Thursday means it is time for a drought update. As I expected, this is the week we see the big change in the official drought statistics for Wisconsin. It has been raining a little extra this month, but due to the nature of how the Drought Monitor is calculated, there is usually a lag between the time the rain falls and when the drought map starts to look a little better. 
The extreme drought has disappeared and all of the other categories have shrunk. Hooray! Now if we continue to experience regular rainfall through the month of September, perhaps the drought will completely disappear. I doubt this will happen. It usually takes at least 2 or 3 months to recover from a severe drought. Also, after Friday (tomorrow), it doesn’t look like much additional rainfall is on the way. We might have a week or so of dry weather. This will make for some fabulous early Fall weather next week but it will not be good for blasting away the rest of the drought.
Alternative Energy:
Following the alternative energy news brings a lot of emotional ups and downs. Depending on how you look at it, we are heading for a new era of clean cheap energy, or we are headed for a time of tribulation with declining fossil fuels and nothing viable to replace them. Right now, alternative energy makes up a tiny percentage of the world’s energy production. Wind and solar power are intermittent in nature and finding a hard time breaking through to the big time, not only because of cost, but because of logistics. Here is a good discussion of the remaining hurdles when it comes to installing the “smart grid”. It doesn’t help when either when you have stories about solar panel starting on fire.
If fossil fuels remain relatively cheap, there is little hope the increasing amounts of solar or wind power (or geothermal and nuclear for that matter) will be installed. Here is an article about how solar prices are coming down due to a glut in solar module supply. This could be taken as good or bad news. It makes solar power cheaper to install (although still not very close to fossil fuels), but it also might force some solar companies to go out of business or reduce research and development due to lack of cash.
The good news is that technological breakthrough are happening every day. Perhaps one of the breakthroughs will be a big one (in solar) and produce a radical increase in efficiency. (Maybe adding nanospears to solar cells will help) If you are wondering where some of these breakthrough might come from, check this list of research centers and companies in the alternative energy field. Even without big breakthroughs, there are many ways that we are increasing the efficiency of the world economy. More than ever before, human society is creating more products and services using less energy. I came across this article about the potential for automated cars. This has been talked about for decades but only now do we have the sensor and computer technology to make it a reality. I know many people have a deep-rooted distrust of computers driving cars, but not me. The vast vast majority of cars accidents (deadly car accidents in particular) are caused by human error. Mechanical failure to the point of causing an accident is rare. Not only that, to come back to the efficiency point, computerized cars will get better gas mileage because they will drive in a more orderly manner. If you can’t wait to get better gas mileage, you could always download this app for your smart phone and learn how to hypermile. Subway system, trains, and even airplanes, are already highly automated. It is about time our cars followed suit.
In other news, taxis in Tokyo will become the first large scale test of the electric car/battery swapping idea developed by Project Better Place. With 60,000 taxis in Tokyo, it should be a great place to start. Taxis also tend to operate out of a central location so it will make it easier to place battery swapping stations. The only problem is that currently only one car company in the world makes an electric car with a battery pack that can be swapped.
The great solar race in Australia is coming up soon. Here is a profile of another team (Stanford University) entering the race. Interesting how all the top cars look the same. I guess if you want to beat the champion, a good place to start is to copy their design.
For those who like the cuteness of the Smart FourTwo car and are hoping to drive an electric, it looks like you will have your chance. Smart is producing a limited number of Smart Electric FoirTwos this Fall. They won’t be available for the general public until 2012.
Have a good Thursday! Meteorologist Justin Loew.