Friday, August 9, 2013
Greetings & Welcome!
This is the weekend of the Silver Cliff picnic and parade. The parade starts at 10am at Boat Landing 11 Rd and makes its way to the picnic grounds at Parkway North (Hwy I) and Hwy C about an hour later. The picnic will feature raffles, horseshoes, food and drink, crafts, fire department water ball fights and equipment displays, and much more. It benefits the Silver Cliff Fire & Rescue Auxillary, who in turn supports the departments in many ways. It is an old fashioned small town picnic and parade.
Wildlife sightings this week included three different turkeys between here and Lakewood, and all had a flock of little ones following along. On the way back there were a couple of sandhill cranes a little west of Waubee Lake.
I have an interesting challenge ahead of me. There is a paper wasp nest under the back step about the size of a cantaloupe. The challenge comes in that the nest is behind the support joist, and I pretty much have to lay down about 2′ away to hit it with the bee freeze. I am not really liking that idea too much, thus the challenge. It is a dicey little situation without an easy answer. I welcome ideas.
Right now I think that my best option is to buy a beekeepers hat, net, and protective gear. Eradicating the wasps and hornetsis an annual summer ritual around here, it might be handy to have the right gear for the job. I had 5 nests on my land when I surveyed it this week, now I am down to three, two of which are tough to reach.
The storms that came through Tuesday night started out as pretty normal thunderstorms. They dropped 0.5-2″ of rain according to radar returns. The Peshtigo River watershed got hit pretty good, and the river is running above normal this weekend.
The storms took forecasters by surprise when they grew into severe storms that ended up with straight line winds that measured over 85mph and spawned something like 6 tornadoes. They were not expecting severe weather out of it.
It didn’t get severe until it was south and east of our area, and the really heavy stuff was down by Green Bay and points south.
There was one fatality from the storm when the Town of Porterfield Town Chairman was hit by a car while clearing a downed tree from the road. High winds and heavy rain limited visibility, along with the headlights from his car. Our thoughts and prayers are with his loved ones.
The storm brought up a discussion on the morning news about how the NWS determines of damage is caused by a tornado or straight line winds. The answer is in the damage path. Straight line winds tend to push debris away from the downburst, tornadoes tend to gather debris toward the tornado site.
As you probably saw, I was up early Wednesday morning with an update letting people know that this area fared ok in the storm. I will always do that in heavy weather if it affects our area. I know how worried I used to get when I lived in Milwaukee and a big storm came through up here. I have a generator for power outages, so unless the cell towers that bring my internet are down, I will be on it.
Beyond that I don’t have a lot for my update this week. I mostly worked and didn’t get the chance to get out much. Hopefully next week will bring a little time to go and adventure a little.
Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!
RJB
36th Annual Silver Cliff Fire & Rescue Aux. Picnic – Silver Cliff Memorial Picnic Grounds
Parade at 10 AM – Picnic from 11 am – 6 pm – Food & Drink, Games & Raffles, Fun for the whole family
