June 2010

Thursday June 3rd, 2010

Greetings and welcome!

Wednesday was a cloudy and cool day with temps in the mid-60s. After some inside work I took advantage of the cool day and went on a firewood run. I missed the last few weeks due to either hot weather, the holidays, or being busy. It felt good to make another load of wood.

On the way there I spotted a skinny little fox running across the road in a spot where I don’t usually see them. It was a different one than I saw a mile east of there last weekend, so I will guess that one or some of the local dens had some reproductive success recently.

On the way to the wood yard I got a few sprinkles on the windshield. I knew that there was rain coming, but I expected that it would be light or virgo where it shows up  on radar and not on the ground.

I was hauling big cut off stumps 100′ or so to the truck, and eventually 4′ lengths of 6-12″ wood to process later and split. The focus was on oak for the splitter, the big stuff. It was a grade A workout.

I had a pretty nice pile going by the truck when the skies opened up with a steady medium rain. It felt really good, I was working hard and it cooled me off nicely. Eventually it started fouling my safety glasses and I took a break in the back of the truck for a while.

After 20 minutes or so it was obvious that it was not going to abate, so I went back to work. It was probably good that the rain stopped me from cutting and hauling, the wood that I had already piled was about max capacity for the truck. She was sagged good and I could feel the load when I tried to stop or go.

I got pretty wet but it felt good. The end yield was a dozen or so 18-24″ diameter stump cut-offs, plus enough 6″ plus diameter wood to fill it to the top, all oak. The adventure was Repel free, but I encountered no mosquitoes, and only 4 wood ticks found me, two of which got a little lunch before their demise.

I knew the rain was coming, it wasn’t a surprise.  I told Chris that it could end up like Tuesday’s rain where it just stopped raining before it got here, I am going to go cut wood and see if something good happens. It did.

It was not a lot of rain, probably a couple of tenths of an inch. It was a steady soaking 2 hour shower though. It should make all things green very happy. It did make a few little puddles, but was not enough to get to runoff.

A look ahead shows something very different from what we have been seeing in the weather. The models are showing a strong jet stream over us between now and about Wednesday of next week. That should bring us some rain as a parade of storms and disturbances come in succession down the great river in the sky.

Right now it looks like there is a dandy storm for about Friday that is currently shown bringing us 0.5-1.0″ of rain on both the GFS and NAM. If that times out right, it should clear out just in time for a decent Saturday.

After that the timing on the storms becomes difficult to call. The next disturbances should come about Saturday night, Sunday evening, and about Tuesday. QPF numbers vary a lot, but it looks like the Friday night, Sunday night and Tuesday storms are expected to bring the most rain.

How to call the weekend is a toughy. The jet stream scenario makes timing the storms a challenge. It will be a cloudy and cool weekend, but will the rain time out for us to get good days? It looks promising right now, but a minor shift in timing could change a lot.

As I was sitting in the back of the truck watching it rain it was amazing how many shades of green that there were in my view. As  more and more flora get their leaves the numbers of shades and variances almost rivals a fall show. It also occurred to me that with the ferns now well along finding my oak would be more challenging. NBD, I have plenty scouted out.

Something else that I contemplated was that this was not the drought of the past few summers any more. There were stretches of six weeks at a time between rains the past few summers. Here we were seeing rain from two out of the past three storms, and there are 4-5 more rain producing storms on the 16 days GFS that might actually hit far NE WI.

A couple of storms is not the end of the drought, but it is a start. We are not falling behind any more, and if it keeps up, we could be on the path to catching up. It is not uncommon for us to see a good bit of rain in early June in a normal year. The fact that we are seeing the early June rain this year is very encouraging.

The first weekend of June brings some good events. First of all, it is free fishing weekend. You do not need a fishing license this weekend to fish in WI.

An event that is not listed is that it is a free parks weekend in Marinette County this weekend. Most of the parks and waterfalls require a $3 daily tag or an annual sticker to enter. This weekend you can go and see what you have been missing for free. We do have some exceptional parks and waterfalls in Marinette County.

Well that is about it from here. Have a good Thursday and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Tuesday June 1st, 2010

Greetings and welcome!

The weather for the big holiday weekend worked out pretty well for the most part. The exception was Sunday night when a thunderstorm rolled through and stayed a while. The storm brought thunder and lightning but was benign with the winds. It rumbled and rained for a few hours.

The rain gauges between here and Iron Mountain are showing between 1/4″ and 1/2″. That seems low to me. I could hear the rain pounding on the roof for quite a while in some of the good downpours.

Monday started off a little cloudy and gave way to a very nice day. Monday night around the campfire a cold front came through and dropped temps 5-10 degrees immediately.

Today we have another nice day, but it is already clouding up a little in advance of the next storm. That is expected to come tonight into tomorrow.

After that the weather forecasts start getting less clear. The models are not in agreement on if we will have a mid-week storm behind tonight’s, and on the timing of the storm for Friday or the weekend. In the case of the midweek storm, the GFS says that it will stay downstate, the NAM has it coming our way a little.

The weekend goes the same way. The GFS is showing a storm coming Friday and Friday night, and the precip done by Saturday morning. The NAM has it timed out about 24 hours later with rain still on it’s way here Friday night, and rain for Saturday and Saturday night, and lingering into Sunday.

The NWS seems to subscribe to the latter scenario, leaving a chance of rain in the forecast all weekend.

I think that the whole thing needs to stew a little and get another look once some consensus starts forming.

The weekend seemed to go pretty well. There were pretty many people around to do all of the fun things that we do around here. It was not as crowded as some years, something easily blamed on the economy and high unemployment. There were still a lot of people around.

From what I heard the sit on top kayaks and tubing at Kosir’s was a smash hit last weekend. Apparently a lot of people tried it out and loved it. Both are very fun, but I am partial to the sit on tops and exploring the Caldron Falls Flowage.

The first weekend of June brings some good events. First of all, it is free fishing weekend. You do not need a fishing license this weekend to fish in WI next weekend.

An event that is not listed is that it is a free parks weekend in Marinette County this weekend. Most of the parks and waterfalls require a $3 daily tag or an annual sticker to enter. This weekend you can go and see what you have been missing for free. We do have some exceptional parks and waterfalls in Marinette County.

There was a lot of discussion about the drought over the weekend. I am not sold that we are out of the woods yet, but I think that we might be heading that way. There was actual rain for more than 10 minutes last weekend, and all of the forecasts have more. The HPC QPF is for an inch of rain this week. The GFS which can be a little excitable (convective feedback) does show several large rain producing storms possible over the next two weeks.

The words of encouragement that I had for people was to consider the plight of Atlanta. Last year they were in crisis as the drought drained their reservoir. Since January they have had enough rain and snow to raise Lake Lanier levels 7′, half of their deficit from normal levels. That is a lot of change in six months.

I am also hoping that we are at the bottom of the cycle or coming back up.  In my research last night I encountered a dam that has been measuring flow for 96 years. The previous low flow record was in 1958 was 815cfs, and today’s flow is a record shattering 450. That is fairly significant.

I see some hope ahead. The dreaded El Nino is fading into memory. There are some other teleconnections in flux, and it looks like we are in for a strong hurricane season. Sometimes played out hurricanes from the Gulf of Mexico travel up the Mississippi River Valley and end up giving us a few inches of rain. Sometimes they get cut off and bring more.

The downside to that is that we could see rising gas prices as the summer progresses. A significant amount of our gasoline infrastructure is near the Gulf of Mexico and vulnerable to hurricanes.

That is about it from here. Have a good week and thank you for visiting!

RJB