2010

Thursday September 30th, 2010-PT1

Greetings and welcome!

It is about 10 minutes before a very busy day comes at me. I won’t be around for the afternoon report, so the plan is a short version, followed up later with more details.

When I was out last night just after sunset, it looked like the fall colors were really going off. It was hard to tell for darkness, but I could make out a nice patchwork of colors. I have to guess that we will have prime colors for the weekend. I will be taking a camera along in my travels today, one of the reasons for a two part report.

The weather for the weekend looks Fall-like. Our weekend weather will be dominated by a cold high pressure system coming out of central Canada. It will be the first major push of sub-32º cold air at the upper levels of the atmosphere this fall.

The action starts about Friday with a cold front and a little rain possible Friday and Friday night. The rain chances stretch into Saturday on the NWS forecast, but I have some doubts.

As the cold side of a big high pressure system blows cold air over Lake Superior, the warm waters will cause some lake effect showers. The UP could see their first snow flakes this weekend and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them here too. That same lake effect is expected to bring our chance of scattered showers.

The reason that I have my doubts Saturday is that at the moment the winds don’t looks strong enough to push the rain this far south off of Superior. It happens, but usually in the context of 30mph winds that carry it a long way. The winds are predicted to be about half of that, at least right now. In that light, places that see lake effect snow, Like Vilas Co, are more likely to see rain.

My guess is that we will see a cool day with N or NW winds and plenty of clouds blowing by. SOme could bring a quick shower. I like unsettled as a description.

Night time temps are an interesting challenge to predict too. The upper atmosphere will be plenty cold enough to put us into the 30s, but the expected cloud cover could moderate temps a little.

We are expecting a frost or freeze, and the clouds will be the key to that. If it stays cloudy, my guess in that it will go into the low or mid-30s Friday and Saturday night. If the clouds part and we get a lot of radiational cooling, hello 20s.

I am looking for upper 40s Saturday with some wind, and as usual, Sunday looks nicer. Look for clear weather and low 50s.

We have some fun events for the weekend. The bars up and down Parkway are having a mini-golf tournament where each bar sets up their own unique home made mini-golf hole, and people go bar to bar to put-put golf. It was a lot of fun last year, and people were looking forward to it being held again. OK, here is round 2.

Thornton’s is also having a poker run hay ride that day. The hay wagon goes to the bars on the poker run. It was out of hand fun a couple of years ago when we went.

There is also a big Fall Festival in Wausaukee Saturday. They have a lot going on there. Here is the official list from Chris..

Whitewater folks- The rivers are STILL running very high and very much above normal. The Peshtigo is probably about at +18 right now and not falling too fast. It was +24 last Saturday. Normally it is -5 or -6 right now. It is very unusual to have this high of water and not have ice on the sides of the river. Get it now r get it in 7 months when it is ice water. Hmmm.

I was also made aware that the Rapids Resort has a special with big discount on their cabins between now & gun hunting. Give them a call.

Chris & I were planning on hitting some waterfalls this weekend. We will see how that works out, but it would be a good call.

Well I am 20 minutes late now so I have to run. I covered most of the important stuff, I will be back later with some fall color pictures.

Have a good week and thank you for visiting

RJB

Tuesday September 28th, 2010-Paddler’s Alert!

Greetings and Welcome!

It is very abnormal for me to start today’s report with whitewater related stuff, but it has been a very unusual year.

The rain last week really brought the area rivers up, and they are staying up. The Peshtigo River peaked at about 24″ last Saturday night, but has NOT fallen much. By my estimation, it is still running at +20 or +21. Not only did paddlers not have to raft in April  icewater to get the big flow, the river was beautiful with fall colors.

The normal level right now is about -5″. The +24 level was probably the highest water of 2010, the previous record was about +13″ in June when it rained for like a week straight. There is still time, but it seems unlikely that we will break last weekend’s level by Dec.

The rain was not lost on the other area rivers. The Menominee River was at about 7.5′ when the rain came. The next day it shot up to 10.75, over a 3′ rise in one day. Five days later it is still at 9′. That river is setting records at Niagara where the gauge is 17 years old. Upstream at the Twin Falls dam the gauge has been there since 1914, and the 1951 record still stands.

Chris and I are going to try to get out and see a few waterfalls late week to try to catch them while they are so full.

All of the area rivers are way above normal. As I told the river guys, the rivers will be staying up for a while. If the swamps and bogs are so full that it went that high, it will stay up for a while. It also bodes very well for big water in the spring runoff season.

The fall colors took a beating with the rain and wind last week, but were still nice for the weekend. Some of the nice early maples got knocked down, but there is another color wave right behind them. We should have good color again this weekend.

A look ahead at the weather proved interesting. We have a little light rain coming for Wednesday into Thursday, and after that the forecast is mostly clear.

There will be a little precip in the region for the weekend, but it looks light and scattered, and at the moment we are not in the path of it. It does look like a chilly weekend. Saturday looks like the upper 50s and upper 30s, with Saturday night in the low 30s and Sunday around 50. Based on upper air temps, there is a good chance that a few places in the UP and the northern Lower UP could see their first snowflakes of the year over the weekend. According to the GFS, we will see ours somewhere between the 10th and 15th of Oct.

We have some good events for this weekend. These really snuck up on me. The hayride was really fun when we went a few years ago. The indoor mini-golf is fun too, with each bar making their own creative version of a put put golf hole. The fall festival sounds great too.

Here are a few rafting pictures.. Click a picture to make it bigger, then hover your cursor over it to click to the next one.

Right now is a time that I call the fall squeeze. There are a million things to do that are time sensitive, like getting dirt moved, the roof patched, and firewood cut. Also on that list is stuff for getting snowmobiling web sites up and running for the year. That and a wave of new business has me really hopping. It is a great place to be, but a little challenging. I am off to dive into the challenge head first.

Have a good week and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Fri 9/24/10 Paddler’s Alert-Area rivers go HUGE

Greetings and welcome!

We did not get a lot of extra rain in the rain bucket overnight. My official total is 4.25″.

Four inches of rain plus soggy ground has brought the rivers up even beyond my expectations. I predicted that the Peshtigo River woould be over +12″ this morning, and it was. It is still rising and is in the 16-18″ range as of 8am Friday, now breaking 1,000cfs.

I would not be surprised to see it in the 20″+ range for Saturday and Sunday. The water we are seeing now fell between about here and Goodman Park. The water from where the watershed reaches north of Hwy 8 and west almost to Crandon is not here yet.

The rain hit the Menominee River too, and near Piers gorge where they raft it is running at a huge 7,290. Usually they stop rafting it at about 5,000, it is just too big for commercial trips. Put it this way.. the Menom came up THREE FEET since about dinner yesterday.

According to the NWS forecast, we are in good shape for the weekend. Look for partly cloudy and about 60 Saturday and add a few degrees for Sunday. Look for lows at night around 40.

It is a very windy day outside today, but the skies are clearing. You almost have to expect that big wind when there is a 20 degree temperature difference on either side of the storm. It is expected to calm down for the weekend.

Because weather related updates pushed Tuesday’s report so far back, here is a copy n paste of this weekend’s events.

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

RJB

Thursday Night Update

Greetings and welcome!

My travels today were interesting with the big rain storm. On my way back from Green Bay the rain got really heavy about where 141 goes back to two lanes between 64 & Crivitz.

There was a lot of rain down and big puddles were throwing me around. Anytime that there was a low spot in the road, it was full. A its worst 141 was like driving in wet snow, with the car pushing through the water filled lane ruts.  Some of the more contoured side roads produced some big puddles. A couple caught me off guard and produced spray well over the truck. (yeeha!)

Skeptical or not, I was ready for this storm with the rain buckets. One was a big serving pan 3″ deep. It didn’t measure up, it overflowed. Checking the 5 gallon bucket I had exactly 4″ as of 7:15 Thursday night. There is more on the way, but the really big stuff is past.

Click the picture for a bigger view..

With 4″ of rain there were low spots flooding and some full ditches. There were some erosion tracks in gravel roads.

Driving over the Peshtigo River bridge it was obvious that the river was way up, and quickly heading for bank full stage. It would not surprise me at all to see that up to +12 and 800cfs by morning. There should be a lot of private boaters around this weekend.

They will be well rewarded not just with the highest water levels of 2010, but with some outstanding fall color. The early maples are in their glory in Silver Cliff right now. The really bright red ones are bright and full, the purple ones are prime, and here is plenty of bright yellow and orange.

The leaves varied a lot in my travels They were actually farther along in Green Bay than they were in Pound or Coleman. There was a noticeable increase in color heading west of A on C. As I progressed past the Silver Cliff line they were really nice, and again with the area around Parkway and C and west to F.

The early fall colors are here, and I like the early ones a lot. There is a tree down the road that is purple on the outsides of the leaves and still green inside. Those are prime early leaves.

The heavy rain today did take down some leaves, but they held up pretty good when I was out late afternoon. There will be good color for the weekend.

We have winds coming tomorrow behind the storm that could go 15-30, possibly up to 40mph in gusts. Because it is so early in the color change, hopefully the leaves will stick around. The color change has come on quickly this week.

Between the fall colors and the high rivers, this might be a great time to visit some of the Marinette County waterfalls. When the falls are full like this they are majestic and powerful. The fall color is just frosting on the cake. It is probably a once in a few decades opportunity to catch them with this much water in fall.

There isn’t much to report for wildlife. I spotted a few turkeys playing by the road along A south of C. The rest of the critters were smart enough to get out of the downpour.

Looking at this storm through the purely speculative lens of what if it were January.. This storm would probably have been a lot of rain for us. The low is expected to track over far NW WI, and the best snows come when it tracks between Chicago and Milwaukee. We would have been in the warm sector for most of the storm. It would not have brought a lot of snow, but a lot of rain, and maybe a really bad ice storm, depending on conditions. What if..

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

RJB