2023

Wednesday 4-12-2023

Greetings and welcome!

What an incredible transformation that we have had in the last two days!! Yesterday we got up to 75, and today we got up to- get this… 86 degrees. Our typical high temperature for today is in the low to mid-50s.

The melting that has taken place is just incredible. When I put the snowmobiles into storage Monday the north side of the barn had about 18” of very dense snow and ice. Almost none of it remains. My brush pile was in a shady spot. I was hoping to burn it while there was snow on the ground. The problem is that the rest of the yard melted off from the sun and the brush pile still was under 18” of snow. Today it is on mostly bare ground.

I won’t be burning any brush for a while. Spring is a high fire danger time once the snow goes away. The old grass and brush from last year turns into this year’s tinder. It is also frequently windy on warm spring days. Today we have very high fire danger and farther south and west they have red flag warnings out, meaning no burning at all. That is our future too if we don’t get some rain. The danger goes down a lot once things green up and start to grow. Usually that happens about the beginning of May.

The rivers and creeks are very swollen with the sudden surge of melt water. People rafting at Kosir’s this weekend are in for an incredible ride. The river is rising fast and as of 6:30 tonight it is running +24”. That is an incredible ride for whitewater rafting. But wait.. The gauge is going straight up meaning that it won’t quit rising for a while. I fully expect the river to get into the mid-30s by the weekend, possibly higher.

I have watched this river for over 30 years. There are certain levels where it dramatically changes personalities as far as running the whitewater. At about 12” it is seriously fun. At 16 it starts getting snaky as waves get bigger and the rapids get less forgiving. At 24-26” the waves get taller and the holes deeper. That’s big water and clearly a fun ride. At 28” there is this magical thing that happens and the river gets just HUGE. I have pictures of 16 foot rafts with a dozen people in them totally disappearing in the rapids. It is really incredible. There is a reason that the Peshtigo River is world famous for whitewater, and over +28 is high on the list. This weekend it is going to be all of that and more. People running this weekend have a great trip to look forward to.

When I was traveling Tuesday (Hwy C to Wabeno, 32 to Lakewood, Hwy F back to Silver Cliff) All of the lakes were still frozen over. I don’t know if our 86 degree day changed that. Perch Lake near Wausaukee still held ice late Wednesday afternoon.

The warm weather has a lot of people thinking about golf. When I went past the course in Lakewood Tuesday it still held quite a bit of snow and there was some flooding. That one needs a little time before it is 100% ready. People on Facebook said that there were courses near Crivitz that were at least partially open.

One of my favorite things is exploring the area forest roads. When I went past a bunch of them on my Wabeno/Lakewood trip the forest roads were a mess. Shaded areas held snow. Areas with the frost coming out were very muddy. I won’t be cruising the back roads anytime soon.

I saw my first leaves today. It looked like some sort of cottonwood or poplar. I am not sure if they are first leaves or the beginning of catkins. That is all hard to establish going by at 60. At any rate our first green has emerged.

When I was out driving at sunset yesterday the deer were very plentiful up by the roads. I am sure that I saw at least 15 in a 10 mile journey. There is going to be a lot more of that in the days ahead. Early spring is bad for car/deer collisions because roadsides often have the first grass popping up. As more green plants emerge in the woods the danger is reduced somewhat. At any rate the next few weeks is going to be dangerous for deer up by the roads.

I haven’t been to the Silver Cliff house since the big thaw started (ugly driveway with the frost coming out). I would bet that if the ice is off of the pond we would have the first frogs starting up after today’s warm day. If they didn’t start up already they will tomorrow or the next day. We are expecting the abnormally warm weather to continue until Saturday.

Spring is a magical time around here. With this week’s abnormally high temperatures spring just got a really huge boost.

Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Friday April 7th, 2023

Greetings and welcome!

Spring is about to spring in a big way!

But…. Like the guys on the TV news when I want to see the weather forecast, I am going to talk about something else first.

We had a big storm come through earlier in the week that brought some very high wind gusts. The wind started Wednesday afternoon with some frequent 30-40mph gusts. Thursday night and Friday (especially Thurs night) the wind was just howling. Some of the gusts would hit the house and make an ugly noise. I saw the NWS had gusts of 40 in Iron Mountain and I would guess that there were gusts well over 50mph. Today is much calmer. I don’t expect much of anything for storm damage. The easy stuff already got picked off by our numerous previous storms.

We had a rough winter. It would snow and then it would rain. Then it snowed, and it rained. As a result there is a lot of moisture trapped as ice under the snow. There were plenty of storms that brought nasty weather. There will be some fallen branch cleanup coming once people can get into their seasonal cabins.

I am sure that a lot of people want to know the condition of their gravel driveways. That varies by sun exposure, but mostly not good yet. I have sunny spots that are bare but soft from the frost coming out of the ground. There are shaded spots where there is still 12-16″ of a rock hard snow ice block. I was in Michigan a couple of days ago and the guy’s sunny plowed driveway (all sand) was firm enough to drive on in most places. It varies widely.

Here is a sight typical of spring in northern WI.. 8″ of fresh snow on top of 8″ of frost-out mud. This was one of my neighbors’ driveways on April 1st.

Things are going to change very dramatically next week. We have not had a 60 degree day yet. Most have been 50 or less. That is why shaded spots still hold so much snow.

Anyway, next week we have some unseasonably warm weather coming. We will start with 59 Sunday, 65 Monday, Tuesday 72, Wednesday 78, Thursday 77, and Friday 73. That should knock down the snow and help a lot with getting frost out of the ground.

Whitewater rafters & paddlers have a lot to look forward to this year. With the big brick of ice snow we should have good water well into May as sheltered areas slowly melt off.

Kosir’s Rafting usually starts spring rafting the first weekend in April. As is very common, the river wasn’t quite ready, so they pushed it back to next weekend. I am going to go out on a limb and predict very high and very pushy water for next weekend. With those 70 degree temps and overnight temperatures that are not below freezing there is going to be a LOT of melt water hitting the river by next weekend.

I have always said that a rising river is a pushy river and a lot of fun. This one will be rising in a big way. I’m too old to paddle anymore, but it is still exciting what is coming.

There are not a lot of signs of spring yet. There are buds on my maple trees and a few migratory water birds but that is about it. I expect that next week we will see the return of birds and bugs and chipmunks and in general a great awakening.

This is always a hard time of year. When it does get warm about 70% of the time we get a cold wind off of Lake Michigan that takes away some of the joy of working outside.

The other hard part is waiting of the great greening of the land. There are usually three weeks or so of brown everything after the weather warms up and before the world of green emerges. I usually expect things to start getting green about May 10, with what I call the Green Explosion coming between May 10 and Memorial Day weekend. It can come earlier or later, but that is a general rule that I came up with after living here the first 20 years or so.

I always look forward to the Green Explosion. Every day when I walk outside there is a new plant, flower, bug, or critter that wasn’t there yesterday. It is a magical time of year.

Well I am off to go and take my doggy for a walk. Like the rest of us she has cabin fever, and she didn’t get to go for a walk for a few days because of the high winds and nasty weather. She is either bouncing off of the walls or depressed and moping around. It’s my job as Doggy Daddy to go and fix that and I won’t mind a little fresh air and exercise.

Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!

RJB