May 2020

Friday (March?) 5/8/2020

Greetings and welcome!

We are in the midst of a cold snap that is bringing near record low temperatures. Last night we got down to 26 and at 1:30pm it is still only 37 degrees. There are freeze warnings out for plants and plumbing. The bad news is that it isn’t going to get much better for almost a week. I looked at the GFS forecast model and could see cold air pouring out of arctic right into the upper Midwest. Our normal high should be getting close to 60, and our normal low should be over freezing.

One other note, when Fido needed to go out in the middle of the night last night, she came back in with snowflakes on her. Now I know why they call it May.. It may be 65 or 70 or it May feel like February.

Right now I am taking refuge from the cold and using the time to catch up on computer work inside, and later I will head to the parts store. I really want to be cutting brush, working on cars and power equipment and the boats, but I won’t be doing any of that at 36 degrees unless it is an emergency.

One thought this morning is that a week of cold weather like this will slow down the warming of the lakes, and probably set back the spawning times of the fish. I guess that makes it OK that I am not working on the boats yet.

In addition to the cold weather we again have some very high fire danger. We have very low humidity (36% right now, but it could drop to 20% or lower) and some wind. Combined with the dead vegetation from last year, fire danger is very high today. There isn’t much in the way of precip expected in the short term, so that very high fire danger will last through the weekend.

We do have some signs of spring going on. The trees are budding and getting close to opening up with the first leaves. I saw my first marsh marigolds yesterday. I also had my first wood tick of the year a few days ago. People have been reporting wood and deer ticks for several weeks. FaceBook friends have reported seeing their first hummingbirds and orioles in the past week.

I saw in the news that our governor thinks that there will be no delays in opening the state up after Memorial Day weekend. It wold be great if they opened a week or two before that so businesses can recover from the lockdown. There is a case in the state supreme court challenging the order lasting past the 60 days. There was no word this morning on how that is going. I know that people around here are ready to get back to normal.

One last thought about the cold weather.. After living here 20+ years I learned the hard way… I never plant outside plants until after June 10th. Every time that I did I got frozen out. The new path was to start everything in movable containers that I could move inside on cold nights, then transplant them in mid-June.

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

RJB

Saturday 5-2-2020

Very High Fire Danger Today Be Careful!!

Greetings and welcome!

I got a warning on my weather warning system on my phone this morning. We have some pretty dangerous wildfire conditions today. The Key elements are warm temperatures, sun, low humidity and high winds..

We have a beautiful 71 degree morning going on as of 11am. It is going to be a nice day. I can see the big pine outside of my window blowing around so the wind is already here. The NWS is predicting  11-15mph winds gusting to 30. The other key part is that the humidity is very low. Right now it is about 40% and it could go into the 20% range, really really dry. With the sun, wind, and humidity the dead grass and brush from last year will dry out fast.

Personally I would love to have a little campfire later today for happy hour. I will have to wait. Even one little spark could set off a bad fire, and with the winds it will spread really fast. No thanks.

You guys know what is best for your particular situation. Just be careful.

Here is a link to the NWS Special Weather statement-

...NEAR-CRITICAL FIRE WEATHER CONDITIONS OVER THE WEEKEND...

https://forecast.weather.gov/showsigwx.php?warnzone=WIZ013&warncounty=WIC075&firewxzone=WIZ013&local_place1=8%20Miles%20WSW%20Athelstane%20WI&product1=Special+Weather+Statement&lat=45.4228&lon=-88.3108

Here is a link to the DNR Daily Fire Briefing- https://www.weather.gov/media/grb/DSS/FireBriefing.pdf

Have a great weekend!!

RJB

Friday 5-1-2020

Greetings and welcome!

It is a nice sunny morning outside this morning. The beginning of the week was cool and damp and now we have traded that for a nice weekend.

There is a lot going on this weekend. First up fishing season opens Saturday morning. The ATV trails opened today, and Kosir’s is opening whitewater rafting.

According to the USGS gauge by Kosir’s we saw about 1.75″ of rain this week. The ditches and low areas suggest that it is probably twice that much. There is standing water in any low spots and streams are flooded over their banks. This is not lost when it comes to whitewater rafting. The Peshtigo River is running at about +24″ with a little bit of an upward angle on the graph. For those of you that haven’t rafted the Peshtigo in high water I can tell you that +24″ is a great and very wild ride. it will be memorable.

Kosir’s is re-opening the campground this weekend and running raft trips in a state compliant manner. That means that you can camp, but the main shower house can’t open and raft trips will be in small groups. Rapids Resort will be open for carry-out food, ice, and package goods only.

That brings me to the next topic.. I have been seeing menus and indications that Rustic Inn and Jungle Jim’s plan on opening for carry out food soon too. I assume that they will be opening this weekend with ATV trails and fishing season opening.

I am not sure if it is going to change with the busy weekend, buy the Red Pine BP has been closing at 5pm. If that is still the case you will want to plan ahead.

Something that we had a lot of this week was wind. We had gusts yesterday that had to go 40+mph. We are expecting a little more of that this weekend. Saturday the NWS says south winds at 6-14 gusting to 25mph. Sunday they are predicting  “West northwest wind 6 to 11 mph increasing to 15 to 20 mph in the afternoon. Winds could gust as high as 33 mph.”

There is a small area of rain coming for tonight. The NWS says that it will mainly be between 11pm and 3am, but it could bring up to 1/4″ of rain.

Other than the wind and rain we are in for a very pleasant weekend. We are expecting mostly sunny days and are likely to get into the upper 60s today, the low 70s Saturday, and mid-60’s Sunday. Get it while you can, Monday and the first part of the week temps are going to drop back down to the low 50s.

One last thought.. This might be a good weekend to go and see some of our waterfalls. The rivers are going to be really full and really moving.

That is it from here. Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!

RJB