One thing I wanted to comment on today that I didn’t have time for yesterday (because I was too busy talking about rattlesnakes), is the July recap. Check Kristen’s blog entry for the numbers. One interesting thing to note is that the highest temperature of the month was only 86. The only 90 degree day we have had so far this year occurred way back on May 24th when the mercury reached 92. Since then the warmest temperature has only been 86. Today I am forecasting 87 but if the sun is out longer than expected, we could hit 90. If we don’t hit 90 today or next week (when some heat could once again build in the upper Midwest), then the chances of hitting 90 will become much less for the rest of the Summer and early Fall. It would be interesting if the warmest temperature for the year occurred so early.

Second up, you might want to take a look outside tonight or early Wednesday morning (while it is still dark). A large magnetic “explosion” (coronal mass ejection-CME) occurred this past Sunday on the sun. You can see the video here. If the ionized particles from this explosion hit the earth “head-on” then there could be some cool northern lights tonight (but hopefully no communication or electricity outages).  The good news is that our skies should be mainly clear tonight, but it will still be a bit humid so some low clouds or fog could form toward morning. Here is another page with a cool hi-res picture magnetic activity on the sun.

Space News:

I have been following the story of the Mars Rovers since before they landed 6 years ago and I have been amazed at their longevity. Now it looks like Spirit might be in some trouble (besides being stuck in the sand). The rover went into hibernation for the winter and mission controllers have not heard from it for a couple of months. If solar energy generation drops too low, then it might not wake up. The Martian winter ends in November. As the strength of the Mars sunshine increases over the next couple of months, we will find out if Spirit made it through the winter. Even if Spirit is done, it has far surpassed original expectations. The original mission life expectancy was only 90 days.

Also on Mars, scientists have identified the most likely spot (based on current knowledge) where life might have existed in the past. Unfortunately, I don’t think the new Mars Science Laboratory (the robot Curiosity) is headed for that spot, nor is it designed to detect signs of life. Thankfully it has some high-definition image and video capabilities, otherwise why is it going to Mars? If it only does more detailed but similar experiments to the current Mars rovers, then it would be kind-of a wasted opportunity. One interesting new thing the Curiosity will do is take video of its landing process.

In what could be a sign of choppy waters ahead, NASA has cut some funding for the development of private rockets to take astronauts to space. I hope this doesn’t derail the nascent fast-developing space tourism industry.

NASA has spent a little money on outreach and education in the form of a video gamecalled “Moonbase Alpha”. I tried to check out if it is free and/or how one can start on the game but my companies Internet filter blocks the site. Some cynics might wonder why NASA is cutting back other “real” initiatives in favor of the “virtual”, but I think it is an ok move. It will appeal to younger gamers and could get a few more people interested in exploring “outer-space”. Young folks spend so much time in virtual environments I am starting to wonder if we are seeing the end of the great space exploration dreams that began in the 1950s and 1960s. Then again, exploring alien terrain virtually might be more efficient and obviously a lot safer. Just keep sending robots into space with high bandwidth communication capability and viola! – everyone can be a space explorer. Perhaps as a plug toward the future of robotic exploration, NASA in cooperation with Microsoft has released a interactive 3D map of Mars. Now you can explore Mars from the comfort of your home!

Have a nice Tuesday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Monthly Recap, Space

It has been a couple weeks since I last looked at the U.S. Drought Monitor. Given that we have had nearly zero precipitation since then, you would think the drought situation would have gotten much worse. So far it hasn’t, but I expect this recent dry spell to show up big time in the drought calculation before the end of the month. So far we have only seen a slight increase in the moderate drought category. It certainly is dry and if it continues then we might have a slightly early fall color season. I have read in the past that a little extra stress on the trees causes them to turn a bit early.

Across the rest of the country, things are looking pretty good. Even the exceptional drought in south Texas is improving. The worst impact from drought continues to be in California, where environmental water restrictions implemented to protect the Delta Smelt fish, has caused crops to die off and unemployment to rise up to 40% in some central valley communities.

Special Note: I forgot to bring my digital pictures from my trip to Europe to post here in the blog today. Will have to wait until early next week.

Space News:

Now some follow up stories on exciting happenings in space exploration and travel. Many of you are probably aware that the Spirit Rover is stuck in some soft sand on Mars. Engineers on earth have been trying different extraction methods with a test rover here on earth. They seem to have a couple moves planned out but are still unsure if they will work because they can not simulate all of the conditions on Mars. After all, the red planet has about one third the gravity of earth. The first attemps to move the rover will be in October. Engineers are now admitting that the rover might be permanently stuck.  If so, no need to cry. Spirit has out-lived its life expectancy by several years.

Closer to home, there has been some trouble with recent lunar craft and the accompanying sicence experiments but good data is still coming in. A couple weeks ago the LCROSS orbiter unexpectedly burned up a significant portion of its fuel. Also around the moon there was some international cooperation. India’s Chandrayaan-1 paired up with the LRO from NASA in order to explore the surface and find water. Unfortunately it did not last too long. Chandrayaan-1 had been in orbit much longer and failed. The LRO continues to function normally and is returning data and images that suggest the presence of water on the moon. One thing nice about the incident is that it is very nice to see international cooperation in space.

Speaking of images, how about some eye-candy for all you space aficionados out there? Here is a link to a new composite image of the entire Milky Way galaxy. Also, a new high resolution UV image of the Andromeda galaxy is available.

In the arena of competitive prizes, it probably comes as little surprise that Team Armadillo has won cash in NASA’s lunar lander challenge. They have shown great dedication and engineering skill in winning the prize after faltering a couple times in the beginning.

Have a nice weekend! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under Drought, Space

UPDATE: No winner in the snowmelt contest yet. Record cold in June doesn’t make the snow melt any faster. We could be looking at a final snowmelt this weekend or early next week – the latest we have seen in the last 5 years.

Speaking of record cold, we have finally broken out of an amazing string of cold weather. I don’t think I have seen so many consecutive record cold high temps during June or any Summer month. And don’t forget, there was a record low of 31 on Saturday morning in Rhinelander! Five cities in Northcentral Wisconsin either tied or broke record cold high temps on Monday, including Wausau with a high of only 53 (old record: 54 set in 1916). Temps should hit 60 today and could even reach the mid 60s if the sun breaks out for a couple hours, which is a few degrees above the record for today. However, I can’t completely rule out another record in Wausau. The record is 55 and at the time of this writing the temp is only 47. The good news is that temps should reach the 70s this weekend and remain in the 70s for much of next week. Mid 70s is normal for this time of year.

Space News:

Here is a little update on the Mars rover Spirit. If you remember, it got stuck in deep Martian sand and it is not known whether it will be able to free itself. Here is an image of the underside of Spirit taken by the microscopic imager. One good thing is that it doesn’t appear to be hung-up on a rock. I was amazed at how deep the wheels have dug into the sand. You would figure a machine that crawls along at a snail’s pace would be unlikely to spin its tires enough to bury them. So what will Spirit do if it cannot get unstuck. As long as the solar panels are oriented somewhat toward the sun, it should continue to have power. It won’t be able to do much micro analysis of the soil, but it might be able to do some atmospheric research by taking photographs and making time lapse movies of events such as dust devils and dust storms.

Staying on the Mars theme, take a look at what Clara Ma got to do yesterday. She signed the Mars rover she named. She was the winner of the “name the rover” contest. The name will be “Curiosity”. As the winner, she received a trip to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Her hand written signature will be on the rover as it explores Mars in a couple years. How cool is that. Just think, someday she might take a trip to Mars and see her name enshrined in space science history.

An update now on the Japanese satellite – Kayuga – that has been investigating the moon. It was designed for a two year mission and that is coming to an end. It will perform a “controlled” crash landing on Wednesday.It will be travelling at about 3728 mph when it hits the surface so there should be quite an impact. Since it will be coming in at a low angle, it might skip along the surface, or plow up a lot of moon dust. Amateur astronomers might be able to see the impact from the earth. Overall, I was a bit disappointed about how much information was made public from Kayuga. It had a high definition camera that took the first high def movie of the moon’s surface. Other than that, data was pretty scarce. Maybe I was just not looking in the right places. Tell you what, I hope they have the camera running as it crashes. It could make for a spectacular movie.

As far as humans getting to space, a relatively new idea has cropped up – an inflatable space tower. It would be made up of segments nearly 500 feet long and 750 wide and filled with helium.

Scale Model Inflatable Spacce Tower

The segments would be stacked to a height of 9 to 12 miles, which is the approximate edge of space – where companies such a Virgin Galactic aim to take people on short rocket trips. The inventors think it could eventually be extended to 125 miles, but I am not sure how, since there would be no more atmosphere to support the inflatable segments. Of course there are many problems yet to be worked out, such as high winds in the atmosphere, cost, leakage, etc… Still, it seems slightly more promising that creating a tethered space elevator.

As far a NASA sending people to space (and the moon in particular), it is a dream that might have to wait a while. Congress recently cut the NASA budget by 647 million. In the current economic environment this is to be expected, but couple this with new mandates that NASA should spend more on studying AGW (global warming) instead of human space flight and your dreams of heading to space might rest completely on private space companies. I have always thought NASA should focus on space, not the earth, yet the current trend is to spend more money on “earth science”.

Have a nice Tuesday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.

Posted under AGW, Records, 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