October 2021

Friday 10-29-2021

Greetings and welcome!

We have been enjoying some slightly above normal temperatures in October. Many days ended up with high temperatures close to 60 or a little above. That will come to an abrupt end next week.

Last night the NWS blew the forecast pretty bad. They had a 10% chance of rain and it rained for much of the night, and not just a little. That put me out of outside work this morning so I get to do an update. The NWS folks have been missing the forecast badly a lot lately. Not sure what is going on there.

Anyway, we have a nice Saturday ahead with high temps getting close to 60, some sun, and for a change, not much wind. Sunday we have a cold front that comes through and drops temperatures to a high near 48.

Next week we are in for reinforcing waves of colder weather. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday we are looking at highs around 40 and low temperatures in the low to mid-20s. From what I see on the GFS forecast model, it isn’t going to get any better until about the 9th, when we get a brief warm spell right before what could be our first snow of the year.

That changes my focus on outside work from working on my house exterior to hurrying up and getting exposed plumbing and the camper winterized. The next step after that is jobs that need to be done before the ground starts freezing.

Here is a picture from my Facebook memories from 9 years ago with the frost coating my back field. There was a note that it was 21 that night and 19 the night before.

Here are some fun facts about freezing water pipes..

It is a given that copper pipes shrink when cooled. That is part of the problem. As it shrinks the freezing water inside of the pipe expands as much as 9%. That doesn’t sound like much, but as the Packers announcer would say.. Here is the dagger. Freezing water can expand at a force of 25,000 and 114,000 psi. That is not a typo. 25,000 and 114,000 psi.   That is why pipes burst.

The fall color show is mostly long gone. We still have some soft hardwoods with leaves, but right now the oaks are the main player. The tamaracks are starting to change, signalling the beginning of the end of fall colors.

I don’t have kids so I have not followed the Halloween trick or treat times. I believe that both Crivitz and Wausaukee are on Sunday.

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

RJB

Tuesday October 12th, 2021

Greetings and welcome!

It has been a very unusual fall this year. We are much warmer than normal, and pretty wet as well. We still have not had our first frost or freeze yet.

There are several places that this matters. First of all it was not a good year for fall colors. The maples never really went off and got super colorful like they usually do. The just looked drab and fell off quickly.

Some people attribute this to the fact that we have been warmer than normal and we never had really cool nights. Other people suggested that it had to do with the rainfall amounts earlier in the year. Personally I would subscribe to the no cold nights theory. Whatever it was they never showed their brilliant colors before dropping, and they went really fast.

For the most part the peak color is long gone. When we went leaf peeping on Sunday the 3rd the colors were nice but not quite at peak. Last Sunday the best of them were gone. It wasn’t much of a peak season… maybe a day or three?

There are still fall colors coming with the oaks and other late species, but there are a lot of bare trees now.

There are some other unusual things happening this fall. The first is the mushrooms. There are an abnormal amount of them right now. There are the classic white ones, but they are both huge and plentiful. There are also the ones that look like a potato and are slimy when you step on them. There are a lot of lesser varieties here and there that you wouldn’t expect to see.

I know very little about mushrooms and fungi and don’t even like them on pizza, so I have no idea what these are. I can tell you that I took all of these pictures within about 2 minutes walking around the house.

These nice white ones are very common. I think that I counted at least 7 of them in the bottom picture.

The next item is that the insect kingdom has not been knocked down much since we haven’t had frost yet. The yellow jackets were very common this year and they still are. I don’t know why they are so curious but they have been very inquisitive around me. Several have become one with my roof and house paint. The Asian lady beetles are still around and will likely swarm again on the next warm sunny day. I even had a mosquito in the car yesterday.

I am happy that it has been warm late this year, but between the rain days and life’s constant interruptions I am still way behind where I need to be with outside jobs. With November only a couple of weeks away they have taken top priority. I still have inside work from August and September to catch up on. It rained last night and it is too wet to work this morning so I am getting a head start on this week’s update today.

The weather has been goofy this fall and I think that we will be in for some more. We have a fairly strong LaNina forecast for this winter. I am not sure what that means for weather yet. Last year was a LaNina year and it was terrible for snowmobiling. Sometimes it goes the other way. I just don’t know what to think about that yet. The fact that we might be waiting until October 16th for our first frost tells me that it will likely be an interesting year.

Time for me to get back to work. Have a good week and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Friday 10-1-2021

Greetings and welcome!

The fall colors are starting to come on strong right now. The early maples didn’t put on much of a show this year but a lot of other species are getting into the act. The Travel WI web site says that we are at about 50% right now. There are a lot of nice fall color pictures on Facebook.

Personally I haven’t gone more than about 5 miles from the house this week. I am madly attacking all of my fall projects, and in particular the ones that need to be done over 60 degrees. Today I am filling driveway cracks and then going back on painting my house. With cold damp mornings and the early sunset the days just aren’t as long as they used to be, so every hour counts. I really need another month of September.

Now that October is here there is some fun stuff to do. There is the corn maze and pumpkin patch on Nejedlo Rd just west of Hwy 141. The Camp 5 Terror haunted house should be opening up too. There is another corn maze and Halloween place down in Peshtigo too.

Here are some posters..

There is some rain possible for this weekend. It doesn’t look very organized so I am not sure what to expect. Will it be drizzly? Will it be just a passing shower here and there? I don’t know. I guess as always be ready for any turn of the weather. I would actually welcome a rain day to catch up on inside work like my 750 unread e-mails and overdue web site work, but it would be nice if it happened sometime other than a fall color weekend.

Time to get back to work. Have a great weekend and thank you for visiting!

RJB

An afterthought.. I started getting those Asian lady beetles with the warm weather this week. This is the stuff that I use to kill them. It kills everything from bedbugs to ants and spiders, and is safe for the fur babies too.

https://store.doyourownpestcontrol.com/d-fense-sc-insecticide