Wednesday October 12, 2011

Greetings and welcome!

Our string of nice days ended with yesterday’s sunset. We had a little shower move through in the afternoon, and once the sun set, a lot more rain. There were a couple of pretty good downpours and even a few cracks of lightning in the bigger clouds. It is still warm out today, but the threat of rain is not too far away.

We are going to see off and on rain right up until the weekend, and some bands could be moderate to heavy. Once Saturday comes we are expecting clearer weather, but with highs in the mid 50s instead of our recent mid-70s. There is a chance of a fast moving system bringing some light rain Saturday night or into Sunday, but it looks minor with the lowest QPF on the scale.

Our recent weather was really pleasant, but it was not normal. Our normal high temp right now is about 57. Having days almost 20 degrees above that was bordering on unusual. By my observation, most of the time we will see our temperatures within about 10-15 degrees of normal, with the occasional stretch of 15-20 degrees above or below. We seldom go 20-30, but it happens. Having a week in the mid-70s this time of year was great, but it couldn’t last.

Something that I found unusual was that the  Asian lady beetles weren’t too bad this year. They swarmed a little with the warm weather, but nothing like in years past. Likewise the paper wasps are usually pretty aggressive and out scouting. Both pests were present, but not in the numbers usually seen in a warm October week.

I took advantage of the nice weather when I could and actually got a couple of days of work in outside. One day I just focused on the truck, tuning it up, changing the oil, trans fluid, transfer case oil, and a lot more. The other day was mostly spent chasing supplies, but I got the roof fixed and a few other details.

Seeing that it was going to be an insanely busy Fall, I went ahead and ordered a load of slab wood to supplement my wood pile. The slab wood is the D shaped pieces that the saw mill cuts off of the side of the log to make it square. That scrap makes good kindling and medium sized wood, but I still have about 4 more cords of oak to cut and split for deep winter, affectionately termed January Wood.

The fall colors have come and gone for most species. There are still some oaks and popples putting on a good show, but there are a lot of trees that are done. We are definitely in late season for color.

We have some events coming up this weekend.

The Snowmobile USA Show is in Milwaukee this weekend. In conjunction with that there are snowmobile safety courses and a swap meet. See the Big Snow Page for details.

More locally, here is Chris’ list..

Between the nice weather bringing outside work and work for other people I am welcoming a rain day to catch up on my neglected computer work. I probably have 7 projects that need immediate attention and a couple of more that will need some soon. It is going to be a very full day today, so I am going to run along.

Have a good week and thank you for visiting!

RJB

.