June 2017

Monday 6-12-17 Storm Update

Greetings and welcome!
We had some heavy weather come through the area yesterday and last night. As the first wave approached I was watching the live TV weather updates.

They had tornado warnings from Antigo to the Oconto Co line. There was a classic bow echo and inbound and outbound winds on the radar were very close and very strong. Then the radar started showing rotation.

I evacuated when the storm was about 10 miles away and bearing down on the area. It was not bad here or at Rapids Resort. We had a couple of gusts, a lot of thunder and lightning, and a lot of rain really fast, but no heavy weather. One neighbor had a big tree come down, but so far that is the extent of damage reports from Silver Cliff.

Reports at the bar had a lot of damage about 10 miles south of Silver cliff. They said that Thunder Mountain Ranch got hit and Caldron Falls Rd north of there had trees down. Apparently Ranch Rd got hit and had trees down, and the damage continued down to the Twin Bridge Area near Hwy X & Parkway, There was damage north of there, but between X and the Curve Inn (Trixie’s) there was a lot of damage. Popp’s Resort got hit and they had a lot of trees down, and some caused car and building damage.

The storm continued east and hit Crivitz. They had trees down and the power was out. One unconfirmed report said that Hwy 141 even had trees down at one point.

There are damage reports from Maple Heights Campground just south of Townsend with trees coming down on some people’s stuff. Some ATV riders ran into a lot of trees down near Mountain.

A friend on Hwy W between Parkway and Caldron Falls Rd had a lot of trees down.

Wausaukee, Athelstane, Twin Bridge, and Crivitz all had power outages. Some will take a while to restore with a lot of trees in the way and plenty for the line crews to do. The morning news said something like 40,000 people were out of power. A news report out of Minnesota said that the same storm knocked out power for about 130,000 people there.

Closer to home the only real damage here is the runoff just destroyed the driveway hill with erosion. That is going to take some work to fix, but I still have it a lot better than a lot of people to the south of here.

We had a couple of subsequent waves of the storm come through after dark. The radar was ugly with orange, red, and black. Those storms brought a lot of rain and non-stop lightning, but no heavy weather.

E-mail me at ray # northerndestinations.com if you want me to check on your place. I am stranded at the moment, the water pump on the car went out, but if all goes well I will be back on the road before sunset.

People asked if it hit the Peshtigo River watershed. It sure did. According to radar return based estimates most of the watershed saw 2-3”. The river was at about +15” before the storm. A neighbor reported that the river was coming up immediately after the storm, and has continued to do so this morning. The gauge is off-line, so I have to guess at current levels. I would expect it to be close to +20” and rising fast. By mid-week we should easily see +24-30”.

I will update with any more information that comes in about the storm as I get it.

RJB

Sunday night 6-11-17 8:52pm

We had some heavy weather move through the area early afternoon. It had a lot of thunder & lightning, and the radar showed rotation. Tornado warnings, and heading this way @ 60mph.. Left the house at about 1pm and took shelter @ Rapids Resort. The storm was impressive but not severe. Apparently that was about 10 miles south.

8:52pm

Went back to the Rapids late afternoon. Reports from patrons said that there were trees down on Caldron Falls Rd at Thunder Mountain Ranch. The damage path went down Ranch Rd and went south to X & Parkway. One guy said that there wasn’t a driveway on Ranch Rd that didn’t have a tree down. Another report said that the damage hit Crivitz too. These are early reports from people at the bar. Take them as such. I will update as I can.

Looking at the radar there is another big line of red and yellow thunderstorms heading this way.

Oh yeah.. the 10 year anniversary of the Bear Paw tornado was 4 days ago.

RJB

Friday 6-9-17

Greetings and welcome!

I was expecting an intense week and that is what I got. I put on close to 150 miles yesterday and will do most of that again today. Again I am starting with my update here first so that it doesn’t get passed by.

Yesterday at about 6pm the skies got very dark and an intense thunderstorm hit. It was red and orange and in a few spots almost black on the radar. Here on the ground it rained about as hard as it can. The rain came in sheets and was falling so hard that I could barely make out the silhouette of the tree line 500′ behind the house. There was plenty of thunder and lightning too.

Today we have a little nicer weather on tap, then we are in for a hot weekend. The weather for today looks great with sunny skies and about 75 for a high. I will take all of that I can get.

Saturday and Sunday on the other hand look very hot and humid. The TV is saying upper 80s for both days and that is on track with the NWS forecast too. The humidity will be there with dew points in the low 60s. Saturday and Saturday night the forecast includes some wind. The forecast Saturday is for 7-17mph winds gusting to 33mph. The wind numbers only change a little for Saturday night.

There are rain chances for Saturday night (40%) and again Sunday afternoon (50%) and evening (70%). With the amount of heat and humidity in the atmosphere there could be some good downpours, but with only 1,500J/kg CAPE values we are on the low end of risk for severe weather.

Next week could get interesting as the boundary between the really warm moist air mass and cooler dry air sets up a battleground that is expected to be somewhere within about 100 miles of here. That will bring hot weather and a lot of chances for rain and storms. That is kind of a wait n see type of thing, exactly where the battleground will be is very difficult to predict.

So it is going to be a hot weekend. What do you do? Get wet! The whitewater rafting will again be outstanding this weekend. With a couple of good downpours this week the Peshtigo River is at near record levels for today. The mean flow for today based on 19 years of records is 434cfs. This morning we are at 910cfs. The record is 938. That translates into about a +14 or 15″ of water. People are in for an awesome weekend on the river.

I have two events for the weekend so far. One is a free pig roast, meat raffle, and ATV trail ride with the Red Arrow Snowmobile & ATV Club in Townsend. The trail ride starts at 9:30am and returns to the Old Town Hall restaurant by 2pm for the pig roast and other activities.

The other item on the events list is the Oconto County Breakfast on the Farm. That is being held in Lena.

This week I did escape the madness long enough to take Chris fishing Wednesday evening. We were a little limited for time so we were on the hunt for some hungry bluegills. It was a good day of catching, and I kind of wish I would have started keeping them. We tied into some nice ones, and the action was pretty steady.The scenery was nice too with some nice reflections in the calm water, a duck family with little ones, and a big blue heron that apparently was only fishing a few hundred yards from where we were. It was a nice afternoon in the boat. I will have a few pictures below.

When loading the boat back up onto the trailer I ended up with wet feet (no surprise). I liked that the water wasn’t much of a shock as far as temperature goes. In my mind the beach season is officially here with reasonable water temperatures.

The bugs haven’t been bugging me too much this week, but were present. Yesterday afternoon I went to look at a car and apparently stumbled into the mothership of mosquitoes. There was a row of big full pines near the car, and some wetlands were only about 50 yards away. I walked near the pines and was met with a cloud of gators that was just amazing. If you happen into a spot like that Repel 40 is your best friend.

It looks like a pretty decent summer weekend ahead. Hopefully a lot of people get out and enjoy it.

That is about it for this morning. Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Monday June 5th, 2017

Greetings and welcome!

I have a really busy week coming up so I am getting a head start this morning with my Tuesday update.

Saturday turned out to be a much nicer day than expected. It was sunny and in the low 80s, perfect for some outdoor fun. A lot of people took to the river to do a little rafting, and they had a great time.

We started the day with a line of rain that faded out about the time that it got here. As reported the radar showed some rain getting here about 9am, but none made it to the ground at my house.

On the way back from photographing the noon rafting trip I stopped at the top of Fox Hill and took a scenic shot of Thunder Mountain in the distance. You could see the haze as the humidity hung so heavy in the air. I told people that saw the pictures that all of that water would be falling down later in the day. Golly was I right.

About dinner time the skies grew dark and the storm came. The radar on my phone didn’t look impressive at first and all of a sudden it exploded in red and orange and yellow. There was heavy rain, wind, and some marble sized hail. There was so much lightning that the thunder never seemed to stop. It let up for a few minutes and then wave #2 hit with more of the same. It was an impressive storm.

I wasn’t at home so I missed the radar return rainfall estimates. The USGS gauge by Kosir’s apparently only measured 0.01″ of rain. Um no. At that point I am stuck with guessing with a little guidance from area stations. I will call it 1.5-2″ of rainfall with a decent chance of higher totals.

In my travels Sunday it looked like the damage was limited to small branches and leaves blown off of trees and a lot of washing out of gravel roads and driveways. Some of those washouts were pretty significant. It was enough rain that the river jumped 9″ in a little over a day just from the local runoff.

As mentioned before I didn’t get my usual rain reports on this storm. At that point I will be a little challenged to  predict the river levels for the weekend. My best guess is that it will peak in the upper teens about Wednesday and return to about a +6 to+8″ level for Saturday. I don’t see a scenario where it goes under about +6. People had a blast in +6 water last weekend and I think that we are in for another really fun weekend for rafting.

The weather ahead looks nice. We have rain chances Thursday, Friday and again Sunday. Early week we have days in the mid-70s on tap, and it will head into the 80s for the weekend.

The first week in June often brings the first fawn sightings of the year, and several have been seen already. I am pretty sure that I heard one crying in the woods near the house the other night. I expect to see one any day now.

Early June also has brought the first turtle sighting. The snapping turtles come up out of their usual wet habitat and look for sandy spots to lay eggs. This one was on a gravel road in the Nicolet and was about dinner plate sized.

Since my early days of visiting this region I have associated the turtles with good fishing. It is after the bass and panfish spawn, but still before the good bass spots get too weed choked. I am going to see if I can’t do something about that later this week.

That will be the carrot on the stick to hammer through the rest of my must do and to-do list early this week. To that end I am going to wrap up here and get back to work.

Have a good week and thank you for visiting!

RJB