2012

Friday April 13th, 2012

Greetings and welcome!

It has been a dry couple of weeks since the snow melted down. We are still under very high fire danger as a result. The DNR still has all burning prohibited, but you can have a camp fire..

Due to fire weather conditions, burning is NOT allowed today.  Therefore, burning in barrels, debris piles, and grass or wooded areas with your annual permit is prohibited.  Campfires, though strongly discouraged, are permitted if used solely for cooking or warming purposes, but please use extreme caution.

They have been battling wildfires the past week including one that burned about 70 acres before they got it under control. I have also seen a few scorched properties where smaller fires got away. Do be careful with your fire.

Hopefully the rain expected later today and over the weekend will help that. We are expecting a line of showers later today. Saturday looks pretty nice, followed by rain Saturday night and later Sunday. Saturday looks like a decent day of around 70 degrees. Saturday night could bring rain (90%). Sunday looked ok until later in the day, but the NWS left a 50% chance in the forecast. For the most part the weekend weather will be dominated by warm air in front of a storm for Sunday night into Monday. There are also rain chances later next week.

Today marks the opening of ATV trails in Marinette County. It is unusual for them to open before the first weekend in May, but the ground is dry and firm, so they went ahead with it. Surrounding counties might not be open yet, so be aware of where you are riding and of trail opening dates.

The leaves and grass are progressing toward summer foliage. More trees are starting to bud or show leaves. It isn’t like it is in pictures that I have seen downstate where the leaves are already pretty full, but it is definitely ahead of normal. The grass is pretty greened up, but at my house does not need cutting yet. That might change after some rain.

The early melt and lack of rain has not been helpful for Spring whitewater rafting. The rivers are still a little above where they would be in Summer, but they are pretty low. Again that will change with some rain.

Moving with the changes, Kosirs Rafting started the whitewater rafting season a couple of weeks early this year on the Peshtigo River. They are continuing to do so as they open up rafting on the Menominee River next weekend. Usually that river doesn’t open until Memorial Day because spring runoff can take it past it’s max safe level of about 5,000CFS up to 20,000 and beyond. This year the river is ready to go early, and Kosir’s will be on it. Call ’em to book your trips and make reservations.

I don’t have any events listed for this weekend. That will change soon. Ads in the paper are starting to advertise early spring events and reopening of places focused on Summer activities. There are also more Help Wanted ads than I have seen in a really long time.

That is going to wrap up my update for today. I will be back next week with the latest info. Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Sunday April 8th, 2012

Red Flag Warning

Extreme Fire Danger-No Burning Today

From the DNR-

Due to extreme fire conditions, a Red Flag Warning has been issued today.  Under this warning, burning is NOT allowed.  Therefore, burning in barrels, debris piles, and grass or wooded areas with your annual permit is prohibited.  In addition, you should not start campfires, use fireworks, smoke outdoors or dispose matches, ashes, or charcoal briquettes into the outdoors.

From the NWS-

URGENT – FIRE WEATHER MESSAGE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE GREEN BAY WI

917 AM CDT SUN APR 8 2012 …

RED FLAG WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 1 PM CDT THROUGH 8 PM CDT THIS EVENING FOR WIND AND LOW RELATIVE HUMIDITY… .WEST WINDS ARE EXPECTED TO BECOME RATHER GUSTY BY THIS AFTERNOON AND CONTINUE INTO EARLY THIS EVENING. COMBINED WITH LOW AFTERNOON RELATIVE HUMIDITY IN THE 20 TO 25 PERCENT RANGE AND VERY DRY FUELS…WILL LEAD TO CRITICAL FIRE WEATHER CONDITIONS THIS AFTERNOON.

WIZ005-010>013-018>021-030-031-035>040-045-048>050-073-074-082230- /O.CON.KGRB.FW.W.0001.120408T1800Z-120409T0100Z/ VILAS-ONEIDA-FOREST-FLORENCE-NORTHERN MARINETTE-LINCOLN-LANGLADE- MENOMINEE-NORTHERN OCONTO-MARATHON-SHAWANO-WOOD-PORTAGE-WAUPACA- OUTAGAMIE-BROWN-KEWAUNEE-WAUSHARA-WINNEBAGO-CALUMET-MANITOWOC- SOUTHERN MARINETTE-SOUTHERN OCONTO-

917 AM CDT SUN APR 8 2012 …RED FLAG WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 1 PM THIS AFTERNOON TO 8 PM CDT THIS EVENING FOR WIND AND LOW RELATIVE HUMIDITY FOR NORTHEAST AND CENTRAL WISCONSIN… * THE AFFECTED COUNTIES ARE…VILAS…ONEIDA…FOREST… FLORENCE…NORTHERN MARINETTE…LINCOLN…LANGLADE… MENOMINEE… NORTHERN OCONTO…MARATHON…SHAWANO…WOOD… PORTAGE…WAUPACA…OUTAGAMIE…BROWN…KEWAUNEE…WAUSHARA… WINNEBAGO…CALUMET…MANITOWOC…SOUTHERN MARINETTE AND SOUTHERN OCONTO. *

WINDS FROM THE WEST 10 TO 20 MPH WITH GUSTS UP TO 35 MPH. * RELATIVE HUMIDITY FALLING TO AS LOW AS 21 PERCENT. * TEMPERATURES RISING TO IN THE MID 50S. * IMPACTS…FIRES COULD START VERY EASILY AND SPREAD AT A FAST RATE. BURNING RESTRICTIONS ARE LIKELY IN EFFECT. FOR MORE INFORMATION ON BURNING RESTRICTIONS…VISIT THE WISCONSIN DNR WEBSITE AT HTTP://DNR.WI.GOV/TOPIC/FORESTFIRE/RESTRICTIONS.ASP. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS… A RED FLAG WARNING IS ISSUED WHEN CRITICAL FIRE WEATHER CONDITIONS ARE EITHER OCCURING NOW…OR ARE IMMINENT. A COMBINATION OF STRONG WINDS…VERY LOW RELATIVE HUMIDITY…AND EXCEPTIONALLY DRY FUELS WILL CREATE DANGEROUS WILDLAND FIRE CONDITIONS.

Note that the DNR link in the NWS post does not work. This page is where fire danger and burning restrictions are listed..

http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/ForestFire/restrictions.asp

Friday April 6th, 2012

Greetings and welcome!

As you have probably noticed I have been taking a little time away from the web site after the daily updates over the Winter. I will be back to twice weekly updates when things pick up going into the summer season.

We have been having pretty seasonal weather over the past week. We have had some warm sunny days in the 50s and 60s, some hard frost and freezes at night, and generally pretty normal weather. What we haven’t had is the normal dealing with the frost-out mud, melting snow, and the usual Spring challenges that come when you don’t have 80 degree weather in mid-March. I can’t say that I am mad about it.

We have not had much rain and the world has not greened up all of the way yet so we are dealing with high fire danger right now. The old vegetation from last year is very dry, and combined with unpredictable Spring winds it is not hard to start a wildfire right now. Do be careful with your fire.

Parts of NW WI are under burning bans right now. That means no grilling, no camp fires, no burning barrels or brush burning, and even no smoking outside. We are not up to red flag conditions yet, but we are still at high fire danger here in NE WI.

The greening of the land has slowed down since our weather went back to more normal temperatures, but it is still progressing. Some trees are getting pretty many leaves, others remain mostly bare or have buds. The grass is mostly green but does not need cutting just yet.

I haven’t seen any mosquitoes this week at all, but the cat did manage to bring in a grand total of two wood ticks. I haven’t heard any frogs in the pond since the big cold wave ended our July in March weather.

There have been a lot of deer along the roads this week. Maybe it is my perception of it, but they seem dumber than usual. I have had them double back in front of the truck, wait until the last second and bolt in front of me, and even one that didn’t want to move. Keep an eye out for them if you are driving around.

ATV riders got some unprecedented good news this week when the Marinette County Parks & Forestry Department announced that the ATV trails will open next Friday. Normally it is the first weekend in May, this year it is Friday April 13th.

Date: April 3, 2012
From: John Scott, Forestry and Parks Administrator
Subject: ATV Trail Re-opening

The Marinette County ATV Trails will re-open Friday, April 13, 2012.
The trails have been closed for spring breakup and because of downed
trees/branches.
Thank you for the help in protecting the soft trail base.

An Important Reminder:
ATV riders on the Iron Snowshoe ATV trails in the Butler Rock area of Marinette
County which connect into the Oconto County summer only ATV trail system at the
county lines- need to be aware that Oconto County’s ATV trails won’t open until
May 1st and closes Oct. 31st each year.

The ground has firmed up nicely. The back roads that I travel are all dry and firm as is the driveway. You can actually travel forest roads and get into remote spots again with only the occasional soft spot.

Being Easter weekend there are not any formal events. Kosir’s has their official opening day of whitewater rafting tomorrow, along with their annual first weekend special where you can raft on the 10am trip and run again at 2pm for free.

Beyond that I would look for the Easter Sunday buffets at places like Jungle Jims, Hilltop, The Peshtigo River Resort, and the Twin Bridge Resort.

With the lakes open and the water warmer than usual people have been asking if fishing was open yet. The last that I heard we still have to wait for the first weekend in May for gamefishing to open. You can still go for the panfish and the early trout season might still be open, but don’t be going after the walleyes and bass just yet.

Shameless self promotion.. The recent past has found me very busy as a computer tech. There were quite a few virus extractions and file recovery jobs, and a couple of upgrades where I took laptops and put in solid state drives.

I am a huge fan of the SSDs. This week I took a laptop that took amost 6 minutes to start up and had it doing a full restart and connected to WiFi in a minute. I run a SSD in this computer and will never go back to the old hard drives, not even my enterprise SCSI 320 stuff.

Keep me in mind for those SSD upgrades and virus extractions, not only am I very cheap, I am very good at it. I also set up networks and WIFi, and can help with networking your DSL or long range WiFi for the campground or resort. A little known factoid.. I started this web site in December of 1998 as a celebration of surviving a year building and selling computers on the net. I have been at it a while.

Well I am at the end of my topic list, so I am off to dive into another full Spring day. Have a good week and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Friday March 30th, 2012

Greetings and welcome!

The great outdoors is white this morning. We had a decent sized storm come through last night and give us between an inch and two inches of snow on the ground. As of lunchtime, a lot of it is still there, but it won’t last long.

I had a pretty good idea that it would snow last night. When I was coming home from work the sky was mostly clear, but the moon had a hazy halo around it. That usually means that there are ice crystals in the upper atmosphere, and I expected that we would see snow by morning.

The weekend weather looks a little more inviting. Saturday we are looking for low to mid-50s and a cloudy day. The NWS put a minor chance of sprinkles in the forecast for afternoon as a warm air mass reaches the area in advance of an early week storm. There is nothing showing up for precip in the models, so don’t worry about it too much.  Sunday looks nice with temps in the mid-60s.

This past week was a little bit of a rude awakening when the temperatures dropped from thirty degrees above normal back to about where they should be. The 70s and 80s were easy to get used to, but were way out of the normal variability for this time of year.

Weekend events..

This is the weekend of the giant 10 Bar indoor mini-golf tournament. The bars around Twin Bridge and the High Falls Flowage each have a mini golf hole set up and you go place to place to golf the course. The tournament starts today and goes through tomorrow. Saturday night the score cards need to be back at Caldron Falls Bar by 7, where they will give out awards, prizes, and door prizes.

The other big thing going on this weekend is the second weekend of preseason  rafting with Kosir’s. We will be hitting the river again Saturday and Sunday. It looks like the river is running at about +5.

Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!

RJB