2015

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

Thursday May 28th, 2015

Greetings and welcome!

We had another wet day yesterday. A lot of the day was very nice, but late afternoon a line of storms came through with more heavy downpours. The 4pm line wasn’t a big line of rain on the radar but it made up for it in intensity.

Later on about 7pm another line passed through. On the radar we were just on the eastern edge of the heavy stuff as it approached, but as it got close it continued to strengthen. When the rain hit it was huge drops pounding the roof as hard as I have seen it rain. There was some hail and thunder too, but mostly it was about a 45 minute full throttle downpour. Looking at the radar after it passed it went from just barely grazing our corner of the world with a green edge to a line of red and yellow right over us.

That line of storms has me questioning my rain total for the week. That downpour had to bring at least 1/2” of rain, yet it barely measured on the USGS gauge a mile and a half away at Kosir’s.

Having watched the weather for a long time, and at one time owning a weather station, I can tell you that the rain gauges work very poorly. There is just no substitute for a 5 gallon pail and a tape measure.

Anyway, at one point I found that doubling the reading of the USGS gauge verified pretty well with my bucket. A while back they modified the size of the pipe that collected the rain and it came up a lot closer to what I measured. Last night’s downpour has me again second guessing the gauge. It totally gushed for 45 minutes and the gauge only measured a couple of hundredths of an inch. No. I don’t think so Tim.

So at that point I am finding the total of 2.75” since Sunday afternoon very much in question. It would not surprise me if people had overflowing rain gauges (that usually go up to 5 or 6”).

There is yet another line of storms expected for Friday. It is another deal where a hundred mile shift in the line can mean the difference between 0.25” and 1.5”. According to the TV weather channel out of Green Bay’s current prediction animation, we are pretty close to the 1.5” area. The HPC QPF has us in the 1.0-1.25” band. After that we are in for a cool but nice weekend.

The whitewater rafting this weekend will be outrageous. The Peshtigo River will probably hit +24 later today, we still have a lot of water coming from the upper reaches of the long narrow watershed, and another inch plus of rain coming Friday. They will be running big rafts with 6-12 people in them and getting a great ride.

After 15 years of taking pictures on the Peshtigo and another 10 paddling it I can tell you that at +28 something magical happens to the river and it gets really really really big. The slide rapids get these big standing waves that go 6-8 feet high or bigger, and you had best hit them hard even in the big boats. It is a heck of a ride that will leave you with a Grade A adrenaline buzz. That is my prediction, I do expect it to bust through the +28 threshold for the weekend.

It is rare to have that happen over about 40 degrees when we are boating the spring runoff. I have only seen it a few times. At that point the river will be epic, outrageous, tremendous, stupendous, up-end-us, wild ride fun this weekend, and it is only like $25 to go get that ride. You know what to do. Call Kosir’s and book your spots.

The other river that we raft is the Menominee. That river is much bigger and might well be un-runnable for commercial rafts this weekend. Usually they close it down at about 5,000cfs because it is just too big. At about 7K the first rapid swallows the boat and trashes it, and you are in for about a mile and a half swim down a raging torrent. As of the 1am update it was at 9,260cfs and climbing. I’d be surprised if anyone other than highly skilled boaters ran that this weekend.

The soggy week shut down a lot of outside work. Loggers, road construction crews, excavators, on and on, had a holiday weekend that lasted all week. That should help people breeze through road construction zones.

You might want to bring warm gear for the weekend. Once the clouds part we are in for clear skies and a cool Canadian air mass over the weekend. We are expecting upper 50s or low 60s for high temperatures and it could go into the upper 30s Saturday night. There might even be a chance of frost. Be prepared for a cool weekend.

In other news, I was on a mission this year to get into the fishing boat by the end of May. I have been really overwhelmed with work, as happens every May, and it wasn’t looking good. I really hammered away at it last weekend and I am pretty close to having the boat ready.

The motor is a one pull starter, the trailer has new lights, the flat tires are fixed, the registration is good, and I know where all of the stuff like life jackets and the cork are. The new trolling motor came yesterday and the new trolling motor battery comes home with me from work tonight. I only have a little work to do and it will be time for some here fishy fishy fishy. According to the solunar tables, we are coming into a peak time Saturday and Sunday with the full moon coming Tuesday. Even the timing is right.

I am reminded of a sign in a local bar.. On a quiet night in Northern Wisconsin you can hear the fish laughing..

On that note I am going to wrap it up here. Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Wednesday 5-27-15

Greetings and welcome!

The rain yesterday added up to Just under an inch, bringing our total since Sunday to almost 2 3/4″.

That has the river really roaring.

It looks like there is another wave coming later this morning, and some more significant rain Friday.

RJB

Tuesday 5-26-2015

Just a quick update before work..

Greetings and welcome!

It looks like it was a 50/50 weekend. Saturday was nice, and so was Sunday up until about 4pm. That is when the rain started here, and it didn’t stop until noon Monday. There were a few stray showers later Monday, along with some gusty winds.

The USGS gauge by the Peshtigo River at Kosir’s collected 1.75″ of rain Sunday into Monday. I would have been surprised if it was any less.

Apparently there is a round two of heavy rain in the works for today. We are expecting heavy rain and maybe even some thunderstorms that the HPC QPF says could bring another inch or inch and a half. .

Even 6 or 8 hours out it isn’t all that clear where it will hit. A hundred or hundred and fifty miles could make the difference between 0.75″ and 1.5″ of rain. Either way we are expecting significant rain.

Whitewater rafters & paddlers might want to call in sick this week. The weekend rain shot the Peshtigo River up from about a +2 to over 12″, from 300cfs to over 700. That is just the local water between about here and Goodman Park. The big water in the watershed up north won’t hit for another day or two. That additional water, combined with today’s rain, should make for some outstanding whitewater all week and into next weekend.

All of this rain will definitely benefit green things, and get the grass really growing. The grass grew fast last week, and it looks like another big week. Count on cutting grass at the cabin next weekend.

Repel will be a hot commodity up here too. I wasn’t the only one that found an ample supply of gators (mosquitoes) last weekend, and I found a few wood ticks too. The weekend rain will give the gators ample puddles to breed in. At that point Repel should be on the shopping list.

Looks like it is time to start another work week. Have a good week and thank you for visiting!

RJB