May 2022

Wednesday 5-25-2022

Greetings and welcome!

We have the big Memorial Day weekend coming up so there is some stuff to talk about.

First up- The great awakening of the plant kingdom is well under way. In the past week the leaves on trees have emerged or continued to grow. The ferns are coming up. Just about everywhere that you look there is something with new leaves, new flowers, or something changing. The cherry trees are in bloom as are the marsh marigold, trillium and countless other plants large and tiny. It is a pretty cool time of year for the plant kingdom. The star of the show will probably be the trillium. They are really starting to fill in the forest floor.

The insect world is alive and well. One place that I went to this week had plentiful gnats and a few mosquitoes. That wasn’t my experience working outside at my house or the GF’s house this week, but that could easily change tomorrow. I have had some wood ticks, but bug spray on my shoes and pants have kept most of them away. Bring Repel. I use the Sportsman’s 40% DEET and it has worked very well for me over the years, including some really heavy mosquito populated areas. A passing thought.. don’t forget about Fido. Make sure they are up to date with their Frontline or other flee/tick treatment.

I have been watching the weekend weather forecast for over a week now. At first the model was showing a stalled system with all weekend light rain. Not good. Thankfully that all sped up and we are seeing the three days of light rain during the week. That is wonderful. Not only will the whitewater rivers be at excellent levels for rafting and boating, the rain will significantly help with the fire danger.

When I looked a little while ago I saw a summer-like setup where the weather looked pretty good as far as not having a significant or organized system affecting out area. What we have instead is the impossible to predict setup where daytime heating could stir up a storm in the afternoon if conditions line up just right. As the weekend progresses the chances for rain increase. Sunday and Monday are a question mark as the next organized system approaches.

The bottom line? Plan for a nice weekend but be ready for a surprise rain storm to pop up.

One other weather note, Friday night we are expecting clear skies and a low of 42. If you are camping bring warm clothes and sleeping bags. Saturday night and Sunday night look nicer with a low of 53 and 63 respectively.

For high temperatures we are looking at about 70 Friday and Saturday, 80 Sunday and 87 Monday.

I tease at the bar that you know that someone is from around here if they have the following items in their truck.. A t-shirt and shorts, long pants and a sweatshirt, a light jacket, a heavy jacket, Repel, and an umbrella. There is a very good chance that you could use all of them in the same day.

As far as events this weekend I am not all of the way up to date. I know that there is a brat fry at the Lakewood Super Value store, but I need to track down when. The same goes for the flea market at the Crivitz museum. There is live music each day or night at Rustic, but again I need to track down dates and times. One of my GF’s friend’s bands is playing Saturday night, Zoomie & the Sonics.

I need to track down when the Silver Cliff memorial services are. The Crivitz and Middle Inlet services are on Monday and details are listed on the Crivitz event site below.

Over the course of the weekend there is live music at Lil Tipsy’s in Townsend, Gateway Bar, Uncle Mikes, The Rustic, and Woody’s. Lil Tipsie’s has a major act, Vic Ferrari, Friday night.

Anyway, here are the event calendars for Crivitz and Oconto County.

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

RJB

Thursday 5-19-2022

Greetings and welcome!

Last week I said that spring and the great green-up was set to go off like a firecracker. Indeed it was. Everywhere that you look there is something new or greening or blooming. The grass has grown like crazy and needs cutting. The dandelions are flowering too. Most trees have some level of leaves on them, even the oaks and maples. The trillium are starting to bloom and the yellow marsh marigolds are everywhere with ground wet enough to support them. I am pretty sure that I saw some black raspberry bushes starting to flower. The ferns have their ugly brown flowers out and they are starting to fiddle head with their new leaves unrolling.

In the insect world the ants have made a huge comeback and I have encountered a few wood ticks. So far that has been the extent of the pests.

Last Sunday we traveled up to the beech forest to see if we could catch the magic of the first leaves up there. It wasn’t quite time yet and the day was too sunny, so that was a swing and a miss, but still a nice ride.

I saw my first snapping turtle crossing the road. It was only a small one, but there he was. That tells me that it is time to go fishing. I have done some of my best bass and pan fishing right about now before the lilly pads get too abundant.

About a week ago we had two days of heavy thunderstorms. Around here it was mostly a big sky show, some heavy rains, and a lot of thunder. There was enough rain to cause minor erosion, but that is about it. Farther south in Oconto County the rains were much heavier and it washed out a lot of roads. We are not talking about gravel forest roads, but rather paved and main roads. A wild guess was that they had close to 20 detours around damaged areas. In one case a culvert had washed out and the pavement buckled right as an Oconto County Sheriff’s deputy was driving across it. His car got swallowed up and eventually flushed downstream. He was ok, but the road and car weren’t. Check out this news article and the pix and video.

https://www.wbay.com/2022/05/13/oconto-county-deputy-has-narrow-escape-washed-out-road/

After two days of heavy thunderstorms I thought that maybe, just maybe, fire danger would be low enough to burn some of the huge pile of brush left from winter storms and fallen trees. Much to my surprise that was NOT the case. The next day the humidity was very low and the wind was gusty, so we ended up with very high fire danger. How the ___ can you have so much rain that it is blowing out roads and culverts and have fire danger very high the next day? Crazy.

The fire danger is low today, but by the time the 6pm to midnight burning window comes around there will be showers and thunderstorms in the area. Curses! Foiled again! Someday I will get to burn brush safely. In the meantime the monstrous pile grows daily.

We have some racing action going on this weekend. Pine Ridge Raceway is hosting an event, and the new dirt track by Lena is having side by side races too.

Spring is indeed springing and a lot of it is really spectacular. Get out there and enjoy it. Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Tuesday 5-10-2022

Greetings and welcome!

It was a long winter and a short spring. Today I am hiding inside from the heat and humidity. At 3:30pm I am showing 80 degrees, down from 85. The humidity is plentiful too, with near tropical dew points. It wasn’t more than a day ago that the furnace was running overnight. Northern WI weather is like that in spring and early summer. I joke about it saying, “You know that he’s a local when he has shorts and a T shirt, long pants and a sweatshirt, and a snowmobile suit, hat & mittens in his trunk year ’round..”. it also is not uncommon to run the wood burner and the air conditioner in the same day.

The heat and humidity comes with a chance of  thunderstorms later. There is a slight severe weather potential, but not much is happening on radar as it approaches.

Yesterday, on the other hand, was a little windy. When I was walking the dog the roar in the trees was incredible. I looked at Iron Mountain’s history and about then they recorded sustained winds of 28 gusting to 47 about then. Yowza it was windy. Some trees and branches came down and took some power lines with them. It was very scattered. The one that came down near Newton Lake Rd and Hwy C started a small grass fire, but that was very quickly dealt with. Even a small fire can become a big one with 40mph winds, so they were right on it.

My spring cleanup has stalled. Lately the fire danger has been very high so burning brush is definitely out. After the storms this winter and spring I have a mountain of the stuff to burn. I also took a really bad sprain to my right wrist about 10 days ago. You couldn’t believe how much I missed being able to use it trying to do spring projects.

When I was walking Fido yesterday I did notice a few new flowers. There were some bushes that were maybe dogwoods with nice yellow flowers. My sugar maple also is in bloom with flowers that almost look like birch catkins. The grass is greening up nicely, but does not need to be cut just yet.

In the next week or 10 days I am expecting the world to just explode with new green leaves and spring flowers. It is a magical time of year around here and that firecracker is just about set to go off.

There are some cool songbirds coming back to the area. A quick visit to the Rapids Resort bird feeder window yesterday yielded lots of goldfinches, a scarlet tanninger, a morning grossbeak, and an indigo bunting. There were no hummingbirds just yet.

The insect world remains mostly dormant. I have not had my first mosquito or wood tick yet. I am sure that is right around the corner.

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

RJB

Tuesday 8-4-2022

Greetings and welcome!

We have a beautiful 62 degree day unfolding this afternoon. It looks like the weather is finally turning around, we are expecting nice days in the 60s right through the weekend.

The spring is springing all over the place. The grass is greening up nicely and some of the trees are starting to show buds. The green grass has the deer up by the roads, and there are a lot of them. You will want to be really careful driving. The spring peeper frogs are really noisy in wetlands and ponds. The whitewater rafting on the Peshtigo River continues to be excellent with water levels in the mid-teens.

It is tempting to get outside and start cleaning up the yard and start the gardens. A couple of words of caution about that.. Usually the fire danger is really high between when the snow melts and the big greening of the land. Combined with the ever present spring wind people need to be really careful with their campfires and brush burning.

My second word of caution comes with the gardening. My rule of thumb is to not plant anything that can’t be covered or brought inside before June 10th. I learned the hard way that at this time of year a cold front can bring below freezing temps overnight and frost kill young plants. Even with my June 10th rule I have been frozen out a few times.

Among other things this weekend is the opening of the fishing season. The lakes are open and have been for a week or more. It should be a good opener.
The ATV trails in Marinette, Florence and Oconto Counties open this weekend. Oconto is a recent addition to the list.

Oconto County Tourism

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

OCONTO COUNTY ATV TRAILS WILL OPEN FRIDAY, MAY 6, 2022.

BE AWARE TRAILS ON USFS PROPERTY ARE CLOSED. This means there is no access to Forest County from Oconto County.

Trails on Private and Oconto County property will be open along with county highway routes North of State Highway 22. The Nicolet State Recreation Trail is open in Oconto County from Valley View Road South to Shawano Line Road.

Please check with individual townships on whether their roads are open or closed.

Please check the County website www.co.oconto.wi.us or the Oconto Tourism site www.ocontocounty.org for the most up-to-date trail condition information.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the Forest & Parks Department at 920-834-6995

The trails in the Nicolet National Forest do not open until 5/15, so the trail ends at the Forest County line. The Nicolet trail along Hwy 32 will be open.

Last Saturday was the benefit for Carole Walesh at the Silver Cliff park. Even though the weather was cold and rainy a lot of people came and the benefit was a tremendous success. I don’t know how much that they raised in total. I did see that both Allen from Jungle Jim’s and Ed from Rustic Inn lost their beards. The challenge was if they raised 5 grand each they would shave their beards. Apparently the donations blew away the bounty and they both got a shave.

Al and Carole are wonderful people that have helped the community in countless ways. It is great to see the community step up in such a huge way when it was their turn to get a little help. Thank you to everyone that stepped up!
Between the opening of fishing, the opening of ATV trails and people returning to open seasonal cabins I am expecting a busy weekend.

That covers my list for today. Have a good week and thank you for visiting!

RJB