstorms on July 4th (Saturday).

Have a nice Monday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Uncategorized

First things first. There havebeen no winners in the snowmelt contest as of yet. I estimate the final melt will be this weekend or early next week. The cold weather is certainly helping the snow hang on. The snow was piled a little deeper by the ski resort  this year which is also helping out. Right now we have the perfect conditions for a slow melt. Cloudy, cool, and dry. A couple sunny days, with highs temps around 80, and a couple gully-washing thunderstorms, would put an end to the snow right quick. Instead, it looks like we will have more clouds than sunshine from today through Sunday with high temps slowly warming up from the 60s today to around 75 by Sunday. Theclouds might produce isolated showers or thunderstorms on each day but nothing heavy is expected. So it looks like we will beat the old record latest snowmelt (June 8th) by a week or more.

One interesting part of the contest is to see which days had the most predictions. Since this is the 4th year running the contest and 5th year keeping track, people are getting pretty savvy. They know that 3 of the years had a snowmelt between June 6th and June 8th. Three years ago was the earliest melt at May 25th. So the predictions are fairly sparse for dates before May 25th and again for dates after June 10th. Most people guess dates in the 1st week of June. This year June 3rd had the most guesses at 142. June 6th was 2nd with 118 guesses. Curiously, June 10thwas 3rd with 111 guesses. I wonder if a few of those people guessing June 10th were skiers who had noticed some big piles of snow during the winter. After June 10th the number of guesses drop off dramatically. By June 20th, there are only 8 people entered. Those are pretty good odds of winning the three R-store gift cards. 1st prize is $250, 2nd place is $150. 3rd place is $100. All three winners will be randomly drawn. The rest of the winners will receive 2 R-store car wash coupons worth $6. Below is a graph show the distribution of guesses from May 25th through June 20th.

Alternative Energy News:

What is the latest in alternative transportation? Despite recent troubles and a bankruptcy, GM is moving forward with production of the Volt. They recently opened a battery development and testing facility in Michigan. They have also created a first official model of the Volt. I am still very positive about the development of electric vehicles, however, I don’t give the Volt too much chance of success now that the company is being run by the government. Good thing there are a lot of alternatives. I could be wrong about the Volt, but it doesn’t look good. The main problem is that the price tag is over $40,000. I could barely afford a $15,000 gas model much much less a $45,000 electric. Maybe it will be a niche vehicle until the point where the price comes down and it gains wider acceptance.

Motorcycle companies are getting into the electric game as well. Here is a video of an electric motorcycle created by Mission One. Very nice, but again mostly for rich folks with a proposed price tag of $69,000.

In the area of lighting, LEDs are touted as the future, but incandescents might not be dead yet. Researchers at the University of Rochester, New York have created more efficient incandescent bulbs (the bulbs most people still use in their houses). They have done this by shooting a strong laser pulse at the tungsten filament at the heart of the bulb. This changes the nanoscale surface texture of the filament and makes it much more efficient – theoretically 100% efficient according the researchers – although I would have to see it to believe it. Even if this treatment does not produce efficiency as great as LEDs, it would still be worth pursuing because incandescent bulbs are dirt cheap. Additionally, the light from regular bulbs is much more pleasing to the eye. What about life expectancy? I would expect that these treated bulbs would last much longer because there would be less thermal stress. Being more efficient means less of the electricity is being turned to heat in the bulb. 100% efficiency would mean that all the electricity would be turned into light (none becoming heat).

Have a fine Wednesday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Alternative Energy, Science

No winner yet in the snowmelt contest. If your friends are asking, let them know it will be a couple days yet. It is getting close enough to melting that I will have to get up close and personal tomorrow and mark the last bits of snow in anticipation of the melt later this weekend or early next week. Could it still be around by the middle of next week? Maybe. It looks like a very cool spell of weather will develop from Saturday through Wednesday. High temps will only be in the 60 to 65 range during this time frame. Normally, this would be enough to keep the snow around. However, there is a possibility of steady rainfall on Sunday and Monday. This might be the final dagger that sends the snow away…until, well…. I suppose, October or November. Come to think of it, if you include the snow on Rib Mountain then it is typical to have only 3 snow-free months in Northcentral Wisconsin. If you exclude the “special” snow at the ski resort, then we typically have 5 snow-free months.

One benefit of cooler than normal weather is that we don’t have to worry much about severe weather. The severe weather season has been very quiet thus far. I think we only had 2 days so far with warnings in Northcentral Wisconsin. The most active day was April 24th when high temps were in the 80s and we had a few reports of large hail and isolated wind damage. May, June, and July are typically our most active severe weather months in Northcentral Wisconsin, so we are getting close to half way through the season and we are getting off easy. Let us hope that continues. The rest of the country has experienced a similar lack of severe weather here is some research compiled by Todd Shea of the National Weather Service in La Crosse:

“Our office only issued 1 warning during the entire month of May.

Believe it or not, that only ties the record of 1 warning set in May 2005. In May 1997, our office only issued 4 warnings. The busiest May was 2004 with 69 warnings. By the way, 2005 ended up being a relatively quiet year overall with only 131 total warnings issued.

The Storm Prediction Center issued the fewest watches during May 2009 since 1992. The average number of May Watches issued since 1970 is 138. May 2009 had only 100 watches for the entire month, 38 watches fewer than the long-term normal, or about 70% of normal. The last time so few watches were issued was in May was in 1992, when 92 watches were issued during the month.

The average number of warnings our office typically issues in June is 58 (ranging from a high of 144 in June 1998 to 14 in June 2003).

Let’s hope the string of quiet weather continues.”

Last week I linked to an interesting picture/article about large ice-circles seen in lake Baikal from space. This week, another interesting site from space. If this was not reported from a reputable source, I would swear it was a photoshop image. It just does not look natural, and of course it is not natural. The picture (taken from space) is of solar evaporation ponds in the Atacama desert of Chile – the driest place on earth. The ponds are used to evaporate water used in mining iodine. After the water evaporates nitrates (used in fertilizer) is collected.

Have a fine Thursday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Freeze, Space

At one point a few days ago, the rain chances for Tuesday and Wednesday looked rather iffy and I was getting depressed about the thought of constantly spending time watering my gardens and plants. The nice steady rain of yesterday and today have brought a smile to my face, as mentioned yesterday. Ray commented (see comments section, and feel free to leave your own) that rainy weather often means cool weather. It is interesting that the last 2 years have been drier than normal with more sunny days than average, and yet temps have been a bit below normal during the last two summers. Can you imagine how cool our summers would have been if we had received normal or above normal rainfall? Speaking of cool weather, it looks like temps will average a couple degrees below normal through early next week with high temps generally in the 65 to 70 range.

The rain will continue for most of the area today. Some locations in central Wisconsin could pick up an inch or so. At the time of this writing Wausau had already picked up a half inch, Wisconsin Rapids had about 0.80 inches, and Stevens Point already measured about 1.30 inches. The only locations that will miss out on the steady rain will be the far north around highway 70. Park Falls, Butternut, Springstead, and Mercer will likely only receive some drizzle or sprinkles. The rain will taper off tonight and then the next chance of significant precipitation will be Sunday evening when some thunderstorms could develop. The rain is melting some of the snow on Rib Mountain but it still looks like it will last a couple more days – so no winners yet in the snowmelt contest.

Alternative Energy News:

This has been a hot topic as of late and I am definitely getting more behind “electrification” of the economy. Even though there are a lot of reasons to support electric transportation as the heir to liquid hydrocarbons, there is a big government-industrial complex that has built up around ethanol and hydrogen. Bio-fuels do have some uses but funding is drying up and some ethanol producers are starting to go bankrupt. Hydrogen fuel cells still have some momentum but the case for using hydrogen in transportation is a tough one. First and foremost and entire new infrastructure has to be built across the entire continent. It just isn’t feasible. Most of the distribution and manufacturing capability for electric transportation is already in place. In any case, hydrogen fuel cells could still find very important use in helping to develop clean energy. Wind and solar energy is intermittent. Fuel cells could be one of the best ways to store electricity from these sources during peak times and release that energy during down times. So here are some recent developments on the hydrogen front:

An interview with energy secretary Chu where he dismisses the case for hydrogen-based transportation (and also talks about nuclear power plants)

Material with record high surface area could store a lot more hydrogen.

New metal substance could split water into oxygen and hydrogen more efficiently.

In a somewhat related story, the city of Seattle has found that plug-in hybrids are not doing as well on fuel efficiencyas originally hoped. Their fleet is averaging 51 mpg. They expected to achieve nearly 100 mpg. The unexpected low efficiency has to do with “real world” driving situations. What works in the “lab” does not always work in the street. People might not plug them in as often as they should, or they might not drive with fuel efficiency in mind.

Also, a little article on what an electric car fleet mightlook like. You have probably seen many of the pictures before in this blog.

Lastly, Tesla is more likely to survive the economic downturn after Daimler bought a 10% stake in the company.

Space News:

Is anyone else amazed at how long the Rovers have lasted on Mars? They have been going over 5 years now. Some problems related to “wear and tear” have been cropping up, but both Rovers are still functional. Spirit’s latest trouble is getting stuck in sand. Mission controllers think it might have gotten stuck deep enough to actually bottom out. The “belly” of the rover might be resting on sand, which would be a tough situation to get out of. Engineers are busy working with an analogue rover here on earth trying to simulate the conditions on Mars. They hope to devise a method for Spirit to get moving again. Opportunity is not stuck, in fact it has just passed the 10 mile mark on its odometer. Even though it is moving, it still has more than a year to go before reaching its next target crater. One thing I think the Rover designers should think about with the next robots to travel to Mars is a “fast” mode. It shouldn’t take a year to travel a couple miles, especially when the rover is traveling through a flat desert like Opportunity is.

Every once in a while I take a look at the raw images of the rovers (see here), just to see how the landscape differs as they move to new areas of the planet. Here is one picture I viewed today.

Opportunity Navigation Camera Image

 Another nice shot of the desolation in the area called Meridiani Planum where Opportunity is exploring. The interesting part of the photograph is the little white streak in the upper left hand corner. (direct link to large image here) If this was a photo on earth you would immediately think it was a jet contrail. Or if it was night-time someone might suggest it was a meteorite (falling star). I am not sure what to make of it, since it is on Mars. My best guess is that it is an artifact of the camera lens. Maybe a glint of light or a reflection. I suppose a meteorite or asteroid cannot be ruled out. Interesting none-the-less.

In another exciting development, more testing of robotic underwater probes is occurring in Antarctica. Back in 2008 a prototype was tested right here in Wisconsin at lake Mendota during the middle of winter. Thes tests are occurring in preparation for a future trip to Jupiter’s moon Europa. Under the icy crust of Europa is a potential spot for life in the solar system.

Have a nice Wednesday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Alternative Energy, Space