2010

Thursday April 22nd, 2010

Greetings and welcome!

It is a cool and sunny day. Yesterday’s wind and high temperature of 55 was downright cold after Tuesday’s high of 77. It got even colder last night when it went into the mid-teens.

Tuesday night when I was out I noticed that the moon looked strange and eerie. It had an orange/brown glow that reminded me of a harvest moon. My guess is that it was the volcanic ash in the atmosphere giving it a little tint. It was one of about 10 times Tuesday that I cursed myself for not bringing along the camera.

The weather for the weekend is a coin toss. It might rain or might not. There is a decent sized rainstorm coming to the state. The question is if our invisible force field will leave us watching the rain from 20-30 miles away, or if it will actually break through and sprinkle on us a little. The forecast models have been flip flopping about it all week, and offer little meaningful guidance.

With a 50/50 on the models, I am going to go with a dry forecast based on our recent weather patterns. I am guessing that some rain will make it to about Hwy 64, with a slight chance of a little rain breaking through Saturday night or Sunday. If it does, it won’t likely be much. Look for highs in the upper 50s to low 60s with a little wind Saturday (E 10-15mph) and lows in the upper 30s or low 40s.

Spring is continuing to spring early. Now many trees and brushy plants  are starting to show early green leaves. The cherry trees are starting to bloom, and I have several that are well flowered already.

They had a bit on the noon news that Door County has some worried cherry growers. A few years ago the blooms came early like this year, and a subsequent cold wave froze the blossoms. It wiped out almost the entire cherry crop. Last night probably wasn’t good.

Tuesday was a nice day so I took advantage of it and went and made a load of firewood. It was actually hot when some of the hard work came, and I found myself sweating a little. That seems unusual for the third week in April.

The gnats came out Tuesday afternoon and were just getting a little pesky when the day started cooling off. The bug of the day was the wood tick. Chris came along on the firewood run, but mostly stayed by the truck helping load what I had cut. She ended up with two wood ticks, my count was 9.

One thing that I couldn’t get over was how dry the woods was. The grass and leaves were crunchy underfoot they were so dry. I was very watchful of where my chainsaw muffler was pointing, my smoking, and the hot exhaust on the truck not contacting any dry plants. It was a real tinder box.

Fire danger is either very high or extreme right now. Depending on the wind, temperature and relative humidity, I would not be surprised to see extreme fire danger warnings or even red flag warnings posted. It is very dry, and it only takes a minor spark to get a wildfire going. Be very careful with your fire, cigs, and even where you park the car.

When fire danger is high, usually the rivers aren’t. All three whitewater rivers within an hour of here are running very low. So far it looks like the Wolf River has it the worst, it is running almost 20cfs lower than it has on this day in the last 43 years of watching.

Thankfully we have the Menominee River to raft on. The bigger dam controlled river has mandated minimum flows to keep the river ecosystem healthy, and that helps us by keeping the rafting fun no matter what. That is the recommendation this weekend for whitewater. You can run the Pesh, but it will be on the low side.

Kosir’s started running trips on the Menominee River last weekend. Usually they don’t start the Menom until Memorial Day because it gets so huge in spring. The Pesh is low and the Menom is low enough to run, so why not? It is great having options.

I do not have any events listed for the weekend. There is a band coming to Curve Inn May 1, the Hammer Down Band. Later in May the events start picking up.

One last item, an OT (off topic).. NASA has a new instrument up in the heavans called the SDO or Solar Dynamics Observatory.  It has resolution x3 that of Hi def TV, and it has started sending back some pretty neat images. Here is a link to one that I think is the best so far. It is a 6MB Qucktime movie of a solar coronal mass ejection or CME. Cool stuff.

That is about it for today. Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Monday April 19th, 2010

Greetings and welcome!

I have a lot on my plate this week, and it looks like it will get hectic, so I am starting off with a Monday report.

The weekend was nice but very windy. Friday was supposed to be the windy one, but Saturday came up with 15-30mph winds that put a chill in the air. Sunday was nicer.

It was also cold at night over the weekend. The clear skies let radiational cooling and the cold front from late last week have their way, and overnight temps plunged.  The NWS in Rhinelander doesn’t show anything under 33 over the past few days, but Athelstane Weather was in the 20s. I am inclined to agree with the local source. When I got home late Saturday night, it was 58 in the house. This morning there was frost in the field.

In spite of cold nights and a little wind it was a fun weekend. The DPOD group was up at Kosir’s. After coming there every year for decades they have a good time down to an art form. They had fun on the river and off, and it spread to the people around them too.

If you were driving down Highway C last weekend, you might have encountered some people doing a highway clean up. That would be our local 4-H Club, the Silver Stones. Cool stuff guys, thanks!

Speaking of working along the roads, the county continued work along Parkway North, also known as Highway I. They have been cutting trees and brush along the road and opening it up. Since it became a county highway they are improving it.

They widen roadsides for a number of reasons including being able to see wildlife before you meet them with the grill of the car. Also very desirable, it lets sunlight hit the road making sand and salt operations more effective in winter. Right now they have it cleared about two lanes wide on each side of the road. You don’t want to drive there though, there are a lot of stumps that will soon be hidden by the foliage.

A lot of people have asked about improvements to the road itself. I am not privy to the exact timing of it, but the last that I heard they want to eventually improve it initially up to the Goodman and McClintock Parks. The road is just over 20 miles long, and it would cost  lot to pave it. More likely they will do it in sections, with the above mentioned section the priority.

In the great outdoors Spring is continuing to spring. I noticed that the popples are starting to get the first green leaves to their crown. It is a delicate haze, but unmistakably leaves. The grass is now almost fully green in the yard. I have seen a few moths and other flying bugs as new species emerge. The nasty bug award remains with the wood ticks, which are atypical in April. Not this year. They are not June thick, but they are increasing.

Our drought continues with no obvious end in sight. The week looks dry. There is a slight chance of rain Saturday night and Sunday, but it is questionable. The models have been consistent with showing the force field of high pressure saving us from the evil rain as it has for the past few years and keep the majority of the rain south of Hwy64.

I keep expecting it to turn around as the El Nino declines, but it just isn’t happening. The El Nino is declining, and the forecasters expect it to return to ENSO neutral conditions by summer. The problem is, it is not showing up on the forecast maps. The 16 day GFS continues to show the ridge of high pressure from the north repelling any chance of storms. There was a good storm showing up for about May 4th, but oops, no. It vaporized on the next update.

Between the last couple of drought summers and the snow poor winters, water levels in area lakes and rivers are at or near record low levels. It isn’t something that an inch or two of rain will fix anymore. We need a protracted storm and a wet period to turn things around.

I do believe that it will eventually happen. We are not headed for desertification, but rather a change in the cycle.

Some of you have been made privy to my trees in the swamps theory. If not, here we go. The way that it goes is that by my observation that swamps around here have a lot of dead trees in them, and the dead trees are all about the same size, maybe 4-5″ in diameter.

As the theory goes, those trees were rooted and killed all about the same time. Presumably that would be related to precip patterns over a longer time scale where in drought times like the last 5-10 years the trees root and grow in the dry swamps. When the cycle turns around, those same trees find their roots under 2′ of water and die off when the swamps and lakes refill with the increased precipitation.

The best that I can tell is that it is about a 20-30 year cycle, which would loosely coincide with the PDO, the Pacific Decedal Oscillation. The PDO is on roughly a 30 year time scale. I have not done the leg work to correlate them yet, but the timing is somewhat paralell. We did just come out of a warm phase PDO and into a cool phase.  That end of it remains a hypothisis.

What gives me hope that it will turn around is that the new trees growing in the dry swamps are almost as big as the dead ones. If my theory holds water, the rainfall should be gradually increasing in the coming years, and our surface water tables will again rise to kill them.

Maybe you guys can contribute to or comment on this theory. I’d be interested in some input and discussion on it.

As far as rafting goes, Kosir’s and the other outfitters are running trips regularly. The Pesh is low at about -3″, not the end of the world, but low.

The Menominee River is bigger and dam controlled, and doing a little better at ~1,000cfs. It looks like Kosir’s will be starting trips on that river this coming weekend. Normally in April it is a huge torrent, and too high to safely raft. The record for today is something like 18,000cfs, and generally 5,000 is about the limit for rafting it. Since it is runnable, the weather is nice, and the Pesh is getting low, they are opening the Menominee to give people more choices.

Speaking of rafting, I put a video on You Tube over the weekend. It is at this link, or go to Youtube and search for Riversport Digital.

I have not heard about when Kosir’s will start renting the flat water stuff. Last year they started tubing trips on non-whitewater stretches of the Peshtigo River. Later in summer they introduced canoes and sit on top kayaks that you can rent and paddle on Caldron Falls Flowage.

Personally I thought it was a great expansion. It brought families with children too young to challenge the whitewater back, and gave others that might not be inclined to the whitewater new and fun activities.

I will try to track it down, but I’d expect that they will be starting up as soon as the water is warm enough to play in without a wet suit. That shouldn’t be long with no snow melt and warmer than normal weather.

Speaking of summer stuff returning, it looks like the Big Bear Outpost will be opening again May 7th. They will be open Fri-Sun, and will again have the ice cream and camping supplies.

In the weather department we have a pretty normal week ahead. Today and tomorrow we should see mid-upper 60s, with the balance of the week on the 50s. There is no rain in the forecast until the weekend, and as we discussed above, that looks doubtful. As tempting as it is to start gardening, resist, low temps are still in the 20s and 30s. Clear nights will bring cold temps and frost as usual. Our normal last frost date is about June 1, though personally I would say 6-10.

The ATV trails reopen this weekend. That comes a week early thanks to dry conditions and minimal frost thanks to a warm and dry El Nino year. Other than that I don’t have anything for events until May.

Thanks goes out to Neal H, who gave me some much needed encouragement this weekend. Thank you!

That is about it for now. I will try to return and add some pictures of Spring springing. In the meantime, have a good week and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Thursday April 15th, 2010

Greetings and welcome!

It is a cloudy and warm day with 15-25mph winds. Checking in with Athelstane weather I see that they have us at the high of the day with 77.4 degrees. The NWS is showing 75 in Iron Mountain and the Accuweather is only showing 72. It did just snow 3-5″ a week ago, and now it is pushing 80.

There was a line of showers that came through last night at about 2:30 with about 20 minues of moderate rain. There is more on the radar between here and Rhinelander as a cold front approaches.

That passing cold front should replace our above normal temps with more seasonal temps and clear weather for the rest of the week and the weekend. Our normal hi/lo today is 52/29. Yesterday we were at 73 and 40, and today you can add a few degrees.

Friday looks windy like today as the front moves away. Saturday should calm down a little with the winds and bring sunny weather with low to mid-50s. Sunday looks nice and a few degrees warmer.

Not much time has passed since our last visit, so I don’t have a lot to report. Yesterday the big excitement was a yard clean up followed by a trip to the dump. A full truck and almost full trailer cost something like $13 to leave it at the landfill. I was very happy to get rid of all of that junk, and there is another load coming as soon as I can spend a little time on it.

The push right  now is to clean up anything that will be overgrown once the ferns and berries start coming in. It is a lot easier to clean that up now.

The snow last week and the occasional rain this week have started greening up the land. The grass is coming in nicely, and more and more trees are starting to bud up. I saw a mullen yesterday that was well along and as big as a dandelion.

Messing around in the yard yesterday I encountered a few gnats, but they were not bad. I did collect my first two wood ticks that stuck, including the first belly button tick of the year. Considering where I was working it isn’t even a little surprising. In June that would be a nest of them.

It was a little unusual to have ticks on April 14th, but the El Nino bringing an abnormally warm and dry year have a lot of stuff in the great outdoors ahead of their time.

My guess is that we are close to two weeks ahead, and will have an unusually green start to May. Some years it doesn’t green up until early or mid-May. My famous beech forest picture with the emerging leaves from 8 or 9 years ago was taken the weekend before Memorial Day.

In the tech department I have updated the Ubuntu page with the latest. Yes I still like it.

Also of interest, in the process of getting ready to sell the helmet cam I snapped together a few clips of rafting action from it to put out on U-Tube. It turned out pretty cool for an hour project. I ran out of time yesterday, but once I get it uploaded I will link to it.

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

RJB

Tuesday April 13th, 2010

Greetings and welcome!

It is a chilly cloudy day in the high 40s. The little bit of rain that came last night could visit us again late this afternoon with another brief round of showers.

Yesterday and last night’s rain was mostly a radar event. The radar showed it raining for a good bit of the day, but it never made it to the ground. A few hours after sunset it picked up into a mist, and overnight got going enough to get the ground wet.

Once we get through today’s cool and damp weather we are into a nice day for tomorrow. It should clear up and get up to around 70, a nice change from today’s 47.

Thursday another line of showers threatens to bring us a little rain and a temperature drop from the 70s to the mid-50s for Friday and the weekend. That Thursday line of showers should be it for the week and weekend, replaced by mostly clear weather.

The rain has helped a little. It has served us to keep fire danger reduced and to at least give emerging greenery at least something to drink.

Based on what I have seen we have a pretty significant rainfall deficit. As you saw, my pond is pretty low, and area lakes and rivers are too. It isn’t someting that will go away in the short term, at least not with sub 1″ per week rainfall.

Talking about it over the weekend, I suggested that we would need a protracted stormy pattern, a cut off low pressure system that sits over us for a week, or maybe a tropical depression or hurricane remnant to soak us. It is nice that we are seeing a shower here and there, and encouraging that the storms are actually getting close to here. It is still a ten dollar payment on a million dollar loan. It took a couple of drought summers and low snow winters to get here, I don’t expect it to heal overnight, and certainly not at a half inch a week.

On the other side of it, my El Nino (ENSO) research last night found that the El Nino is expected to return to neutral conditions any time now. The actual time frame was between March and June. It is in decline, but not gone yet. In theory with the passing of the El Nino we will see more storms come this way and a chance at more normal rainfall. By my observation, the transition out of an El Nino can be a stormy period. All is not lost.

Some of the forecast models had us going into a La Nina phase later this year. As one forecaster pointed out, it is a little early for that. At this time of year the ENSO models are at their lowest skill due to the time frame looking ahead nine months. It wouldn’t surprise me though.

Spring continues to spring, but there is a little lull in the action. The grass is greener and is growing actively from the recent showers. There is a willow down by the pond starting with emerging leaves. Both a tick and mosquito were spotted, though neither one got blood or was common. Some insects by the river started emerging. Tom turkeys were again easy to spot the past few days.

Here are some pictures..

There is not much on the event calendar. The only thing that I have is an NRA banquet this week. After that it is pretty quiet until May.

There was an interesting e-mail today from the County. It looks like ATV trails WILL open early this year, and the SUTV/UTV program is moving forward. Here is the press release..

————-

From: John Scott, Forestry and Parks Administrator
Subject: ATV Trail Re-opening
The Marinette County ATV Trails will re-open April 23, 2010. The
trails have been closed for spring breakup and because of downed
trees/branches.
Marinette County is participating in a Pilot Program that will allow
Utility Terrain Vehicles (UTV’s) to use all designated all-terrain
vehicle trails and routes in Marinette County. This Pilot Program
will end on June 30, 2012.
UTV riders must register their Utility Terrain Vehicle at any
Department of Natural Resources Service Center to be allowed on the
Marinette County ATV trail system.

—————-

So.. a week from Saturday the trails open. That is unusual. As long as I have been reporting them it is usually the first weekend in May. I did notice that the trails by my house had been groomed last week.

Well as usual the clock is ahead of the list of stuff to do, so it it is time for me to scamper off and get to work. Have a good week and thank you for visiting!

RJB