2019

Tuesday 9-17-19

Greetings and welcome!

We have had a very wet week this week, and when it isn’t raining it is damp. Friends are reporting all kinds of mushrooms and fungi popping up in lawns and in their travels.

The rain Saturday night was a heavy one. The USGS gauge by Kosir’s marked it as about 1/2″. Umm… no. Absolutely not. I would call it 1.5-2″. The heavy stuff kept redeveloping right over us and the rain kept coming hard. I saw quite a few friends that posted rain gauges on FaceBook showing the 1.5-2″. By my estimation we saw 4-5″ of rain in the past week.

The rain stopped for a couple of days but it will be back for the weekend. My GFS forecast model shows a slow moving storm that could bring off and on rain Friday-Sunday and a couple of more inches of rain. It is not an all day every day thing, but the chances will be there the whole time. I always say that the forecast is usually worse than the weather, but I am a little skeptical of that in this scenario.

Something that is a little bit of a sneak preview on my winter forecast is this nagging though that this is a lot like last fall when the weather was really wet. The other typical thought at this time of year is what if last week happened in January or February? That 4-5″ of rain would translate to at least a couple of feet of wet heavy snow.

The rains have lifted the whitewater rivers quite nicely. The Peshtigo peaked last weekend at about a +15″. It is coming back down and is at about a +12″ right now. Some people did go rafting last weekend and they found a wild river issuing big adventures. It was good to see people out after Labor Day. It always annoyed me that tourism just shuts off after the holiday when September brings some of the nicest weather, and often outstanding whitewater.

We have not had our first frost yet. As a result a lot of the insect world is alive and well and thriving on the wet weather. The gnat is the most obvious annoyance. There was laughter yesterday when a friend with a big cloud of gnats walked up to a taller friend, stood next to him for a minute, and then ducked down and snuck away, leaving the taller person with a whole cloud of new friends. LOL. I will be remembering that one.

The fall color change has come on full throttle in the past week. The silver maple across my pond had just a splash of color when I did my last Tuesday update. Now it is fully yellow/orange. A LOT of other species have started the big change in the past week too. The early show is here.

The fall is always busy for me with winter preparations. This year it is really extreme with moving the girlfriend to a new house and getting two others ready to rent. I am having a fit that I haven’t touched the first stick of firewood and it is September 17th already. My short term to-do list has 21 jobs on it and 8 are emergencies that have to happen yesterday, and most are NOT hour long jobs, but rather the all day type. The technology hasn’t been my friend either. Yesterday Hughesnet went down for a lot of the day and most of the night, throwing a wrench into my plans to catch up on web site work. I have also burned up 3 smartphones in 3 weeks and am waiting for the UPS guy to bring the next one. I know that there are  texts with more work waiting for me. It is going to be a busy fall. We have a saying around here.. The Good Lord only issues you the challenges that you are capable of.

On that note I am off to get going on my lists. Big smile-Check. Good attitude-check. Lots of tools-check. Beautiful fall colors-check. Ready set go.

Have a good week and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Friday September 13th, 2019

Greetings and welcome!

I have a couple of quick weekend notes to update you on.

First up is that the fall colors made huge strides in the past few days. A lot of the maples are starting to come into color, and a few other species as well.

Item two is that we had a lot of rain last night. The USGS gauge by Kosirs says that we saw about 1.5″, bringing this week’s totals to about 3″. That could be very easily understated. It will be a little muddy in places.

That brings us to my third point, the prediction of the Peshtigo River being prime for rafting this weekend. I predicted a level of +12. We blew through that running away last night. It is probably about +14 right now and the gauge is going almost straight up. I’d be surprised if it wasn’t 16″+ tomorrow. The weather will be nice. Call Kosir’s.

The jury is still out on the cell phone booster.

Don’t forget about the Country Fling at Fisher’s Camp Saturday.

BTW, it is Friday the 13th and the full moon is just after midnight.

Gotta zoom. Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Tuesday’s Update..

9-10-19

Greetings and welcome!

My apologies for missing my updates last week. I have been so busy that if I had a clone it would take a month to catch up.. and the phone keeps ringing. It is good to have plenty of work, just not all at once while I am trying to do pre-winter chores.

We had a lot of rain last night. The radar returns estimated about 1/2”. No. Not even close. The USGS gauge by Kosir’s says 1”, bringing our one week total to 2”. That is closer, but I will insist that it was over an inch. There were a lot of waves of really heavy rain. There was a lot of thunder and lightning too.

This morning was dreary, windy and damp. It was a classic wet fall day. It reminded me of a lesson that I learned the hard way many years ago. When I have a couple of weeks in fall to do outside work above 50 degrees it is really a lot less. Between the short days and stormy weather a couple of weeks is really a lot less.

The fall color show is getting started. It seems late this year. There is one species of early maple that is full blood red right now. Otherwise the maples in my yard, mostly silver maple, are getting a branch here and there that is changing. A lot of the trees are getting a lot lighter green, indicating that they are getting started. The ferns are yellow and the sumac are starting their change too.

For now there is not a lot of color. My thought yesterday driving home was maybe 5% of the show is there.

The wet fall weather is not lost on the local whitewater rivers. The Peshtigo is running at about a +6” and is on the way up. Normally it would be about zero. I’d be very surprised if we didn’t see it go to +12 by the weekend. Yes they still whitewater raft after Labor Day. The crowds are smaller, but they raft for most of September. If you are lucky you will hit it when the fall colors on the river are in their full glory.

I have two events for this weekend. In Lakewood they are having their Festi-Fall weekend. https://www.ocontocounty.org/events/?i=festi-fall-2019-09-14&d=2019-09&view=l

Also Fisher’s Camp is having their Country Fling this Saturday.

The County Fling started at Parkway Inn many years ago when Augie & Eveie owned it and Ron & Karen kept up the tradition. They are in the process of being sold and went to an end of summer party. Augie & Eveie’s grandson Evan runs Fisher’s Camp now, and he is continuing the Country Fling tradition. There will be several bands and the cookout and all of the fun stuff that goes with it.

Something that a lot of people want to know about has been the subject of a lot of my research lately. That would be cell phone boosters. The girlfriend’s new house is in an area lower that some areas between it and the tower, and the signal needs some help.

Most people around here have Cellcom phones, and those run off of Verizon towers. ATT based phones work OK by Hwy 32 & 141, but when I tried them in between the highways I had very little success. Our phones run off of the Verizon/Cellcom towers so that is what I am dealing with.

My surveys show that most areas run off of band 13 700mhz frequencies. I did get a band 4 in Crivitz. I would guess that the band 4 is the ATT offering.

I can buy multi-band boosters, and Wilson Electronics or We Boost are the ones to have. The bad news is that they start at about $400. I have one of those set up at the GF’s old house now and it works good.

The hook is that I only need one band and I really don’t want to pay another $400. I bought a single band booster ($200) that just does the channel 13/700mhz bands. As soon as I get the chance I am going to see if it works out or not.

It has a yagi directional antenna that works much the same way as cupping your hands over your ear to hear something better. With that antenna outside and up on the roof it gets a much stronger signal to amplify (8Db gain). The price of that is that it needs to be pointed at the cell tower very accurately. Overall it could potentially do up to a 65Db gain. We will see.

Something that I found out along the way was that they are going to phase out the 2G/3G 1900mhz early phones possibly as soon as the end of the year.

There has been a lot of utility construction in the ditches around here recently. They have been on Hwy A, Hwy C, and down Parkway Rd south. Some of the pipe that they are laying is orange, indicating telecom cable. Some of it is just a normal black cable. They are also installing quite a few termination or frame boxes along the ditches.

So what is going on? I am not sure, but if I had to guess I would say that they are running lines for cable TV/Internet. It could easily be just the phone co doing upgrades, but they put a new cable down Hwy C about 10 years ago. I just don’t know.

Could Silver Cliff finally be getting a high speed internet provider? It would be nice to get off of that $94 a month satellite habit and the 4G cell phone internet that clogs up on weekends. I will try to get a straight answer.

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

RJB

Monday 8-26-2019

Greetings and welcome!

Labor Day weekend is just a few days away. My week ahead is insanely busy so I am getting a head start tonight.

First up is the weather. Right now the NWS forecast is nearly perfect with high temperatures in the low 70s and lows in the mid to upper 40s. There is no mention of rain after Thursday afternoon. In my research I found a similar forecast with high pressure dominating our weather. I did see a small chance of rain Saturday and Monday, but right now the GFS shows it as very minimal.

We have been seeing some cool nights, but we have not had a frost yet. I have had to run the heater for a little while a couple of recent mornings. Be ready for some cool nights and the normal bugs.

There are a lot of events this weekend. One that I don’t have verified yet is a Fireman’s Breakfast in Crooked Lake Saturday morning. I remember seeing a sign but I want to verify it.

Suring Labor Day Celebration Aug. 30, 2019 – Sept. 2, 2019
	Labor Day celebration! – More Information

Annual Red Arrow Snowmobile ATV Club Corn Roast Aug. 31, 2019
	More Information

Riverview Fire Department Corn Roast Aug. 31, 2019
	Free corn all day! – More Information

Lakewood Firefighter’s 34th Annual Picnic Sept. 1, 2019 @ 12:00 pm – 8:00 pm
	Support your local heroes! – More Information

I have not seen much for fall color yet.

The whitewater rafting will continue to be good this weekend. We hit about zero on the Peshtigo bridge gauge today but it did not stay there long. The rain today was about 3/4″ right here, but the upper watershed saw less. There is another wave of rain coming as I type this. At any rate I would expect rafting and tubing to be ok this weekend.

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

RJB

Thursday August 22, 2019

Greetings and welcome!

This isn’t what I am supposed to be doing right now but I am not missing two weeks in a row.

First up is the weather. I just LOVE weather like this. Today’s high is supposed to be about 67. Over the weekend we are looking at highs in the low to mid-70s. I am not a fan of 90s and humid and I rejoice when we get weather where I can work outside without sweating just from the hot or humid day.

The hook in all of this is that at night it is definitely starting to feel like fall. Cutting the grass at sunset last night I went into a low area and it was downright cold. The low tonight is expected to be 42. Friday and Saturday nights are a little milder at 45 and 49 respectively.

In the wonderful world of whitewater the Peshtigo River continues to amaze me. Most years it is too low to run in August. This year is very different. People last weekend saw +4” water levels, and right now it is at about a +3”, well into the fun zone.

To the best of my knowledge we did not go below zero this summer at all. If we did it was very brief and just below the mark, and then it rained right away bouncing it back up. I have watched this river for 30 years and have never seen a year like this. Rafting and tubing on the Peshtigo continue to be solid weekend options.

We have a lot going on this weekend.

Close to home it is the Rapids Resort anniversary party Saturday. They will be cooking out and having live music.

Right down the road the Rustic Inn is opening with new owners this weekend. I have not met them yet but the word on the street is that I know them. Stop in and say hi.

In Mountain the Chute Pond snowmobile club is having Mountain Motor Madness- A Car, Truck, Tractor, Bike & ATV Show. (Link)

The Marinette County Fair is in Wausaukee this weekend. They actually get started this afternoon. They really have a lot going on with every thing from rides and animals to music and modified truck and tractor pulls. Here is a (Link).

There is a motorcycle ride at the Pour House in Lakewood Saturday that benefits the Wabeno/Laona school athletic programs. I don’t have a link, but it starts late morning Saturday at the Pour House and goes about 100 miles.

ATV riders will like this.

OCONTO COUNTY ATV TRAILS WILL OPEN THURSDAY, AUGUST 29, 2019.

Please be advised that as of August 29, 2019 all ATV trails funded by Oconto County will

be open for travel. The attached map shows the location of Oconto County trails that will

be open for travel (Depicted in color BLUE).

Here is a link to the PDF that shows which roads and trails will be open. Trail Opening Aug. 29, 2019 Press Release

The fall colors have not show up yet. I have seen two splashes of color so far, both in cottonwood trees. Since they are not usually the first color I guessed that they were damaged by wind cutting the branch off from the rest of the tree. I have not seen the maples change color yet and they are usually first. It is not unusual to see the first ones showing a little color in mid and late August.

A couple of personal side notes.. One is that I wrecked another smart phone. At that point my number is dead until early next week when my new one comes.

Item two is a hat tip to Dama Plumbing. I was looking for an impossible to find shower faucet stem from a modular home. None of the local hardware stores or home improvement stores had anything close. Even though he wouldn’t make money on it, Mike Dama put me onto a company that stocks them in less than 5 minutes. That is the third time that they helped me on unusual stuff. The other two times they had my part on the shelf. That deserves a hat tip. Thanks Mike!

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

RJB