June 2015

Thursday 6/11/15

Greetings and welcome!

Rain Rain Rain!

We had a nice weekend last weekend until Sunday morning storms sent a lot of weekend people heading home. That is unfortunate, it cleared up after noon and by mid-afternoon it was a very nice day.

The rain came again later. About midnight Monday morning I was awakened by the rain and maybe hail really pounding on the roof. I turned on the local weather channel radar and nothing was there. Apparently this really intense little squall formed right over my neighborhood and didn’t show up on radar for a few minutes. When it did it was this intense little blob of red and orange.

Monday brought another round of heavy rain, though it didn’t last all day. Tuesday was a warm and humid day with a heavy sky that looked like the least little trigger would set off a round of storms, but it didn’t happen. In the wee hours of Wednesday morning a line of rain finally came through marking the passing of a cold front that made for a very pleasant Wednesday.

In other words it has been a wet week.

But wait, if you buy now.. We are looking at a pretty intense storm coming in Thursday afternoon and sticking around until mid-day Friday. The current map has the heaviest rain south of us, but we could still see 1-1.5” of rain. A 100 mile shift in the heavy precip area could take that into the 3+” range.

The accumulated rain and anticipated heavy rain has lead the NWS to issue a flash flood watch for most of northeastern WI.

The good news is that we are in for a nice weekend. The rain should clear out in time to leave us Friday night, Saturday, and most of Sunday until the rain returns. With pleasant days in the 70s it holds a lot of promise.

Chris was right on the events for the weekend, here is her list.

June 13
Red Arrow Trail Ride & Pig Roast at the Old Town Hall in Townsend. Fundraiser for trail maintenance. Visit website for full details.

June 14
2015 Oconto County Breakfast on the Farm.
Location: Golden Corners Dairy, 8551 Holtz Road, Oconto Falls, WI
Activities include Farm Tours, Educational Tent, Ice cream making, petting zoo, badger bouncers, live band, peddle tractor pull and much more!

June 13
1st Annual Pig Roast at Parkway Inn & Resort, starts at 1:00 PM

With all of the rain in the past month or so we are in whitewater heaven. The Menominee River is about as high as you want to raft it, and would be a spectacular run. Likewise the Peshtigo is in prime form running about +14 to +16 and expected to jump from Friday’s rain. You rarely get that and 70 degrees and sunny on the same trip.

Repel should be at the top of the list. An hour out in the driveway tonight found clouds of mosquitoes and so far 8 ticks that came home with me. I use the Sportsman 40.

I saw a few more turtles up on roads looking for a sandy spot to lay eggs this week

Time to wrap it up for tonight. Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!
RJB

Saturday 6-6-2015

Greetings and welcome!

Just a couple of quick things-

Item one.. Expect a busy weekend. When I was on the roads last night they were really busy. A lot of people will be around this weekend.

This is verified by the really slow cell tower based internet already at a crawl at 6:30am. If history repeats itself by 8 it will be just about unusable.

It is free fishing weekend. You don’t need a fishing license this weekend. Admission to state parks is free too.

The turtles are out on the roads. I traveled a good bit yesterday and had to dodge a couple of turtles. Keep an eye out for them, especially on gravel roads.

With the high water the waterfalls tour in Marinette Co will be a good choice this weekend. They used to have the parks open free on free fishing weekend, I am not sure if they still do or not.

If you are headed out tonight be sure to bring your designated driver. The TV news said that the Marinette Co OWI task force will be out looking for drunk drivers and people not wearing seat belts.

Have a fun and safe weekend!

RJB

Thursday June 4th, 2015

Greetings and welcome!

We had a small but intense area of rain move through last night. By the time that I woke up the very tail edge of it was exiting the neighborhood. I wasn’t awake for it but people said that it rained pretty good.

It didn’t much show up on radar, but it drizzled and misted later in the morning and early afternoon as well. It wasn’t big drops, but it was enough to keep the wipers running.

It looks like that will be it for the rain, and tomorrow is expected to be a nice but breezy 70 degree day. Saturday they up the temp to 71 and cut back on the wind.

The faster timing of the systems cleared the way for Friday to be nice, but Sunday’s late day rain now looks like a Saturday night to Monday affair. For most of Sunday the rain chances appear to be pretty minimal according to the QPF, but that goes up later in the day. Up until the noon to 3pm frame, the GFS has us in the 0.01-0.1″ per three hour frame. That isn’t much. After noon they are showing us in the 0.25-0.5″ per three hours area.

The big news today is that I am seeing more fawns. I saw one here in the driveway last weekend. It was so young that it could barely walk.

There was one fawn on the way home from work today that very tiny and really awkward. It was almost a little comical as it tried to scurry after Mom on legs that could barely support it. It was just burning me that I didn’t have a camera ready.

The whitewater rivers have settled down after the big week of rain, but they are still well above normal and at very fun levels for whitewater rafting. Get it while you can.

I am a little short on time so that is it from here for tonight. Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Tuesday June 2, 2015

Greetings and welcome!

It was a good weekend. There were some people around to do all of the fun stuff that we do, but it wasn’t crowded or overwhelming.

The story starts on Friday afternoon. The final gasp of our week of bountiful rain came in the form of a line of thunderstorms that set up camp and had wave after wave of storms come down the line like train cars. The line set up a little south of here ( C & F in Silver Cliff) and had a slight SW to NE tilt. I didn’t see a lot of rain here, but they did a mile or two south, and elsewhere along the big line.

Wausaukee chalked up 3.77″ Friday alone according to the news. Reports had ditches full and water over the road in spots. It came hot n heavy once it started. I saw plenty of gravel washed onto roads.

One friend from Lakewood said that he measured about 6″ of rain for the week near Lakewood Golf Course. I can only wild guess, but I’d put my rain total for the week someplace in the 4-6″ range.

I saw on Facebook that Niagara, WI (near Iron Mountain) took a hard hit from the rain last week. They had a similar scenario to the training where they saw close to 4″ of rain in a few hours. With their hilly terrain there were washed out and damaged roads, and I saw pictures of trucks going down 141 almost bumper deep. One cloud looked a lot like a tornado, but I am not sure how that worked out.

Since then we have had some cold nights. Last night was down to 33, and the night before was 32. Those might be a little high, I had frost on the car windows both mornings this week.

I tell people to not plant delicate plants until about June 10th. It is really tempting to get started with nice days in May, but I have seen many early June frosts.

This year it looks like we are good to go as of today. I looked at the medium range forecast models and didn’t see anything that would support 20s or low 30s. We can still get clear nights that will get cold (tonight low 40s), but the really cold air mass looks like it will stay up in Canada for a while.

When I was at Rapids Resort Saturday night the people were having a great time recalling the outstanding whitewater of the day. There were flips and swims and crashes and a lot of people had a great time. You can’t go wrong when the Peshtigo River is all big like that. It will still be great this weekend too.

The Menominee River got too big to run last weekend, but I expect that they will be back out on it this weekend. It just came down to the max runnable level today. There is still plenty of water in that watershed, so a trip to that river is highly recommended for this weekend too.

We are having a dry week so far, but that will change for Thursday and Friday. We will be back in the warm humid air, and showers and storms are expected to develop. When I looked at the models last night it didn’t really show a focused low pressure area with a swirl of precip or a defined line. It was more that conditions will be right and where and when might be a little elusive.

I am happy to report that it is expected to clear up in time for Saturday and the weekend. We can expect nice weather and highs in the low 70s. The best chance of rain is Sunday night. With lows in the low 50s, it might even be nice enough to enjoy a campfire and some stars.

After a busy and fun weekend I finally got the boat into the water. Sunday afternoon Chris and I hit Caldron Falls for a first boat ride. I am kind of sorry that I didn’t bring fishing stuff, but it was ok just touring around a little and doing a shakedown tour.

I had a new trolling motor and a huge new battery, so we just cruised around on electric for a while. That was pretty relaxing. Next time I will bring fishing gear.

One last item..

There is a place being built on the east side of Silver Cliff that will be a vacation rental home for large groups of up to 14 people. It will have 7 bedrooms, a big common area, a kitchen and 2 1/2 or 3 bathrooms. It looks really nice.  They are wrapping up construction, and it will be ready to rent later this month. I will bring you more details in an upcoming report.

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

RJB