1. 2. 3. Northern Wisconsin Weather: Sunny today, overdue April Precipitation & Winter Wrap-up. 4. 12. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 23. 24.

25. 26. Sunny today, overdue April Precipitation & Winter Wrap-up. 27. 28.

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After some overnight rain showers, a beautiful sunrise with clear skies.

I took this picture (
to the right) at 7:00 looking east over the front deck and across the valley. The sunshine already felt warm and I swear the grass looks greener this morning than yesterday.

0.29" Port Wing, Bayfield Co.
0.15" Bayfield 9 mi N, Bayfield Co.
0.06" Madeline Island, Ashland Co.

I measured only 0.04" of rain in my gauge that started at 16:10 yesterday afternoon. In Houghton, MI, Jack reports 0.15" of rain fell at his location with a brief thunderstorm.

Satellite imagery shows clearing from the west.

The low pressure and frontal boundaries are exiting east into Lake Michigan, allowing drier air on light northwest winds to move into the state, clearing out the clouds and allowing the sun to shine!


This satellite screenshot (to the left) comes from UW's SSEC and was taken at 7:15 this morning.

The clearing is forecast to continue pushing across the rest of Wisconsin by this afternoon.

Looking ahead through the weekend.

This clipped screenshot (to the right) is from my local NWS office and shows forecast high & low temperatures through Sunday with rain chances.

Today looks wonderful, Thursday doesn't look bad with a few possible thundershowers later in the afternoon.

NWS Duluth's discussion highlights a trough of low pressure that is forecast to move across the region on Thursday evening, bringing chances of showers through Friday night. Unfortunately, this rain threat looks like it will not produce significant amounts of rain, which we need. Fire danger remains in the Moderate category across most of Wisconsin, according to WI-DNR's Fire website, but Vilas and Oneida counties have been upgraded to High.

Last month's precipitation summary: April 2008.

Looking back at my rainfall totals, what a wet month! I received over 200% of average - I measured 4.86" of liquid (rain & melted snow) while we usually see about 2.29" total.

Despite the huge amount of liquid, it did not cause any problems, and was actually welcomed to help the recovery from a two-year drought that ended over the winter here. Without a continuing wet pattern, we have fears that the drought may return.

April 12th was the last time we experienced a major snowfall, 10.4" here with strong winds off Lake Superior warranted the Blizzard Warning that was issued by the NWS in Duluth.


Winter 2007/08 snow summary.

With the threat of snow finished for the season, I wanted to post my snowfall totals (to the right) for each month before I delete them from my blog's right-hand column.


This winter was a little above-average in terms of how much snow fell - average is between 60 and 70", while I measured 90.0" at my location.

December and April stand out as being months that were extra-snowy, although, every month totaled above-average snowfall except September, October, and May.

Some numbers from this past winter.

These are just some interesting numbers that I kept track of throughout the snowy season (
to the left).

The first snow fell on November 7th, but didn't stay on the ground until two weeks later.

The deepest snow depth didn't occur until the end of winter, 21.6" deep on April 1st.


The snow finally melted off the ground on April 23rd, giving me 155 days of having snow covering the ground.

And finally, the last snowflake fell from the sky on May 3rd.

Length of Winter.

The blog author and weather observer of OSNW3, in Oshkosh, WI, and I worked on a quantitative definition of the first & last day of winter, based on snow and temperatures.

I clipped the definitions that we came up with (
above) from OSNW3's website. "Several consecutive days" has been set at 6 days by OSNW3, and my ground observations indicate that 6 days may work well for my location in northern Wisconsin too.

Graphed duration.

This graph (
to the left) is completely OSNW3's labor, credit where it's due, and shows the Length of Winter definition applied to my weather data (OSNW3's duration graphs can be found here).

My first day of winter began on December 2nd and ended on April 28th, a total of 148 days.

This compares well with the 155 days that there was measurable snow on the ground, my snow pack lasted one week longer than winter itself. In addition, the following day, the First Day of Spring by our definition (April 29th), was when my first daffodils began blossoming (a picture in this post). I'm pleased with how well our definition experiment worked.

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