April 2024

Saturday 4-20-2024 Update

Greetings and welcome!

There is a lot going on and I am having trouble keeping up with it all.

First up we have events today. Today is the Saturday of Peshfest at Rapids Resort and Kosir’s Rafting. They have all kinds of whitewater activities, a big meal tonight, followed by music and a mechanical bull. They should have a good weekend of it with the river running at about 800cfs, about a +12″.

Next up today is the tavern minigolf. Here is a poster.

Next up before I forget, there are workers working on Boat Landing 11. That got delayed last year for a lack of materials. I would look forward to that opening sometime this summer.

I put on a lot of miles this week and there were orange signs going up all over. In Silver Cliff It looks like they are going to tar and gravel part of Hwy C from C & F and toward Old J Rd.

Apparently they have the same thing planned for the mountain goat path that they call Hwy F. That stretch got new asphalt a while back but they cheaped out and put about a 1/2″ of asphalt over the rough road and expected it to last 15 years. It didn’t last. No big surprise there. It has been rough for a coupe of years now Now it looks like they are going to cheap out again and patch, tar & gravel part of it.

Hwy C from Tower Rd to C & F and Hwy F really need to be ground up, compacted and re-asphalted. The road is in poor condition but there is no indication that they are planning on fixing it. Welcome to the end of the county where there is always somewhere else more important to repair roads and suspension parts fail in less than a year.

The spring greening is well under way. New this week the maples are dropping the little red flowers that they put out in spring. You will see red stains n the road where the trees dropped the flowers and they got mashed into the road. Soon they will follow with leaves and helicopter seeds.

Everywhere that you look there are trees or plants greening up. Some years my world doesn’t get green until the first weekend in May. We are very early this year.

Until that greens up fire danger will be high. It was somewhat reduced this week with some rain but it will be back. Between last year’s dry vegetation and the relentless spring winds it will again be high or extreme again soon.

Last weekend the ATV trails and road routes opened in Marinette County. There were quite a few riders but it was all pretty casual. Oconto County opens later this month, and Langlade will open soon.

The bears are out of hibernation and they are hungry. At the moment there are no grubs or berries for them to eat so bird feeders are a prime target for them.

The chippies are out and active. I don’t really care if the cute little dirt rats are running around and chirping for mates. When they start getting destructive and trying to undermine foundations and steps then it is game on. I use a Chipmonkinator trap like they have at Tractor Supply. They are spendy but they work fantastic. https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/catchmor-chipmunkinator

People were asking if it is safe to disconnect well house heaters and plumbing protection. Last week no, this week mostly yes. Exposed pipes might be at risk still but I will be turning off the heaters in my well house as soon as I can get back there.

This is going to be an absolutely brutal year for gypsy moths. Large areas were hit hard last year and now there are billions of eggs waiting to hatch. That should start any day.

The DNR announced some airplane spraying in the area, but so far it is limited to Tommy Thompson State Park. That has people quite annoyed. For people with more than a few trees the aerial spraying of BT is the best option, but so far no one is stepping up to do it. Hopefully that changes.

That’s all that I have at the moment. Have a fun weekend and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Last Friday’s Post that never got posted

This is a post that I started last Friday (8 days ago) that never got finished.

Greetings and welcome!

Spring is here a month early thanks to our very warm ElNino winter. Things are picking up now.

First up the ATV trails have opened yesterday. Normally they open about the first weekend in May. The county went by conditions and opened early. The county highways that allow ATVs open My 1^st, but they made an exception and opened them too.

We have had some very warm days and the insect world is alive and well. I haven’t seen a wood tick yet but I got bothered by my first mosquito a few days ago.

Last night I heard the first spring peeper frogs. A lot of the small wetlands that we went past had them. Vreep!!

The trees and foliage are about a month ahead of normal. I usually expect to see leaves starting on trees and the understory starting to get green about the first week in May. I see where my maple is getting first leaves. Cottonwoods are getting the first hazy leaves, and I have seen catkins on some trees.

I took a shortcut/longcut home Wednesday night and hit some forest roads. Normally the frost-out mud would have that unthinkable until about early May. I did hit some soft spots but nothing too threatening. I did see some off-road stuff that would challenge a nice truck, but the gravel roads are just coming into season.

Some years the lakes and rivers are still pretty frozen up. Some years we are not sure if the ice will be off of the lakes in time for the opening of sport fishing the first weekend in May. This year the lakes have been clear for weeks or even a month.

I expect that the early warming of the water will advance the various spawning seasons. I saw on FaceBook that walleyes are already staging up at the mouth of the river in Peshtigo. I’d expect that the bass and panfish seasons will likewise be advanced.

Someone asked if it is ok to turn off the heater in the well house and to use water in the camper. I would wait a week. If you have to roll the dice you will probably be ok. Our climatology has our average low riht now at 30 and the possibility of nights as cold as 15. My rule is if it will be over 40 in the daytime it can handle low to mid-20s at night. That is for an enclosed well house I’d be a little tighter with exposed plumbing.

The local greenhouses are ahead of schedule too. I see one is opening April 25^th. My rule is I don’t plant stuff until June 10^th, and I have been frost bit a few times. Is this year different? Sure, but even above normal years can have below normal stretches. I’ve seen years where the frogs in the pond are really going and the leaves are coming out on the trees and here comes a big snowstorm and a couple of days of winter.

One last topic.. gypsy moths. A few days ago I went out to check for egg masses. Oh boy are we in for a bad year with them. They really had a big party planned for my big oaks. I probably saw about 100 egg masses near my big oaks. At 500 eggs a piece that is like 50,000 catepillars. Even if it is only half of that it adds up to a lot of leaf munchers.

If you own a lot of land and can get in on some aerial BT spraying I would do that. You will want to get on it too, they will be hatching any day now.

More to follow-

RJB

4-9-2024 ATV Trails and Road Routes Open This Weekend

The ATV trails and road routes open this weekend. Usually the trails don’t open until about the 1st of May. That is when they expected to open the road routes on the county roads. Thanks to the ElNino winter they are all opening almost a month early.

MARINETTE COUNTY FORESTRY DEPARTMENT
Phone 715-732-7525 FAX 715-732-7533
PRESS RELEASE
Date: April 9, 2024
To: Peshtigo Times
Eagle-Herald
Green Bay Press Gazette
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
The Daily News-Iron Mountain
Florence Mining News
Chamber of Commerce
Marinette County Snowmobile/ATV Club Presidents
From: Ryan Bourassa, Forestry Administrator
Subject: Motorized Recreation Trails & County Road Routes Opening in Marinette County Wisconsin
Marinette County would appreciate you informing your subscribers and/or members of the below information.
The Marinette County motorized recreational trail system will re-open to all authorized motorized vehicles effective 12 am, Friday, April 12th, 2024. Motorized recreational trails are being re-opened now that conditions exist which can support motorized traffic without damage to the trail.
In addition, all Marinette County Road Routes will be opening at dawn on Friday, April 12th, 2024

RJB

4-3-2024 Storm Followup

This is cross posted from The Big Snow Page..

Greetings and welcome!

The storm didn’t go as expected but it sure is a mess. As of 11:30pm last night when the snow stopped I had 4.5” of absolutely cement snow. Your two stage snowblower is totally useless, and my little Honda paddle blowers will struggle for sure.
My white pine in the back yard is so loaded down with snow that it looks like a weeping willow.
Once the storm got rolling it was dropping very wet heavy snow really fast. I had to go and clean off my Starlink dish no less than 4 times. It has a heater that melts snow, but it couldn’t keep up. Each time that I went out there I cleared at least an inch of near slush snow.
The snow stopped around midnight as dry air mixed into the storm and created a dry slot. When I see that dry slot I know that the storm is weakening and don’t expect a lot more snow. Since then we have had an inch or two of much finer snow.
The wind has been a huge factor. It has been howling all night, and still is. I don’t know if we got to 55mph but I’m sure that it was 40+ many times. I heard it hit the house hard quite a few times overnight. It is still blowing around snow in huge clouds.
The wind and heavy snow conspired to take down a lot of trees and tree branches. Here at the house (near Caldron Falls Flowage and Fisher’s Camp) we had the power go off for a few seconds and come back on at least ten times. We were some of the lucky ones.
There were transformer or power line fires in Crivitz across the bridge from Riverside and on Moonshine Hill Rd and Camp 5 Rd.

This storm has been a huge disaster for the power company (WPS). At one point they had over 62,000 customers out of power. When I checked a few minutes ago they were down to 56K.

Those guys are heros. They are out there in 40+mph winds with driving snow sandblasting them cutting trees and restoring power lines. The ugly part is that thousands of those power outages are only a handful of people. If it is only ¼ of the outages that would still be 15,000 individual restoration jobs. Golly.
Here are some power outage numbers..

County-
marinette 13,273
oconto 5,853
forest 410

Town-
crivitz 485
middle inlet 507
silver cliff 149
stephenson 1,502
wausaukee 757
Total: (As of 8am) 56,914

There were also some road closures due to downed power lines and trees. They shut down W in Crivitz for the fire across the river from Riverside Bar. Hwy 180 got shut down in Porterfield, and Hwy 41 got shut down in Peshtigo. You know if they are shutting down state highways there are some ugly conditions.

The good news is that once they get the roads plowed any salt that they use will be very effective.
A couple of things bug me about storms like this. First, if this would have come in January the wet sloppy cement snow would have made a base that we could have ridden for weeks or months.
The one that really gets me is the fleeting nature of it. I think of all of those people that struggled to get home, stayed in dark cold houses, fixed power lines in brutal conditions, crashed their car, struggled to shovel, or otherwise had a hellish time of it. In a few days the only evidence of those struggles will be some downed trees or tree branches. In two days it will be 50 and sunny and in four days, 60 and sunny.
My official snow total is estimated at 6-7”, with 4-5 of that wet heavy cement snow. With 40mph+ winds blowing it around I never will have a solid number.
RJB Over & Out.