High Water Alert!
Definitely plan on going whitewater rafting later this week and weekend!
Sunset came about a half hour early in Lakewood last night as a series of thunderstorms hit the area. When I was there at about 8:15 it was as dark as it would be an hour after sunset, and the clouds were ominous. There was an almost constant rumbling of thunder, and I drove home in a downpour that filled the tire tracks and threw the truck around.
There were three significant waves of storms, and they all hit the Peshtigo River watershed. There were flash flood warnings for Forest County, and the warned area really got hit.
Radar returns estimate between 2-6″ of rain in the Peshtigo River watershed, with most of it seeing 3-5″ and one spot 6-8″. The radar estimates are a tricky beast. Sometimes they are pretty accurate, sometimes they come in about half of what is in my rain gauge.
I am going to guess that we saw at least as much as shown, and maybe a lot more. I was watching the lightning out of the north window, and it went on until about 3am.
It must have been a good storm, the WPS web site is showing about 4,400 people out of power in the Wabeno area. There was a LOT of lightning.
Here in Silver Cliff I would estimate that we saw about 3/4″-1″ of rain based on the puddles and washouts in the driveway. There was not much for high winds or hail, but we did have a little lightning. One strike had to be right out back, the light lit up the living room and the thunder was immediate.
Most of the action was to our north and west, and I have a first hand report that it was a pretty bad storm.
We were actually pretty lucky with the timing of the storm. With the moisture levels and instability of the atmosphere the storms could have easily gone severe had they come in the heat of the afternoon.
Here are a couple of screen caps of the radar estimates. This one is from the Intellicast radar on the left side of the page.
I outlined a very rough approximation of the Peshtigo River watershed in pink.
Here is the NWS version from about 3am last night…
The green box is the flash flood warning area. You can see that not only did Forest Co get pounded, much of northern Oconto County and central Marinette Co saw heavy rains too.
Anyway, the rain should translate into some great water for whitewater rafting on the Peshtigo and Menominee Rivers late week and this weekend. I would recommend calling Kosir’s and making plans to go rafting this weekend. Right now I can only offer a wild guess on water levels, but that has it breaking the +6″ mark, and possibly doing it as it rockets well past it.
Anyway, work calls, so I have to run. I will update more later in the week once we get past the 2-3 day delay the Peshtigo has bringing water to the whitewater section and we see firsthand how much water we really get. I am expecting good things though.
Have a good week and thank you for visiting!
RJB