Friday, April 27th Obs & Sat, April 28th Obs/Report

Friday April 27th Weather Observations
Observed at Phillips Hall on the UWEC Campus & Walking around Water Street
Eau Claire, WI 54701
Woke up early, wind was out of the East at 10-15MPH.  Sunny conditions at 9AM, cloud cover 0%.  Temperature cool but nice with the sun shining.  Temperatures in the mid 50's (F) for the most part of the day, with a high cloud deck of patchy, scrappy looking cirrus clouds moving in around 2PM.  The breeze out of the east took more of a Southeasterly pattern at this time too while still blowing at 10-15MPH.  At this point I was just wondering when the rain would be coming.  It seems like I've posted this alot but when the wind has been out of the East and the cloud cover has been increasing throughout the day it has been a precursor to bad weather this semester.  The temperature did not drop off very hard during the evening hours as the cloud cover increased to near 80 or 90% by 10PM.  These overcast conditions kept the surface more "insulated" than usual moderating the temperatures somewhat for the first part of the night before the rain came.  I was walking home from a friends' at about 1/130 (somewhere in there), and it began to drizzle and lightly rain on the last two blocks of my walk.  The breeze had calmed down right before the precipitation began, and then once it did begin the wind must have been gusting to 20-25MPH for short periods of time. 

Saturday April 28th Weather Observations
Didn't wake up nearly as early this morning as last haha. Pretty gloomy outside so far today.  Overcast conditions, cloud cover 90%.  Dark grey, mid-level stratus mostly from what I saw.  Light winds at 5MPH out of the E-ESE again...I found the current conditions image to be quite interesting especially for our location here in Eau Claire (see below)

As you can see there is what looks like a small band of precipitation just barely south of Eau Claire at the moment (less than 30 miles).  High pressure to our NE in Ontario represents the sunnier conditions that we saw on Thursday and early Friday.  Now this pressure has moved east and a couple of low pressure systems are found to our South and West.  The system to our south looks as though it could develop some strong storms if the cold front keeps moving east (closer to the high pressure in Florida, and the warm/moist Gulf air).  Getting back to the precipitation band, it stretches all the way from Northern N. Dakota over to the western edge of Pennslyvania. UWEC Rooftop Temperature was 45.5F at 2:20PM CST.  Conditions are supposed to continue to be overcast which judging from the wind direction and my outdoor observations that the cloudiness should continue.  It will be interesting to see whether or not this system strengthens over Eau Claire or if it will just dissapate and fizzle out.  I'm banking on the latter, I think that the low pressure systems will not be close enough or quick enough to strenghten the small bit of precipitation that we might see today.