2012

Tuesday June 5th, 2012

Greetings and welcome!

It is a spectacular time of year in Silver Cliff. When I was down by the river over the weekend there were dragonflies, damsel flies, butterflies, birds, and other critters like squirrels and chippies.

On one trip I caught a really cool picture of an osprey. An osprey is a fish hawk or fish eagle that can have a wing span of up to six feet. I guessed this one at 4+. It flew over the river from behind me casting a huge shadow and it very briefly landed on the dead tree. I grabbed the camera and found a window through the trees, got a focus, and click. It all happened in about a second and a half, but I brought it home. Here is a picture, and it is sized to 1,200px wide so it could be a desktop background or print. Cool stuff.

I am still trying to get a handle on what is up with the mosquito population. I had a couple that tried to bite me back in March, and until last Saturday that was it for the year. Even with all of the time that I spend in the woods and by the river, the bite tally is up to seven. I remember writing in March how I hoped all of the breeding stock would wake up in March and get killed when winter returned. Maybe I got my wish. I wished the same thing about the wood ticks, but those we have a healthy population of.

This is about the time of year that the deer start having fawns. I was thinking that aloud last weekend, and sure enough a couple of hours later I heard about the first one. Hopefully I can get more pictures like this one that I got in ’05. (Also a free desktop background..)

There was some wildlife in the river too. The river wasn’t very high, but people were having a blast.

It was also the weekend of the great save. There were two instances where the guy was for all practical purposes in the river, but somehow recovered.

Both of those guys recovered. Amazing. Here are a couple that didn’t..

The weather this week sounds like summer, and there is a hot weekend coming up. Today and tomorrow we will be in the 70s with a minor chance of showers or a pop-up thunderstorm. We had a little rain already today up in Forest and northern Oconto County. Friday/night brings a minor chance of the same type of weather. Thursday and Friday temperatures start trending up into the upper 70s, and we should be in the mid and upper 80s for the weekend. The GFS is showing a chance of a shower or storm for late Saturday into Saturday evening, but the NWS doesn’t have it in their forecast.

Here are the events for the weekend so far..

That is about it from here. If you are driving around keep an eye out for those wobbly legged fawns, it is that time of year. Have a good week and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Friday June 1st, 2012

Greetings and welcome!

It has been a cooler than normal week. I doubt that we hit 70 for a daytime high temp this week, and there have been cold nights that required the starting of the wood burner. Last night and the night before we had mid-30s for low temps, and the NWS put out frost warnings.

The weekend looks better than it sounds again. There is a storm that is progged to go south and east of us, and then bump into high pressure and come back this way. It doesn’t look like a nice weekend for the lower UP of Michigan as the storm hovers over them most of the weekend. Fortunately for us, we are expecting to be on the far west periphery of the rain, and mostly only in danger of a passing shower or two.

There are a couple of ways that this could play out. We could have the forecast model solution as mentioned above. My guess is that it won’t back up quite as far as shown, and it will have a minimal impact on the weekend. Scenario three is where it packs up an extra 150 miles and we see a steady light rain. I will be ready for rain this weekend, but I don’t expect much of it.

As far as temperatures, the NWS is looking for low 60s today, mid-60s Saturday, and mid-70s Sunday.

The event calendar hasn’t changed since the early week report. At that point I am off to jump into what looks like a very busy day. Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting.

RJB

Anyone ever run into a bug that looks like this? It was probably 1-1.5″ long. I don’t recall ever seeing one before.

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Wednesday May 30th, 2012

Greetings and welcome!

We had a pretty good weekend considering everything. The forecast of rain Saturday night and Monday worked out, and we ended up with a decent Saturday, Sunday, and early Monday.

The rain Saturday night was pretty heavy as I mentioned in my Sunday update. The USGS gauge by the Peshtigo River measured about 1.5″.  Sunday morning another wave of storms came through with a lot of lightning and about another quarter inch of rain.

The lightning hit some power lines and took the area out of power at about 8:30am. Apparently this wasn’t the usual tree across the power lines stuff. According to calls to WPS it took down a major component on the high tension lines that feed the area. Power was finally restored here at about 11 or 11:30pm, though the grid to our east came on a couple of hours sooner.

The power outage was not well timed, and caused some problems. A lot of people were stranded without the gas station being able to pump gas. The gas station and local businesses had to loose thousands of dollars in business. We ended up running the photo business on my generator. Rapids had one too, and they managed to get enough stuff running to cook a limited menu and stay open.

The repair estimates kept changing. Initially power was going to be back at 6:30, then it was 7:30, 8:30, and then they said that they didn’t know, it was up to ATC the high line operator. The outage affected 1,000-2,000 people, so it was pretty localized. After a 15 hour outage on a major holiday weekend it probably wouldn’t be too hard to sell some standby generators around here.

The early afternoon storm Monday brought a round of heavy rain for a little while, but none of the severe stuff that could have been. I did hear a report of some penny or dime sized hail from the wave that went through Crivitz, but we saw just rain here.

The storm Monday was in advance of a pretty major cold front. We probably got close to 80 on Monday, and today we are looking at a high in the upper 50s and a chance of frost tonight as the low temps could go into the low 30s. Thursday and Friday look to be on the cool side too, with highs in the low 60s.

The weekend looks pretty good. There is a minor chance of showers Friday-Sunday as a storm to our east could spin off a small shower or two, but we are looking at a 30% chance and low rainfall expectations. Friday could hit 60, Saturday could hit the mid 60s, and Sunday’s predicted high is in the mid-70s.

The weekend brings a lot of events. This is the weekend where you don’t need a fishing license to fish in WI, the state parks are open with free admission and open houses, and the Marinette County parks are having free admission on Saturday. Here is the current event list. As usual I will add any more that I see in my late week update.

I am also pretty sure that this is the weekend that the FOMA, Friends of Mountain Ambulance Service will be starting their drive through fish fry and brat/burger fry on Friday nights in Mountain. I don’t have it in front of me, but I recall an article saying that they have raised over 150K for the Mountain Fire & Rescue/Ambulance services so far.

That is about it from here for today. I will be back later in the week with an events and weather update along with anything else that crosses my path.

Have a good week and thank you for visiting!

RJB

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Sunday May 27th, 2012

Greetings and welcome!

The weekend is off to a good start. My prediction of no rain until late yesterday worked out pretty well. We had a few sprinkles in the afternoon, but it was barely enough to get the ground wet. Last night about 10 or 10:30 we started seeing lightning and a few more sprinkles.

Overnight the skies opened up and gave us what gauges saw as about 3/4″. It most have been a good pounding storm, there was water inside around the chimney of the wood burner, and that usually doesn’t leak. This morning brought another wave of storms with thunder, lightning, and more hard rain. The last check of Athelstane Weather had 1.1″ in their rain gauge for the night and morning.

Eventually the power and cell towers went down about 8 or 8:30am, and a couple of hours later at 11am I am still on generator power, but the cell towers are back up.

The rain will help the rafting, but people already were having a good time with it yesterday even though the river was low. I am going to guess that it will come up a couple of inches this morning from local rainfall, and keep rising over the next few days. It should be a good weekend to hit Kosir’s for some rafting or tubing, a rising river is a fun river.

A couple of events coming up for today include the memorial service and VFW picnic at the Silver Cliff Memorial Picnic Grounds, The McCaslin Lioness Faire in Lakewood, and the closing party for the Firelane Bar. Tonight there is live music at Curve Inn with Reset to Zero.

A new event to my calendar this morning, Fisher’s Camp is having a pig roast today, and they start serving around 2pm. Sides include all homemade potato salad, scalloped potatoes, coleslaw, sauerkraut, Italian salad, and baked beans and corn and chips. If you would like to bring a dish to pass you are more than welcome. Also Handcuff pool tournament starting at 3:30 $5 a person 100% payout. and V.I.P. Drawing for a pontoon rental for a day. And they will be doing a drawing for 2 Portifield country music festival tickets $5 a ticket (all proceeds are for Kwasny family). Also the Race will be on!!!

We should be out of the woods for rain today. There are a few isolated spots on the radar in western WI,  but for the most part the rain has passed. Look for a warm day in the low to mid-80s.

Monday may prove interesting for weather. There is supposed to be a strong cold front coming through with some showers and storms, and they could get strong. The contrast in temperatures behind the front would support strong storms somewhere. We are looking at going from mid to upper 80s Monday to mid to upper 60s Tuesday, and upper 50s Wednesday. Usually a change in temperature of that magnitude comes with some fanfare, normally with some strong storms. Keep an eye on Monday’s weather forecast.

Well I am off to get ready for another day of rafting and fun in the north woods. Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!

RJB