April 2011

Friday April 29, 2011

Greetings and welcome!

Just a couple of quick updates..

It looks like the Peshtigo River is going to peak out at +17. Not to worry, people over the weekend will have a great ride whitewater rafting. I don’t expect it to go down much. Based on the swamps that I saw yesterday we will have above normal water levels for a while.

Saturday looks decent with a windy day in the upper 50s. Late in the day and overnight we are expecting some rain. It is expected to clear up by Sunday, which is expected to again be windy, but only in the upper 40s.

We have an event for the weekend.. Saturday from 3pm on Fisher’s Camp is having a big party with a meat raffle, drink specials, and a VIP drawing for a pontoon boat rental. Sounds fun.

Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Thursday April 28th, 2011

Greetings and welcome!

We are having a rainy misty day today. There is some precip coming out of the north and the radar is showing it starting to come as snow. That doesn’t match up with what is on the ground, but I wouldn’t rule it out. This was a strong storm and there will probably be a little cold air mixing into the back of it.

The series of storm that hit this week devastated the southern United States with severe weather. There were literally hundreds of tornadoes and according to CNN, the death toll is about 250 at the moment.

We were fortunate to have mostly wind and rain out of it. The wind got pretty strong at some point.  There is a dead lead that came off of one of my maples and it landed probably 20′ from the tree. There is not a lot of widespread damage or anything like that, it was a dead branch. I am not mad that it landed in the wood yard, its ulitmate destination anyway.

One way that the storm hurt me was with my sinuses. The pressure changes brought excruciating pain Tuesday night, Wednesday wasn’t too bad, and today it is again painful. I have a hunch that the maple pollen being high has something to do with it, the little red flowers are coming out. Looking at my Facebook friends I am not the only one hurting.

The rain from Tuesday added up. Most of the USGS stations in the area are showing about an inch. Usually my rain bucket reads about double what they read. The NWS in Rhinelander reported 1.75 inches, breaking the record held since 1902.

The Peshtigo River did indeed come up. Right now it is at about +17″. I am expecting one more little bump out of it based on what the Wolf did, and it could hit +20 tomorrow. People coming to paddle the whitewater this weekend will have great water, and likely the highest water of the Spring.

People getting a head start on the weekend by coming Friday will be rewarded with high water and a great sunny day in the mid-60s. That is a rare combination. Use your sick days wisely as the old T-shirt goes.

Saturday looks like it will start out ok with temperatures heading for the mid-50s, but there is some wind and a line of rain coming in for later in the day and overnight Saturday night. The storm looks like it will bring 1/4-1/2″ of rain and clear out for Sunday. The NWS has Sunday for partly cloudy and in the upper 40s. Nights might be a little brisk with overnight lows in the mid to upper 30s.

Yesterday we had some excitement when Angela Kelly and Doug Higgins from Fox 11 WLUK in Green Bay came to Kosir’s to go rafting. They were taping a segment for the Get Away May contest where you can call in and win prizes. Those prizes include a family 4 pack for rafting and an overnight stay at Kosir’s and the Rapids Resort.

It was a little brisk yesterday morning when they headed out n the raft trip, but they were troopers and stuck it out in good spirits. The guys from Kosir’s gave them a full featured ride, slamming the side curler at First Drop and just burying the boat not once, but twice. They did great until they tried to surf the bottom wave, at which point our morning anchor team took a swim. After the trip they came back to the Rapids to gather up helmet cam footage and I gave them a disk with pictures from the trip. They were all very nice and it was great to meet them.

Spring is trying to spring, but the weather has been unusually cold this year. This week  some of the first leaves started emerging on  some of the soft hardwood trees. I am not sure if it is the cottonwood or poplar or what. I noticed it driving by and haven’t looked it up yet. The first couple of mosquitoes were spotted and swatted Monday, but it has only been those few. Apparently they aren’t big on today’s rainy 40 degree day. As I mentioned before the little red flowers on the maples are out too.

Based on our delayed start I expect Spring to come full force in the next few weeks. There should be a lot of fast changes once the weather gets a little nicer.

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

RJB

 

 

Tuesday April 26th, 2011

Greetings and welcome!

It is not a very nice day outside today. Like the rest of the Upper Midwest we are getting the wind and rain of a very large storm. Some places are reporting as little as 0.5″ by Fon du Lac up to an inch and a half in Shawano.

The radar returns are showing 2-3″ south of here, but with so much rain between here and there reflecting the signal, the radar is not showing our area or the watershed well.

Here in Silver Cliff I would guess our rainfall at the moment to be in the 1.5-2″ range and growing. It has been a steady series of waves of moderate or heavy rain.

At some point around noon the power came back on based on the flashing clocks. I wasn’t here so I am not sure if it was an outage or just a brief blink.

The TV weather channel 2-2 is showing a 24 hour temperature drop of over 20 degrees for most of the area. Athelstane Weather is showing a 23.3 degree difference. It was very nice out yesterday, today is a sharp contrast to that.

Last weekend I predicted that the Peshtigo River would stay steady or maybe bump up a little. It bumped up a little and gave people that came whitewater rafting a really fun river. People had a great time. I will have a photo gallery posted on the Facebook page a little later tonight and linked into Kosir’s page.

The whitewater rafting section of the Peshtigo River will be wild this weekend. Right now it is running at about +12″ and rising very quickly. With a couple of inches of rain today and more coming, I am going to start my water level prediction for Saturday noon at the 20-30″ range. If were to go for a specific number I’d guess 24.

I have it from a reliable source that the ground up in the watershed is still soggy from the frost coming out, and there are even still patches of snow in the woods. With a couple of inches of rain running off quickly from the already saturated or still frozen ground, the rain goes right to the river and makes it rise quickly. That is what Spring whitewater rafting is all about.

If you are into whitewater rafting, this looks like the weekend to go. The rain has fallen and it is a *sure thing* that the river will be big and fun and worth the ride from IA, IN, MN or IL. This is most likely the biggest weekend of the year for water levels.

We will see the river rising as the week progresses. With a long narrow watershed it takes 2-3 days for rain in the upper watershed to get here. That times out well with Friday and weekend rafting trips catching the big push of water from the storm. We will see an initial push from the local watershed, but the big rise should come Thursday-Saturday. Here is a link to a page that I made many moons ago about the Peshtigo River and its watershed. http://www.silvercliff.com/rafting/rafting2.html

There is another storm showing up on the models for later this week. It is sort of an unusual scenario, so I am not taking it too seriously yet. If it happened as shown, we would see more rain for Thursday followed by a warming trend for Friday and Saturday and a possible storm for the second half of the weekend.

Well, duty calls, so I have to cut this a little short. I am planning on coming back later with some weekend pictures. Have a good week and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Friday April 22nd, 2011

Greetings and welcome!

Thursday turned out to be  a pretty nice day. It does not look like today will be. There is rain moving in as I type this in the late hours of Thursday night. We are expecting off and on showers Friday followed by more Friday night.

The total expected on the storm is in the 1/2 to 3/4″ range, with expected totals going up 1/4″ as you go northwest toward Rhinelander.

The best part of it is when the rain clears out Saturday morning and leaves us a nice weekend. Saturday should be getting better as it goes, with a little wind and a high of about 50. Sunday looks great with partly cloudy skies and a high chasing 60º.

Rafting with Kosir’s should be fun this weekend. The river is running at about a +10.5 and should stay about there or maybe even go up a little. That is a cool level because you can take a raft or a funyak.

It is usually a fairly quiet weekend Easter weekend, but rumor has it that there will be a couple of fun groups around. According to the Facebook page for Kosir’s..

The Peshtigo is hanging tough around +10. Get some winter camping in: this weekend Kamping at Kosir’s is FREE!! And rafting trips are $10 off!!!

The snow from the storm this week didn’t last long. I don’t think that it made 2″ here, and the sun ate it quickly in open areas. It didn’t hit us for very long, and when it did, it was landing on warm ground. We might have had 2-3″ but it never added up to that.

The ground around my place is firming up nicely. I worked outside yesterday in tennis shoes both in the wood yard and down by the work shed. Wednesday I took a walk back by the creek in similar footwear and did fine. It is still soft in sheltered areas, but most of my travels were on moist but firm ground.

While I was on the way out there I opened up the well house and shut down the heater and heat tape. Wednesday night we got into the mid-20s and it made me a little nervous, but it was fine. I will welcome the $30+ drop in the monthly electric bill.

While I was out there the friend that I was with brought back the first ticks of the year. It is a little early but I can’t say that I am surprised. My back field is tick paradise in May and June.

Hooray an event!

Saturday April 30th 3-9pm Fishers Camp -Our first V.I.P. drawing (pontoon rental for a day) and Meat raffle with other party favors given away.

The only lake that I have seen since Monday is Waubee, and as of this morning it was still socked in with ice. It has opened more along the shore and the open area in the middle has grown considerably. It won’t be long. When I went by last Sunday the upstream part of Caldron was open, as was Landing 11. There is still ice on the lakes, but similar current and sun prone areas are probably open.

One last little note.. there are now links to the Kosir’s blog and Facebook pages as well as my Riversport Digital page in the Whitewater Rafting section to the right with the moving raft animation.

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

RJB