Tuesday 7-30-19 Storm Damage Help & ATV Trail Info

Greetings and welcome!

Here is some more storm Damage Info and ATV trail stuff.

There is a “Oconto County “one stop shop” storm recovery resource event at the Mountain Community Center Today Tue and Wednesday from noon till 6pm.”  Information and agencies will be available including the American Red Cross, Oconto County Department of Public Health, Christian Food Pantry, and many more resources for crisis counseling, economic support and development, and animal assistance.” Link

All Oconto County ATV trails are closed because of the storm damage.

There is some talk that the Oconto Co trails may stay closed for the rest of the season and they hope to get the trails done in time for snowmobile season. There was something like 450 square miles of storm damage, and that is a lot of down and twisted trees. Right now the priority is on roads and helping people and animals, so the ATV trails, while important, are not the top priority. They ARE working on it.

You can ride north of the Carter Casino into Forest County, and northern Marinette Co on the Dun-Good Trails. There is nothing on the Iron Snowshoe Trails website about trail closures so you can ride those too. Dusty Trails is closed.

Here is a picture from the Forest Co ATV Association of someone who couldn’t take a hint. (Facebook Link) They took down the trail closed sign, cut the snow fence, and forced the gate open. How stupid.

This gate was about 1/2 mile south of the Carter Casino. The people didn’t get far. There was a mass of twisted trees just a little ways up. Was it entitled ATV riders? ATV haters trying to close the trail? Who knows? The ATV community around there and the Sheriff’s Dept would love some info on who did it.

Here are more storm damage stories that I found this week.

Antigo Times- Storm closes C-NNF campgrounds, rec sites (Link)

Washington Post- Here’s how two derechos slammed Wisconsin, ravaging an area five times bigger than Washington, D.C., with 100 mph winds (Link)

Weather.com- Wisconsin Macroburst Downed So Many Trees the Damage Can Be Seen From Space (Link)

WBAY TV2 out of Green Bay- Mountain residents cleaning up extensive storm damage (Link)

When I was in Crooked Lake this week the place was pretty wrecked. Almost every yard had at least one tree down, and there were several that would have blocked the road on Hwy W. From what the locals said Hwy W from Crooked Lake to Mountain was really wrecked with trees down everywhere. Power has been restored to most people. My memory is fuzzy but I think I heard that something like 400,000 people lost power from this storm, some for 5 days or more. Hats off to the line crews that restored so much damage so fast.

Marinette Co ATV/UTV Road Trail Closures-

There has been considerable discussion about Marinette County closing the county road trails for 30 days and possibly permanently due to misbehavior. No one wants to see that. There is a meeting today with stakeholders and the county that should shed some light on the subject. There have also been some people working on an effort to print up flyers to give out at trail stops to educate riders.

From what I have seen and heard there are a couple of main issues.

1. Riding on roads not authorized for ATVs- County roads that allow ATVs are well marked. There is a process where the sheriff’s Dept evaluates safety issues and submits the road for approval. Once approved the road needs to be posted with signs before it can open. Riding on roads that are not open is the subject of a lot of the complaints. I heard that opening the section between McCaslin Mountain Campground and Chickadee Lane was put on hold because people are riding it anyway, and the same goes for a stretch of Parkway Rd by Homestead Lake Rd. I also see a lot of people violate on HWY C between Rustic and Jungle Jims.
2. Riding the county roads at night- This is a no-no for safety reasons and another source of complaints.
3.  Kids on ATVs on the roads- There are a variety of rules that apply here- Helmets, safety course certificates, adult supervision. I am not going to post the rule book, but this is another source of issues.

Whatever the case there should be more information coming after the conference. I will update as I get it. This is a big deal. It took a lot to get those county roads opened to the wheelers and it is important to riders, businesses, tourism in general, and people with weekend places up here that they stay open. Those road trails are some critical links in our trail system, and no one wants them closed.

Now onto the regular stuff..

We finally are going to see a break in the hot n humid summer weather this week. Today we are expecting a high of about 75 with moderate humidity. The sun will still be hot but at least it isn’t in the upper 80s with dreadful humidity. I am not looking forward to this month’s electric bill.

Our Sunday rains hit the Peshtigo River watershed with a moderate amount of rain. The Pesh is running at about 400cfs, about a +3″. That is a great level for tubing and a fun level for rafting. I consider anything about 300 the fun zone, and we are well into it. The Menominee River is doing the typical summer up and down as the dam opens and closes. Levels there are between 1,000-2,000cfs, still a good ride. Call Kosirs for both lazy river tubing and whitewater rafting.

Events this weekend include the Lakewood Arts & Crafts Festival and the Wabeno Area Music and Arts Festival. I am sure that there are more, but that is what I know about this morning.

I am out of time for today. have a good week and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Monday 7-22-19 More storm damage info

Greetings and welcome!

Yesterday someone showed me video of some of the storm damage. The debris was scattered in all directions indicating that the damage was probably caused by a tornado. What they did not know was where the footage was from (FaceBook). My guess is that it was from one of the areas west of Lake Winnebago that did have confirmed tornadoes.

According to the news that was just on the NWS did a damage assessment and said that the damage in Oconto and Langlade Counties was NOT a tornado. They said that it was a macroburst.

A macroburst happens when the cold air on the top of the storm pours to the ground violently, hits the ground and spreads out ahead of the storm with straight line winds. We talked about how violently that the hot air was rising with a ton and a half of force lifting a 2.2 pound parcel of air. That violently rising air isn’t going to go into some magical stretchy balloon, the cold air that it is displacing is going to fall violently too. That is what the experts say happened.

In order to be a macroburst instead of a MICROburst the area of downrushing winds has to be 2.5 miles wide or more. A macroburst can have winds over 130mph and last as long as 30 minutes, and have damage similar to an F3 tornado. The storm was moving at 60-70mph so it wasn’t going to last 30 minutes in one spot, but rather it would affect a large area as the storm moved E/SE. The TV weather guy mentioned 100mph winds.

With the straight line nature of the damage that I saw, the widespread nature of it, and the extent of the damage, all of that is believable.

Whatever the case, areas from Antigo east to Hwy 32 and from Carter to Mountain and beyond really got clobbered. A lot of that was the same areas that got hit by the Bear Paw/Riverview tornado about 9 or 10 years ago. One person commented that a tornado would have been preferable, the damage path would be a lot less widespread.

There are still a lot of power outages along the Hwy 32 corridor. I just got word that the Lakewood grocery store opened back up. The map shows a lot of people still without power. This is as of 4:19pm Monday afternoon. (Link)

As mentioned in my early morning update the Forest Service has shut down all of the ATV trails in the Nicolet National Forest, and they don’t want help cleaning it up. Storm damaged trees can have other trees laying on them or twisted up trunks and limbs and a lot of power stored up waiting for someone to release it with a chain saw. They don’t want untrained people in danger when that energy releases.

I have done storm cleanup before with a friend that owned a tree service. I have seen branches fly up hard enough to knock me over, saw still running, and I have seen huge trees spin like they were in a drill when one branch was cut. They aren’t being jerks, storm cleanup IS really really dangerous and they don’t want to see club members hurt.

At any rate I still think that we got very lucky with this storm. That is hard to swallow for a lot of people that took damage, and not fun to say. The setup in the atmosphere last Friday was tremendously dangerous and could have easily spawned an F4 or F5 tornado. The dynamics were very similar to those the day of the Joplin, MO tornado (Link) with a 4,000+CAPE and shear over 40k. That ended with a mile wide 250+mph EF5 tornado that killed 158 people and injured almost 1,200 more. The ground was scrubbed clean of anything less than a cement slab.

At any rate that is the latest update on the storm damage.

I am going to repeat this next bit in future posts because people need to know about it.

ATV riders are about to lose all of the roads and many of the ATV trails in Marinette County.

The word on the street is that they are considering a 30 day closure of all of the Marinette County roads to ATV/UTV traffic. The problem is people keep riding on roads that are signed no ATVs or not open to ATVs. There have been so many problems and complaints that the county is looking at closing their roads to the wheelers and future roads about to be approved have been stopped. They are considering a 30 day ‘punishment’ closure first. If the problems continue we are going to end up with a lot less ATV trails and road access.

But wait, it gets worse..

There are several towns reconsidering ATV access to town roads too. The problem there is people doing power stands and donuts on gravel town roads. Those roads are graded a couple of times a year, but the townies have to go and fix damage after every weekend or more often. They are not happy at all.

ATV riders need to self-police. When you see some jerk spinning cheerios on the gravel road or blazing past a no ATVs sign do something about it. That is the guy that is going to wreck it for everyone. We are right on the edge of losing a lot of trails. Once these roads and highways are gone it is going to be REALLY hard to get them open again.

It is really nice being able to ride right from the house and not have to trailer every time that you want to ride. Everyone wants to keep it that way including the towns and the county.

Have a good week and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Monday 7-22-19 Storm Damage closes ATV trails

Greetings and welcome!

From the Red Arrow Townsend snowmobile ATV Club-

Really Bad Storm Closes Area ATV Trails         

Sunday July 21, 2019

It’s 76° in beautiful downtown Townsend this afternoon. The trails are “CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE” in the National Forest.We were notified by the Forest Service today that as a result of the terrible wind storm that went through the area Friday night, and all the trees down on the trails, they do not want anyone on the trails including Club work crews until further notice. They will be bringing in work crews employed by the USFS to do all trail restoration and will notify us when we will be allowed to enjoy our trails once again. There are some snarly bunches of trees tangled together that could be deadly for amateur chain saw operators, so this is a relief for our volunteers and their safety. I am sure they will try and get them reopened in a timely manner and insure everyone’s safety.

I will update this page as soon as I have further information to share with you.

FireCat

Saturday Night 7-20-19 Storm Damage Update

Greetings and welcome!

I did some travelling today and got an eye full of storm damage. Here is the Cliff’s Notes version..

Lakewood and Mountain are out of power and probably will be for a while. There was a lot of tree damage from Lakewood south to Mountain and west on 64, including trees on power lines. Both 32 and 64 west of 32 were definitely shut down last night with blown down trees across them. They got hit pretty hard down there and it will not be an easy cleanup. The highways are open, but there are still trees right on the road’s edge.

Route-

C&F in Silver Cliff to Lakewood on F, north to Carter on 32, south to Mountain BP gas station on 32, back to 64 west, west on 64 to Hwy T (Animal’s Bear Trail), 32 & F back to Silver Cliff.

Discussion-

This was supposed to be a grocery and cig run. The damage wasn’t to bad around here (none) so I didn’t expect what I found.

Hwy F to Prospect Lodge had only an occasional small branch down. Nothing to see here. At Prospect Lodge there was a tree down on a house and a pretty big one had fallen across the road and been removed enough to let traffic pass. There was an occasional tree down between there and the Lakewood golf course.

The golf course had a couple of trees and a sign down. A house across from the church & fire department just east of 32 on F had a bad night with trees down & a tarp on the roof. Power was out in Lakewood and all of the stores and gas stations were closed.

Going north to Townsend there was an occasional big tree down. Townsend had more big trees down, but they were scattered. The sumac bushes had leaves turned over like they had been thrashed pretty good. The power was on in Townsend.

There was an occasional tree down going north to Carter. The smoke shop was open but they had no fuel, I am guessing that they were on the casino’s generator power.

From Lakewood south things got really ugly. There were a lot of trees down between Lakewood and Mulligan’s, and again about a mile south. Some were on a power line. The ones south of Mulligan’s probably would have made the road impassable last night.

From Riverview VFD south to Mountain BP gas station they took it hard. There were a lot of trees down, and even a little wind damage to the gas station. Going west on 64 there were trees down across the road for at least the first half mile. Unless you were on a D-8 bulldozer that would have been impassible last night. There were a LOT of trees down. The damage was hit and miss from there west to Hwy T, but there was really a lot of it.

The power was out from Lakewood to Mountain. The Bear Trail was open but I didn’t know if they were using line power or a generator.

The bottom line is that there was damage from about Carter south to Mountain and points west. Lakewood and south they took it hard.

To me this looked like straight line wind damage. How do I know? The debris was all in the same direction. With a tornado the debris get scattered more randomly. Most of this damage was from the north with trees falling south or from the west and trees falling east. I didn’t have my drone so I couldn’t look at it from the air, but that is my assessment from the car.

That is little consolation to the guy who’s yard looks like a bomb went off, but straight line winds can be as strong as an EF0 or EF1 tornado. The EF0 starts at 65mph, and I would put a fat bet down that the areas that I saw today saw all of that. An EF1 starts at 86mph. I’d have to see radar forensics to really know how high that they gusted. The TV showed 65-70mph+ gusts last night.

Traffic was moderate and between that and the 7pm sun it was hard to get pictures. The camera apparently doesn’t do well at 55mph either. Whatever. Here are some pix.

RJB