Observations for Thursday, April 7th and Friday, April 8th (With some observations of Sunday's "mega storm")

The conditions on Thursday and Friday were much of the same, with really fair temperatures prevailing and increasing wind speeds throughout each day.  On Thursday at 3:00 pm, the temperature was a comfortable 62 degrees with a dew point temperature of 25 degrees, giving us a relative humidity of 24%.  Winds were growing to their strongest at that part of the day, with speeds of 10 MPH from the south/southeast.  Skies were very clear and present all day.  Friday, as stated earlier, was much of the same.  Skies were clear for most of the day, and at 3:00 pm, the temperature was 62 degrees with winds coming from the east/southeast at 9 MPH.  These really pleasant temperatures were really only a precurser to what was to come during the weekend.  On Saturday night and throughout the day on Sunday, a massive spring storm developed over the midwest that was to produce large amounts of hail, rain, and pretty much everything else imaginable.  Though the storm passed through Eau Claire with little damaged, the same cannot be said for other cities in eastern Wisconsin.  The supercell storm will continue to get stronger as it heads east.

Observations for Wednesday, April 6th, 2011

In Joe Hupy terms, today met the threshold for "nice," with temperatures at the time of my observations a balmy 52 degrees with calm winds.  It was really gorgeous out all day, and only a few clouds hung in the sky.  The dewpoint was 27 degrees.  It looks like I was right in predicting the increasing temperatures throughout the week, and I would expect it to continue.  A recent development that I've been watching is the water level of the Chippewa river.  It seems to be getting pretty high, and the NOAA does a great job of explaining it on their website (link in links tab).

Observations for Tuesday, April 5th, 2011

Today was an absolutely gorgeous day out, but a bit windy.  At the time of my observations at 9:00, the temperature was still 46 degrees, and the wind had died down.  The dew point was 26 degrees, giving us a relative humidity of about 46%.  There really weren't too many clouds in the sky today, but when there was, they were mostly cirrus clouds or humulocumulus clouds.  The warmer weather is likely due to the fact that the wind speeds have changed direction and are now coming from the south at 6 MPH.  This warm trend will likely continue throughout the next week or so.

Observations for Monday, April 4th, 2011

It was quite hard to get out of bed this morning, as it was incredibly gloomy outside so the sun could not wake me up like most mornings.  Needless to say, it felt like quite the lazy morning.  At the time of this observation, the actual temperature was about 43 degrees with very strong winds blowing from the NNW at 22 MPH sometimes gusting to 31 MPH.  Due to the strong winds, it really didn't feel like it was 43 degrees outside, and it felt more like 30 degrees.  It's also been drizzling here and there, further adding to the cold feeling outside.  If we take a look at today's weather map, we can see that there is a low pressure system almost directly to our northeast, which is likely leading to our gloomy weather.  There's also an extremely strong cold front crossing over the midwest to the northeastern states, with strong storms right ahead of it.  This is interesting to note, because the jet stream is quite similar to the trend on the current weather map.  I would expect it to get very sunny out within the next few days, and warmer temperatures will follow.

Observations for Friday, April 1st, 2011

Friday was yet another day where we experienced more wet snow falling from the sky, which obviously made things quite sloppy outside.  At 4 pm, the temperature was 37 degrees, with winds blowing from the WNW at 11 MPH.  The northwest winds helped bring in the precipitation, and they also helped to bring in really cold winds for most of the day.  It looks like we might experience some off and on precipitation for the next few days, which is unfortunate.  On a side note, check out some of the new photos I took over spring break that are posted under the photos section!