August 2017

Thursday August 31, 2017

Greetings and welcome!

The weather for the weekend is first on the list today. It looks nice with the exception of rain chances Saturday afternoon and again Monday. Saturday doesn’t look very heavy, but the best chance from what I can see is about 1 or 2pm until after sunset. Monday is far enough away that the timing is hard to call. What I am seeing now is a minor chance in the morning and a better chance later.

Yesterday we had a jammin’ little thunderstorm roll through the area. The first line came, pounded on the roof for a couple of minutes and was gone. I’m thinking, that can’t be it..radar returns were showing a 1/2″ rainfall. That wasn’t it. The thunder came and the rain pounded pretty good. The USGS gauge by Kosir’s showed just under 1/2″.

That rain and the rain from the recent past have the Peshtigo River in great shape for the weekend. It is running at 414cfs, well above the typical flow of about 190cfs. That translates to about a +4 or +5, fun, but not enormous. Put rafting and tubing on your list of stuff to do this weekend.

I have three events to add for the weekend..

Sunday September 3rd-

Caldron Falls 2nd annual Labor Day Pig/Corn Roast

Live Music By “Jamus Unplugged”Free pig/corn roast from 4 to 10 pm

I don’t know how I missed these two, they have been Labor Day Weekend favorite events for 30+ years..

Also be aware that the weekend after Labor Day is Parkway Inn’s Country Fling.

I don’t have anything to add, so I am going back to work. It is a nice day outside and I am taking advantage of that.

Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Tuesday 8-29-17

Greetings and welcome!

The signs that summer is almost over are hard to miss. Some of the underbrush and ferns are starting to die back, and a couple of maple trees have the first splashes of color. I have a perfect track record of being 100% wrong predicting the fall colors, so I am not even going to try. It is in the very earliest stages though.

Next up on the list is weather for the big holiday weekend. Let’s start with I don’t know yet. Right now the GFS forecast model is showing a nice weekend with only a minor chance of rain on Saturday.

The I don’t know dynamic is the hurricane devastating Huston and surrounding areas right now. I have seen a variety of scenarios on how that ends. One sends it up the east coast. Another sends it up the Mississippi River Valley and then the Ohio River Valley, where it redevelops over New England. Both of those scenarios should leave us a mostly nice weekend.

I also saw one scenario where it tracked up the Mississippi River and ended up in SE WI. Depending on the timing of it, the storm could affect our weekend if that scenario came to be. Right now I see that as the least likely outcome.

So the glass is half full right now, but check on the weather for changes late week.

The endless summer of whitewater on the Peshtigo Rive looks like it will make it through Labor Day Weekend without ever hitting zero. We will be in the fun zone again this weekend. Right now it is running at about a +5 or +6, and the graph is at a flat line. Normally it would be about -3″ and too rocky for most people. Between the current  flow of 440cfs and some rain possible tomorrow, rafting and tubing for the weekend should be a lock.

As far as events go, I do not have anything new to add, so I will refer you to last week’s updates.

On the personal side I am in panic mode on fall work. I know that I can do it now or I can do it in less ideal weather. A hard lesson learned is that September is usually pretty nice, but as we get closer to October the increased unsettled weather and shorter days gives me a lot less time than it looks like on the calendar. I have had a great summer, but self employment has left me very busy and neglecting my outside work. Time to be driven.

On that note, I am off to work outside on cars, firewood or something else that I don’t want to do at 40 degrees.

Have a good week and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Friday 8-25-17

Greetings and welcome!

The weather forecast has changed a little. Right now my guidance and the pro forecasts agree that we will likely see some rain Saturday night and Sunday. It looks like the bulk of the rain will come overnight Saturday night. The TV showed Lakewood getting as much as an inch. My models show the rain continuing into Sunday and Monday, but not as heavy.

There is a little room to move on the timing of the rain. I have seen where the chances increased as early as about dinner time Saturday on the early side, all the way up to the rain starting after 1 or 2 am Sunday morning.

The good news here is that we are expecting a good day Saturday. I am a little nervous about that, the radar that I am looking at now already has rain in the western 1/3 of WI.

I have an event to add for Saturday/Saturday night.. The grand opening party for Todd & Barb’s Rapids Resort. It starts Saturday night at 5pm. For $15 you get a pig roast, free beer, live music, and drawings and giveaways.

The white fungus that I had pictures of on Wednesday isn’t a fungus at all, but rather a flower. Thank you to Amanda and Joanne for leaving comments on Wednesday’s post!

Amanda
Thanks for the nice blog. The translucent plant you found is actually a flower, a parasitic flower called Indian pipe. I learned about this when I hiked in Smokey Mountain National Park. I seen a fair amount this last weekend at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore too. Nice find!

Joanne
The white mushroom is actually a plant called “Indian Pipe”. It has no chlorophyll which makes it look white. It is a member of the blueberry family. Apparently, finding a large number of them is pretty rare. Thanks for sharing!

With their guidance I researched it more and it is quite an interesting plant. Google up Indian Flower or Ghost Plant to learn more about it.

It looks like the summer of record whitewater on the Peshtigo River will make it all of the way through Labor Day. I checked the USGS gauge a minute ago and it seems to be leveling off at 363cfs, about a +3″. I consider anything above 300cfs to be the fun zone, and we are good for the weekend.

I have never seen a year where the Pesh never hit 0″, considered its normal summer flow, all year. It might get close this weekend, but I’d be surprised to see it happen. The rain Saturday night-Monday and again late next week should make the party continue for Labor Day weekend.

A travel note.. I saw on the news that they will be doing road construction on Hwy 32 from Mountain up to the Forest Co line near Carter. Apparently they are replacing culvert pipes and improving drainage. They spoke of one lane roads and flagging operations. I did not see anything about it on the WI511 site, so all that I have to go on is the morning news report. When I drove 32 north from Lakewood to Wabeno last Sunday there was construction equipment parked along the road. I have not been by there since.

The hurricane/tropical storm heading for Texas has been in the news. It isn’t that strong of a hurricane with a central pressure of about 990mb, but there is a significant pressure gradient (lots of wind) and the models show it setting up camp and staying in the same spot for 4-5 days. With a 990 central pressure the storm urge shouldn’t be enormous, but is the models play out they could get 2 to 3 feet of rain. Yowza.

I am not quite sold on the idea of it just getting pinned to the map with a thumbtack and staying in one spot for 5 days, but I guess that it is possible. It will be a heck of a mess if it does.

Closer to home, you might want to top off gas tanks before the price goes crazy. Texas has a lot of our gas production, refining, and distribution, and it will all get shut down for the storm. I just checked GasBuddy.com and as of yesterday Crivitz hadn’t moved ($2.34), and the couple of fresh reports in Green Bay show their prices steady at $2.29. If they shut down that area for a week or more those prices will be a fond memory.

It is my hope that the hurricane dissipates and spares a lot of people a lot of challenges.

That is it for me today. Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Wednesday August 23rd, 2017

Greetings and welcome!

We had a bit of a humid weekend last weekend. Thanks to moderate temperatures it was not too bad, but you could see the haze in the air. This picture of Thunder Mountain from about 12-15 miles away shows just how much humidity was in the air.

Monday we had a cold front come through with some scattered storms. Some of them brought some pretty good downpours, and about 1/2″ of rain by my guess.

Now that the cold front has passed we are enjoying lower humidity and some very comfortable temperatures. At 12:30pm Athelstane Weather is showing 68ºF coming off a low of 50 overnight. If I got to write the script our whole fall would be like this until about a week before gun hunting.

Anyway, we are looking at temperatures right around 70 for the rest of this week and into next week. There is actually a hazardous weather outlook for north central WI for a chance of frost tonight. We are expecting to see about 40 for a low, but it could go into the upper 30s.

There is a chance of rain over the weekend. Right now the NWS is holding it off until early Sunday morning. The GFS model guidance has it coming in a little sooner, but with it having to overcome dry air, Saturday night sounds pretty reasonable. There is again a chance of showers Sunday. I am not seeing heavy rain, but there is a good chance of showers, especially from noon on. Keep in mind that this is a 4 day out forecast, so take it as such.

The summer of record whitewater continued last weekend. Usually the river is low and rocky at this time of year. Last Saturday it was up to +8″ a great level any time of the year. The people were having a blast with awesome flips and crashes.

The normal flow is about 200cfs for last Saturday, and the river was running at 600. We are down to 400 today, but the graph has leveled out as far as falling. The rain Monday will help, but that will be about it for this week.

I am optimistic that we will still be in the fun zone ( Above 300cfs) for this coming weekend, and if so I will again be out on the river taking pictures. The watershed is flush with water, so I’d be surprised to see it go below 300cfs. It is hard to believe that the river has not gotten down to zero at all this summer! I have never seen that in my 27 years on the Peshtigo.

Last weekend when I was down by the river I ran into a lot of mushrooms. There were brown ones, bright red ones, and the big white ones that push up big clumps of soil when they emerge. There were also some that I don’t recall ever seeing before. The pitch black one was unusual. The white ones that have translucent stems and what looked like a flower were new to me. They were only in one small area, but there were about a dozen of them.

While I was at the grocery store Sunday I grabbed a few event posters with my phone. Here are the ones that I have seen so far..

Looking around for more events-

Sat August 26- Pour Haus in Lakewood-  Rebel Ride benefiting the Wabeno-Laona School District. Drawings for a UTV and a generator. (Link)

Marinette Co Fair- August 24-27, 2017 Wausaukee (Link)

Sat Aug 26th-Caldron Falls Bar & Grill- Live Music By Fahrenheit 420 (Link)

On the personal side-

I am loving this cool weather. I am very much looking forward to tackling firewood and other pre-winter outside chores now that the weather is a little more moderate. It has been a busy summer of self-employment, so it will be a long list. It is also just about flashlight season, and I am planning on ramping up the focus on the flashlight business once the rafting pictures come to an end, probably after Labor Day weekend. You will be hearing a lot more about that soon.

In the meantime, it is time for me to hustle off and go and make a living.

Have a good week and thank you for visiting!

RJB