September 2011

Friday Sept 30th, 2011-Part 2

Greetings and welcome!

I took a ride to ‘Downtown’ Silver Cliff and up Parkway to see what the wind and rain had done. There were not many trees or branches down, and the ones that were down were already on the way when the storm hit.

Some of the red maples lost their leaves, so those have come and gone, at least on the big ones. The rest of the fall color is nice. There were a lot of pine needles on the road.

Maybe there was more damage in other places. In my travels it looked like the area weathered the storm very well.

Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Friday September 30th, 2011- Part 1

9:24am

Greetings and welcome!

It ended up getting pretty windy later last night. A look out the front & back door shows no damage, no branches down, and plenty of color still in the leaves.

We did lose power last night, I’d guess at about midnight. It only took a few minutes to get the generator going, and the trip for generator gas yesterday afternoon paid off, sort of. By the time that the first tank of gas was burned the lights came back on.

The news reported at one point that an estimated 40,000 people lost power. A quick check shows that there are still about 26,000 people out, with about half around Door County. They show about 4,500 out in the Wausaukee and Waubeno areas as of 9am.

The best that I could tell from the morning news was that we saw 35-40mph gusts. Door County, Green Bay, and Algoma all reported gusts in the high 60 mph range.

The TV last night was advising people to stay off of the big bridge in Green Bay, and if you had to go on it they were telling you to slow down. I was once on that bridge when it was high winds, and I saw a small meat truck ahead of me go up onto two wheels and almost tip over. It was pretty close.

So far the worst of the storm around here was losing cell phone service and my  cellular based Internet overnight. The cellular service went dead about 10 minutes after the power went out, and came back up at about 8 am.

That left me wondering about the wisdom of getting rid of my land line in favor of the cell phone. So far it has been ok, but had there been an emergency last night I would have been out of touch for 8 hours. That would be bad if a guy like me that lives alone had a medical problem.

Anyway, so far it does not look like there is a lot of storm damage right around the house. I will be going for a ride after breakfast to see what the rest of the area looks like.

RJB

Thursday September 29th, 2011-10pm

Greetings and welcome!

We have high wind warnings and advisories out tonight. So far it hasn’t been too bad around my house. Athelstane Weather is showing  10-25mph winds with the max gust of 34mph at 6:46pm. The 9pm news reported similar numbers.

There are some power outages as trees and branches fall on lines or lines blown down. Here is a WPS page that shows where the outages are by zip code. So far the lights have stayed on here, but they have been doing a little flickering.

It looks like not all of my neighbors are as lucky. The top outage area is 54114. That is from Crivitz west to about Crooked Lake and north to about Caldron Falls Flowage. That area is a big zone, and as of 9:30pm, 2396 people are out of power, 33.90%. Sometimes those numbers are deceiving as they cut areas off to effect repairs more quickly.

I will get a better handle on any damage once the sun comes up and I get out to take a look around. So far it doesn’t seem too bad. There were a couple of good gusts, and a fair amount of sustained wind, but other than a few things blowing around, there is no damage here at my house.

The fall colors are close to their peak. The early bright red and yellow maples are there. A lot of trees and brush are just coming into peak color. It was very pretty on Chris’s ride out from Crivitz today, and on my ride for gas for the generator this afternoon.

The rain and high winds aren’t helpful for weekend people seeking peak color. It might help drop some of the early leaves, but a lot of the trees just coming in should be able to take it. Again I will get a better idea of what it looks like in the morning, but I am pretty sure that this weekend will still be a good show of color.

The rain from the cut off low and from this storm have been adding up. We have seen about 2 3/4″ of rain in the last two weeks, and about 1.5″ since Monday according to the USGS gauge by Kosir’s.

Today’s storm had a lot of energy associated with it, and in combination with high pressure behind it, the storm will be bringing in a big shot of cold air in from the north. We are expecting a cold night Friday night, possibly into the upper 20s.

Saturday and Sunday look pretty nice. We are expecting a mostly clear weekend with a high of about 55 Saturday and 65 Sunday. With clear nights and a cool air mass, expect crisp nights in the mid-30s.

There is a warming trend coming on the other side of the big high pressure, and next week looks very nice with temps getting up to about 70.

Good news came in about the German Sheppard that was found. The owners weren’t found, but a good home for him was. Very nice.

Dan P asked about the status of the Parkway Rd construction (Hwy I) north of Hwy C. I haven’t been up that way in a week or so, but it was pretty much finished other than some landscaping along the sides and maybe some shoulder work. The road is striped and complete. It is very nice and it is a vast improvement over the goat path that it was before.

The new road ends just past where the ATV trail crosses by Wolfe Lane. The way that I understand it, they will continue to do segments moving north toward Goodman Park.

Have a good night and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Tuesday September 27th, 2011

Greetings and welcome!

We can add last weekend to the list of weekends that didn’t turn out quite the way that the forecast went. Saturday we had a 20% chance of rain and Sunday and Monday a 40% chance (scoff).

We were in Mountain at a horse trail ride and outside most of the day Saturday. It sprinkled on and off and wasn’t too bad until about 3pm. The waves of rain started getting heavier, and eventually it turned into a steady rain. Areas south of 64 saw more heavy rain early, and eventually it made it’s way north.

Sunday and yesterday we got more rain, and not just sprinkles. The USGS gauge by Kosir’s shows 1.5″ of rain so far, and most of it coming Saturday through today. The automated rain gauges don’t always do well with light rain, so I would expect the total in the old fashioned bucket or tube gauge to be a little more.

So what happened? In order to explain that, we have to know what a cut off low pressure area is. The long and short of it is that we had a low pressure system that was not part of the main flow of the northern or southern jet streams. It was more of an eddy between them.

Cut off lows are hard to predict (obviously). Like a hurricane low, it kind of wanders around anywhere it wants to in a manner that is hard to anticipate. Our cut off low has been camping over us for over a week now, and that is starting to get into the unusual category.

As this storm sat over the southern end of Lake Michigan, it circulated the light and very occasional rain showers that we had last week. It was supposed to amble off to the east and leave us a nice weekend. That didn’t happen.

One of the features of a cut off low is that it doesn’t have much moisture to work with. One of the reasons it is cut off is that being between jet streams, there isn’t a lot of moisture flow into the storm. That changed over the weekend when our cut off low found a Gulf of Mexico moisture tap. At that point the storm got more intense, and we saw a lot more rain and even a few thunderstorms.

Things should get better this week. The storm has pinwheeled out, and is not producing as focused of an area of precipitation. That should leave us with more time between rain showers. Eventually a storm coming out of the northwest is expected to move in about Thursday and bump our cut off low back into the main flow and off to the east.

The storm for Thursday will again bring rain, but it is not expected to linger for a week. It does look like it will intensify as it goes through our neighborhood, so rain is a good possibility. What has my attention is the cold north wind behind it for Friday. The isobars on the model are tightly packed, so we could see some wind, and it is straight out of the north.

It is a fairly fast moving storm on the GFS model, and it is quickly followed by a big area of high pressure. Initially the high pressure’s clockwise flow will aid in bringing cold air out of Canada, but as it progresses east, that same clockwise flow will bring warm air from the south for later in the weekend and into next week. Friday’s high temp might not reach 50, Saturdays looks like 55, Sunday 65, and Monday could go almost 70.

Naturally the timing is everything with this scenario. If it comes faster than expected (my hunch) then we could be in for a beautiful weekend. If it comes slower than expected it could be a cold one, and even a little rainy.

When I was checking the USGS rain gauge I noticed that last year was pretty wet right about now too. We had an unusual amount of rain last fall, and last weekend in 2010 was when the Peshtigo River got up to something like +24″.  It up to a + 2 or so now, from about -2, and it will rise a lot in the next few days. I am not sure what to expect, but my wild guess is for +6 to +12 by about Friday.

Yesterday I was thinking about little observations that I have made over the last decade. One is that I can’t look at October and say that I have 4 weeks, or 5 days next week to work outside. October weather can be a wild ride. Apparently that applies to late September too.

The fall colors really came in late last week and over the weekend. A lot of the really vivid early stuff, particularly in the maple family, has really gotten nice. Some of the underbrush is going yellow, and a lot of trees are either in color or getting close. It is very pretty around here right now, and there is more to come.

Last Wednesday someone posted a notice on a stray or lost dog on the Community Bulletin Board page..

A very friendly, obviously cared for German shepherd was picked up this afternoon running loose on Hwy. C (the part of C that goes to Wabeno) about 1/4 mile from the C & F intersection. The dog was wearing no collar. If this is your dog, or you have an idea who may own it, please give Scott, the town constable, a call.

No one has claimed the dog, and now it is urgent..

There has been no word yet on this dog. I don’t know if anyone actually reads this page, but if someone’s out there, please spread the word! The dog will only be held until the 29th.

If you are looking for a nice dog or kicked one out of your truck, act soon.

Events..

For the snowmobiler this weekend is the Wausau snowmobile grass drags and swap meet. It is the biggest snowmobile swap meet in WI, and they have the grass drags plus ATV and tractor pulls too. I haven’t been there in a few years, but it was worth the ride when I went.

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

RJB