Weather Conditions for Monday, May 16th 2011

It has been a beautiful day! It was in the 60's for most of the day, with zero cloud coverage and a light wind. The wind is currently 4mph coming from the NNE. We still have cooler temperatures at night though. Currently the temperature is 55 degrees F, and the low for tonight is supposed to get down to 33 degrees F so we are under a frost advisory for tonight again.

Graphic courtesy of The Weather Channel - www.weather.com

(Again, if you haven't seen my note below, the links I have been using for these images are live URLs from Weather.com and Intellicast, and whenever they are updated on those websites, they are also updated on here. So if you are looking at these images at a later date, they may not go with the descriptions I have for them.)

Looking at the current surface map we can see there isn't a whole lot going on in our area. There are a couple high pressure systems in the middle states which is giving us such beautiful weather. As long as these high pressure domes are in the area, I suspect that the weather will continue on like this for the next couple of days. 

Weather Conditions for Sunday, May 15th 2011

After our hot and humid weather this past week, we sure have had a cold and rainy weekend.

On Saturday the high was only 50 degrees F, and we received rain for most of the day.

Today the temperature has gone up a little bit, but not too much. It is currently 64 degrees F, and the low for tonight is supposed to get down to 36!! So currently we do have a "Frost Advisory" in our area for the night

Graphic courtesy of The Weather Channel - www.weather.com

If we look at the current weather situation in our area, there isn't a whole lot happening. All of the systems that  brought us humidity and thunderstorms last week are now far to the South and the East of us. The current wind direction is from the NNE at 20 mph, which has a lot to do with why our current temperatures are so cold. 

Graphic courtesy of Intellicast - www.intellicast.com

Looking at the jet stream we can also see that there is a small trough by Wisconsin which is bringing in that cold air from Canada and causing that Northern wind.

NOTE: I just realized that since I have been posting these images using the websites URLs, they are being updated at the same time that they are updated through the websites I get them from (www.weather.com, www.intellicast.com). So if you are looking at these images at a later date then when I posted them, they may not match with my descriptions well.

Weather Conditions for Wednesday May 11th, 2011

We're supposed to get some storms today, some possibly severe, which is awesome!
But I'd like to point out that weird weather pattern we have going on right now.

Graphic courtesy of The Weather Channel - www.weather.com

There is that low pressure system to the south, with that cold front, and stationary front. You can also see that it is occluded on the top, which may mean it could die out, but I don't think it is going to any time soon.

Graphic courtesy of Intellicast - www.intellicast.com

The jet stream is in a strange shape as well, creating TWO troughs, one in the western states and one by us. 

Currently it is hazy out, but sunny. the temperature is 65 degrees and expected to rise to mid to upper 70's. The wind is coming from the ENE at the moment, and if you look back at the current weather map you can see that it is because of that cold front. The wind is blowing across the front of the cold front. I'll check back in later once the storms start to build!

Weather Conditions for Monday, May 9th 2011

There is no better way to start off the day than with a thunderstorm! And a LOUD thunderstorm too!

A line of storms moved through the area this morning around 8:00 am. From then on it rained until about 1:00pm, where it just remained cloudy and windy. Cloud coverage has been at 100% all day with nimbostratus clouds. The wind is coming from the SSE at 15 mph. The current temperature is 55 degrees F with no real noticeable wind chill. 

Graphic courtesy of The Weather Channel - www.weather.com

Looking at this surface map we see the storms that were affecting us this morning over the middle portion of the state. There is a stationary front in southern Minnesota and NE Iowa that is causing all this precipitation. 

Graphic courtesy of Intellicast - www.intellicast.com

The jet stream is looking slightly zonal, with a small trough in the Western states. It moves up slightly by us, almost creating an Omega pattern, but it isn't quite at that point yet.

Graphic courtesy of The Weather Channel - www.weather.com

Looking at lightning strikes, we can see that all of these storms in Wisconsin at the moment are creating lightning. There have even been some reports of hail in the area. 

My prediction for tonight into tomorrow, is more chances of thunderstorms tonight (crossing my fingers!) and tomorrow as well. Tomorrow the temperatures are supposed to become higher, around 76 degrees F for the high, with a chance of Isolated thunderstorms in the evening.

Weather Conditions for Thursday May 5th 2011

It was rainy for the majority of the morning today, with overcast skies (nimbostratus clouds). Around 10:00am the clouds started to break up and turn into cumulonimbus clouds, and there were just a couple short bursts of rain after that.

The high for today was 55 degrees, so it stayed on the cooler side, compared to yesterday. The low for tonight is supposed to be 39 degrees F. There currently isn't a wind, and things are pretty calm.

Graphic courtesy of The Weather Channel - www.weather.com

When we look at the current surface map, we can see that the cold front causing all the rain this morning is now past us and on the Eastern part of the state. Things are definitely calm in our area, and they look pretty calm in the rest of the country too aside from that cold front. 

Graphic courtesy of Intellicast - www.intellicast.com

We are seeing a very zonal jet stream at the moment, which is another reason for all this calm weather. 

My predictions for tomorrow are calm, and beautiful with higher temperatures. Something to look forward to. :)

Weather Conditions for Wednesday, May 4th 2011

On Monday it was May 2nd... but it felt like the end of NOVEMBER! The high was 39 degrees, and it was absolutely awful. In MAY!!!

Today was another story. Today it was beautiful! The high today was 63 degrees, it is currently 52 degrees. Clear skies all day, with a couple cirrus clouds every once in a while. The wind is coming from the SSE at 8mph.

Graphic courtesy of The Weather Channel - http://www.weather.com/

If we look at the current surface map, we can see the end of that cold front/warm front system, the occlusion, heading our way. We will probably end up with some rain tonight and tomorrow because of that. 

Graphic courtesy of Intellicast - http://www.intellicast.com/

When we look at the jet stream we can see that there is a nice trough right where that cold front/warm front system is that is heading our way. If that formed more toward the East I think it could have been a pretty nasty system, but it is occluded, which means it is dying out and the most we will probably get is rain.

Data Analysis of January, February, March and April to date.

So far it seems like it has been a crazy year weather-wise. Here are the past four months summed up.



Temperature



In January we definitely see a lot of cooler temperatures, and a sharp drop in temperatures toward the end of the month. The temperatures fluctuate quite a bit.

In February we see a lot of fluctuation of temperatures, a little bit more than in January. There is a larger drop in temperature towards the beginning of the month, and then some higher temperatures, in the 50’s, in the middle of the month.

In March the fluctuation in temperature seems a bit more dramatic. There are some really low temperatures in the beginning of the month and then some high temperatures in the middle of the month. The temperatures at the end of the month are forming a rising trend and we move into April.

In April the temperatures haven’t fluctuated as much as past months, but there are still some changes. There is a period of really high temperatures, and then a longer period of time with some cooler temperatures. The large spike in temperature around April 10^th is I believe the same time we had Severe Weather in our area.

Precipitation/Rainfall

Since the Metstation here on campus only measures precipitation in amount of Rainfall, there is no data available for January, since it did not rain because of such low temperatures!



In February there was one day where there was rainfall. If we look at both temperature and rainfall, we can see that the temperature was higher, or rising when the rainfall occurred.

When we look at rainfall in March, we see that there is a larger amount of rain, which is because of the higher temperatures. The majority of the rainfall that occurred, happened on days with warmer average temperatures.

April rainfall has significantly increased compared to March, February and January. The temperatures are higher for the most part, and instead of snowfall we are receiving rain as precipitation.

Wind Direction

The prevailing wind direction in January was West, followed by North West and West South West.

In February the prevailing wind direction was also West, like January. On the one day that there was rainfall, the wind was coming from the South East.



In March West is still a prevailing wind direction, but East is just as prevalent. With each month West is occurring less.

In April the West wind directions have slowed down quite a bit, and the leading Wind direction is East. This could be because of the increasing amount of low pressure systems that have moving across the country from the West, causing a lot of strange weather.

Summary

There are a number of trends that are prevalent in all of these graphs. With the temperature graphs, it is obvious that the temperature is rising with each month, albeit very slowly. When looking at the rainfall graphs, it is obvious that there is more and more rain with each month, due to the warmer temperatures. When comparing the wind direction graphs, there are less days with wind coming from the West with every month, and more days with wind coming from the East. There are a few anomalies that stick out, for example in the January graph there are a couple days where the temperature is extremely low compared to the rest of the days in the month. In February one week shows cold temperatures, and then the next week has the highest temperatures so far at that point. In the beginning of March there was an extremely cold day and then temperatures went back to 30’s, 40’s and 50’s shortly afterwards. In April on anomaly is around the 10^th or 11^th when temperatures reached the highest so far. This was when there was a lot of severe weather moving through our area due to a large trough in the jet stream. There were many tornadoes all over the state as a result of this.

Climograph

When we compare this data to a climograph of past months in Eau Claire, we see that the overall average temperatures have been normal, with a few anomalies here and there. There definitely hasn’t been as much rainfall, but that could be because of the snow and sleet we have gotten instead of rain this month and last month.

The average maximum temperature for April is only a little low (52 deg F, compared to 56-57), after having a couple days of temperatures in the 30’s and 40’s it seems as if it should be lower than that. We did have a couple days with high temperatures thrown in the mix as well though, which would raise the average a bit. Even though the weather we’ve been having recently has seemed strange, the data here shows that the temperatures are in the normal range. 

All graphs were created by me and belong to me. So don't steal them. Unless you're Professor Hupy.

Weather Conditions for Wednesday, April 27th 2011

Well these past couple of days have been a little bit cooler than normal it seems. I apologize for not updating my blog recently, but my computer's power source died and it tooke me a while to get a new one! All fixed now.

Currently it is 36 degrees F, with 100% cloud coverage. I would call them mainly stratus or nimbostratus. We did have a little bit of precipitation today, which seemed like a mixture of rain and sleet. The wind is coming in from the NW at 8mph. Weather.com is predicting rain/snow showers to develop overnight.

Graphic courtesy of The Weather Channel - http://www.weather.com/

If we look at the current surface map we can see there isn't a whole lot of activity going on in our area. My prediction is that there won't be anymore showers throughout the night, just based on what we're seeing here. If we look toward the south we can see the large low pressure system that is causing such severe weather. Apparently at least 32 people are thought to have died in the deadly oubreak of tornadoes in Alabama and Mississippi. The system will continue to move to the East throughout the night. Hopefully it will calm down a little bit before it hits the Atlanta metro area (my family lives there!).

Weather Conditions for Tuesday, April 19th 2011

So there definitely was a system that moved through the state today, but nothing too bad happened here (thankfully!!). There were a couple snow flurries and raindrops around 4 or 5pm but nothing significant, and nothing that accumulated.

Graphic courtesy of UWEC Metstation

If we look at the barometric pressure readings from today, we see that right at 4:00 the pressure dropped dramatically, which indicates that this is when the low pressure system moved through. This is around the time when it started raining/snowing.

Currently the temperature is 33 deg F and the low for tonight is supposed to get to 31 deg. The wind is coming from the NE at 12 mph. There was mainly 100% cloud coverage today from what I could tell, and the majority of them were stratus, with some nimbostratus at times (around 4). 

Graphic courtesy of The Weather Channel - www.weather.com

If we look at the surface map, it looks like the majority of the major activity has moved to the East of us, with a few lingering flurries in our area. My predictions for tomorrow are going to be the same temperature-wise that it was today, with maybe a couple flurries or rain showers, but nothing that will accumulate.

Weather Conditions for Monday, April 18th 2011

So while the rest of the country gets tornadoes and thunderstorms, what are we supposed to get this week again? At the end of April? Yup, SNOW!

Apparently a Colorado low is developing and will result in 5-8 inches of snow for us.

Currently though, the temperature is 46 deg F. Wind is coming from the NNE at around 3 mph. It has been mostly cloudy all day with cirrostratus and cumulus clouds. The low for tonight is supposed to get to around 32 deg F.

Graphic courtesy of The Weather Channel - http://www.weather.com/

When we look at this surface map, we can see the low pressure systems forming in the Western states. This is what will be causing our lovely weather shift Tuesday night and into Wednesday. The predicted accumulation is around 5 to 8 inches. My prediction is similar to that of the National Weather Service, although I'm hoping the temperature will remain warm enough to where the majority of the precipitation we get isn't snow. I'd rather have slush, than snow! I'll be checking the barometric pressure readings off and on tomorrow to see the changes occur as the system approaches.

Weather Conditions for Sunday, April 10th 2011

So last night we did end up having a couple of rumbles of thunder. Most of the larger storm cells were south of us. This evening we're supposed to get even stronger storms, and weather.com is predicting tornadoes in the area as well. Look at the Weather Channel's tornado predictions here.


Currently it is 67 degrees!! This is the highest it has been all Spring so far, so that is quite exciting. The high for today is 77 degrees, and the low tonight is supposed to get down to 43 degrees. The wind is SSE at 13mph.

Graphic courtesy of The Weather Channel - www.weather.com

If we look at this map we see a warm front over our area. This is the system that brought storms into our area last night, and you can now see they have made their way into Canada.

Graphic courtesy of The Weather Channel - www.weather.com

Here is the forecast for tonight, as you can see here we are in the red!

Graphic courtesy of Intellicast - www.intellicast.com

If we look at the jet stream, we're still in that trough, like we were last night. This is what is causing all these thunderstorms, and warm weather. The trough is bringing warm air up from the gulf. This pattern is what meteorologists have been predicting for that past couple of days.

So tonight we can expect strong to severe thunderstorms, possibly producing hail and even a chance of a tornado! So keep watching the skies!

Weather Conditions for the week of 4/4/2011 and predictions for this weekend.

This week has been beautiful. Everyday since Monday has shown a warming trend, and it is finally getting into the lower 60's. There have been a couple cloudy days, but mainly zero to 5% cloud coverage with cirrostratus or simply cirrus clouds.

Today (Saturday) there is 100% cloud coverage with what look like simply stratus clouds at the moment. I have a feeling this weekend is going to get incredibly eventful for our area tonight and into tomorrow though, so it will be interesting to see how the clouds change from tonight into tomorrow. The temperature today is 52 degrees with a high of 63. The barometric pressure is at 29.86 Hg and it is falling slowly, which shows that a low pressure system is moving in.

Tonight NOAA is predicting severe thunderstorms in our area, but even more severe isolated storms in our area for tomorrow. 

Graphic courtesy of The Weather Channel - www.weather.com

If we look at the current surface map, we can see a low pressure system to the southwest, which is headed our way. This matches up with the current wind direction which is SSE at 8mph. I'll update again later in the day to look at how the surface map is changing and to see if my predictions are correct. What this basically means though, is that overnight and all day tomorrow we are in for a lot of strong thunderstorms, with a possibility of strong winds, hail, and even tornadoes.

Weather Conditions for Wednesday, March 30th 2011

The weather this week has been abnormal for late March weather. The temperatures are much lower than usual. It tends to warm up slightly during the day, but it's still cooler than usual. The low for today is 25 (for tonight), and it is currently 39 degrees out. The wind is coming in from the NW, at around 3 mph. There wasn't a lot of cloud coverage from what I could see this morning, except for a few cirrus clouds.

Graphic courtesy of The Weather Channel - http://www.weather.com/

If you look at the current weather map, there are a lot of strange things going on. There are two low pressure systems, right near two high pressure systems in the central part of the country. Along with the two cold fronts in the south eastern states. As you can see, there really isn't a lot going on in our part of the country at the moment.

One good thing about this weather is that the cooler temperatures at night and the slightly warmer temps during the day are slowing down the melting snow. It is taking a lot longer for the snow to melt, which is better for our area flood-wise. There probably won't be as severe of a flood that they were predicting before because of this.



Crazy weather in Appleton, WI

Right now I'm on Spring Break, so I'm not in Eau Claire, I'm in my hometown of Appleton, WI. I just felt the need to post about the weirdest weather I've ever seen in my life (I'm sure this happens a lot in the spring, I'm just not used to it). This morning in Appleton we had snow, which then turned to rain, and then turned to sleet. At one point it felt like it was doing all three at the same time.

It has been sleeting now in Appleton for about 8 hours, and there is quite an accumulation of sleet on the ground. The sleet has been mixed with thunderstorms, so it has been sleeting and thundering and lightning for quite a while now.

Graphic courtesy of The Weather Channel - http://www.weather.com/

If we look at the current weather map we can see a low pressure system as well as a warm front that may be causing this weather. The higher temperatures in the lower part of the state are causing the precipitation to be rain, and in the northern part of the state the precipitation is snow due to the lower temperatures. In between we have the sleet, which is where Appleton lies at the moment.

Graphic courtesy of The Weather Channel - http://www.weather.com/

Another interesting thing to look at is the amount of lightning strikes in the area. A lot of these lightning strikes are occurring in the middle of blizzard-like conditions. There have been quite a few strikes in the past couple hours here in Appleton, and they are all very bright, loud, cloud-to-ground lighting strikes. So this is definitely weird weather, that I felt seemed "blog-worthy".

Weather Conditions for Wednesday, March 16th 2011

Early this morning (8:30... that's early for me) it was foggy (most likely evaporation fog, left over from last night) and there was frost everywhere, which had to be hoar frost since it was so clear and cooler outside.



Photo taken by me.

Here is a picture of a cool design the hoar frost left on my car this morning.

Throughout the day the temperature rose steadily. It is currently 48 degrees and the low tonight isn't supposed to get below 38 degrees! Cloud coverage this morning was below 30% with a few cirrus clouds. Currently according to Intellicast it is 80%. The wind is SSE at around 12 mph.

Graphic courtesy of The Weather Channel - http://www.weather.com/

If we look at this graphic map from The Weather Channel, we can see temperatures rising in the Midwest to the Eastern part of the country. We can also see the Jet Stream moving steadily across our area & also notice a trough in the Jet Stream to the west of us, which could result in cooler temperatures in that part of the country.

Weather Conditions for Tuesday March 15th, 2011

Yesterday (Tuesday), it was warm most of the day! I believe the temperature was above 40 at one point. The cloud coverage was around 25 to 30%, and from what I could tell they seemed to be Cirrostratus clouds.


The high point of the day (for me at least) was rain! It rained in the evening for quite a while. I also noticed while walking out of my night class around 9 o'clock, that there was some fog. I would assume this was evaporation fog caused by the melting snow.

Weather Conditions for Monday, March 14th 2011

Well, it was definitely a bit cooler this morning, which could have been the result of that cold front that moved through yesterday/last night, but this afternoon it was absolutely beautiful outside! I checked my phone around 2 o'clock and it was around 40 degrees! There was also 0% cloud coverage today, and it was bright, sunny and beautiful. Right now it is almost 11 pm and the temperature is still 30 degrees. The low for tonight is supposed to get to 19 degrees. Wind is calm, and coming in from the SSE.

Graphic courtesy of The Weather Channel - http://www.weather.com/



As you can see on the current surface map, there is not a whole lot of activity in our area. There's a large cold front along with a low pressure system causing some precipitation in the Southern states, but nothing near us... although the National Weather Service is predicting a 30% chance of RAIN late tomorrow. Did you hear that??? RAIN!!! Not snow!!

Although rain is exciting, especially the first rain fall of spring, it isn't such good news for us at the moment due to how high risk our area is for flooding. According to the National Weather Service, our area is currently in a "hydrologic outlook" area, meaning "...WARM TEMPERATURES THIS WEEK ARE EXPECTED TO INCREASE MELTING AND POTENTIALLY LEAD TO RIVER FLOODING AS EARLY AS THIS WEEKEND AND INTO EARLY NEXT WEEK..."

So we'll have to keep an eye on that!

Weather Conditons for Sunday, March 13th 2011

It looks like a nice day outside, I haven't noticed any clouds this afternoon, the sun in shining and the snow is melting (yes!). The current temperature is 31 degrees with a WNW wind at 4 mph. The low for tonight is predicted to be 20 degrees.

Photo courtesy of The Weather Channel - http://www.weather.com/

If we take a look at the surface map (above) you can see a cold front moving in our direction. Normally I would say that this would cause the temperatures to decrease for tomorrow, but according to The Weather Channel, and Intellicast, the high for tomorrow is supposed to be 38 degrees, which is 7 degrees higher than it is today, so we may not see such a huge drop in temperature because of this cold front, unless it just occurs overnight.

As most people may know, a huge earthquake occurred in Japan Thursday night causing a tsunami, a whirlpool, and an incredibly large amount of damage.

 (AP Photo/Kyodo News)

There is a very interesting part of http://www.intellicast.com/ where you can see all the major earthquakes that have happened recently on a map. Here is the link o the map. http://www.intellicast.com/Local/WxMap.aspx

After opening the link, zoom all the way out so you can see the map of the whole world, and move the map so you can focus on the "Ring of Fire" area. Then at the top of the map under "Quick Picks" choose the icon for Earthquakes, the last one before the purple "Full Screen" icon. If you hover over the large circles, it will tell you exactly where the earthquakes were, and what their magnitude is. You will notice that Japan is still having a huge amount of aftershocks, and that there have also been some recent smaller earthquakes in parts of the U.S like California, Alaska, Texas, and Arkansas. There is also a link to this map in my "Links" section.

Weather Conditions for the week of March 7th, 2011

Unfortunately midterms kept me busy the last couple weeks, so this last week I forgot to post updates on the Weather! So here is a little summary.

The big event of the week was the mini snowstorm we had on Wednesday. It was caused by the large frontal system that swept across the country affected both the northern and southern states.

Photo taken by me.

This picture was taken on my morning walk to class, around 9:30am. The snow began Tuesday night/Wednesday morning and continued until the afternoon. By evening it was done. The temperatures that day stayed in the low 30's.

Thursday was partly cloudy with what I would call Cumulus clouds. Sky coverage was probably at about 25-30% for most of the day. Earlier in the morning it was completely clear, with sky coverage at 0%. Clouds started to move in around 11 or noon.

On Friday it was sunny, I didn't notice the clouds that day. Early on in the morning there was a bit of evaporation fog, caused by the melting of the snow, along with hoar frost on the trees and ground. The temperatures were cooler later that evening, in the 20's.

Saturday it was overcast mostly to all of the day, with a blanket of stratus clouds. The temperatures remained in the low 30's for most of the day.

Weather Conditions for Monday, March 7th 2011

Photo taken by myself.

This morning's walk to class was quite a snowy one. There was a continuous snowfall most of the morning, that accumulated to over 1 inch. The current temperature is 32 degrees, and the low for tonight is predicted to be 24 degrees. The wind is coming from the NNW, at around 4 mph, and there is 100% cloud coverage. The precipitation could be due to the stationary front that has moved through our area, that can be seen in the following surface map.

Graphic courtesy of The Weather Channel - http://www.weather.com/

A frontal system is predicted to move across the country Tuesday and Wednesday, resulting in snow in the northern states and severe thunderstorms in the southern states. The snow is predicted to start in our area Tuesday night into Wednesday.

Graphic courtesy of The Weather Channel - http://www.weather.com/



Weather Conditions for Thursday, March 3rd 2011

My predictions yesterday of snow showers were correct, it was snowing on and off almost all morning from what I could tell. The snow seems to have moved out of our area for now though, and it is currently overcast with temperatures around 30 degrees. The wind is from the SE (another prediction I got correct from yesterday) which is why it is much warmer than yesterday. That and the fact that our cold front has moved through.

Graphic courtesy of The Weather Channel - http://www.weather.com/



As you can see from the above surface map, all precipitation has moved out of our area. There seems to be no major activity in the area as far as warm/cold fronts and pressure systems go, although weather.com is predicting a "wintry mix" of precipitation for tonight. 

Weather Conditions for Wednesday, March 2nd 2011

My predictions yesterday were correct! It was DEFINITELY colder today than it was yesterday due to the cold front that moved through. Right now at about quarter to 7 it is 14 degrees outside with a wind chill of 6 degrees. The winds are coming from the North at about 5 mph, but after this front moves through, I predict we will have some Southern winds to warm up those temperatures again.

Graphic courtesy of The Weather Channel - http://www.weather.com/

As you can see from the surface map, the cold front that was just in our area is now reaching Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama, and it looks like a High pressure system is moving into our area, which could bring us some precipitation tomorrow. We'll just have to wait and see!

Weather Conditions for Monday February 28th, and Tuesday March 1st 2011

Yesterday was a beautiful day, even though it was still pretty cold out. My phone was telling me it was 19 degrees around 2 o'clock. There was hardly a cloud in the sky, except for a couple cirrus clouds, but overall beautiful and sunny!

Today it is already 10 am and the temperature is 26 degrees, and weather.com is predicting it to get up to 41 degrees! It will be nice to see some of this snow melt. There is a SSW wind at around 12 mph, which could be bringing in some of that warm air from the south.

Graphic courtesy of The Weather Channel - http://www.weather.com/

If we look at this surface map of the current winds in our country, we can see that the winds that are affecting us are coming all the way up to us from Arkansas and Missouri.

Graphic courtesy of The Weather Channel - http://www.weather.com/



If we look at the surface map of our current weather conditions, we can see a cold front to the West of us, which is another reason we may have warmer temps now, while it may slightly lower our temperatures again for tomorrow.

Weather Conditions for Saturday February 26th, 2011

More snow! Just what we need. Weather.com only predicted about .7 inches of snow for today, but I think most people are thinking enough is enough! The current temperature is 7 degrees, but the predicted high for today is 11 degrees. Currently the wind is coming from the SSW, at around 5 mph, but nothing stronger than that. There is currently 100% cloud coverage, with nimbostratus clouds, and it is snowing lightly, like it has been all day.

Graphic courtesy of The Weather Channel - http://www.weather.com/

As you can see in this surface map, we are almost directly in the middle of a High Pressure system, which may be causing the arctic temperatures we have had today and yesterday. Since this snow system seems to be moving so fast, it may not be able to get as much moisture as it needs to build into something bigger, like we had last weekend. So most areas will probably only get less than an inch.

With the amount of snow we have had this winter, you would think that we would have some of the highest levels of snow in the country, but there are still other places that have gotten a lot more than we did.

Graphic Courtesy of The Weather Channel - http://www.weather.com/

As you can see in the above snow coverage map, Eau Claire is in the middle area when it comes to how much snow we have. Even though it is hard to imagine, there are still a lot of areas with a lot more snow than us! Let's just be glad we're not them. :)