Tuesday April 9th, 2012

Greetings and welcome!

We have somewhat of an unpleasant week ahead for weather. We have a big storm to our south that will bring us rain, sleet and snow off and on from now until Friday afternoon. Later in the storm it is expected to become accumulating snow, but with the rain/snow line close and cold air to the north, it could come much sooner.

This is one of about four big storms that could hit us in the next two weeks. The one for late Sunday looks like snow, and not a little of it. Think 4-6 plus.

People like me with long muddy driveways probably aren’t too happy with the wet weather at the same time that the frost is coming out of the ground and making it swampy anyway. It is definitely mud season in Silver Cliff, at least in the areas where the sun has already eaten the snow away.

This year winter held on for a couple of extra weeks. It wasn’t just the big ice layers that kept the snow around, March was colder and snowier that usual. Marinette County actually extended the snowmobile season closing date from the usual March 31 up to yesterday, April 8th. It is unprecedented in my time here, but a friend said that it happened in 1995 too.

That late winter probably will not be good news for ATV riders wanting to get started on the trails. They close all trails from March 31 until the ground firms up, usually the first weekend in May. They have held it back as late as the second weekend in recent years if conditions required it. This year probably will not bring an early start.

While riding snowmobiles around Silver Cliff or the flowages was a non-starter last weekend, they were still riding good trails 20 miles north up by the Goodman and Hwy 8 areas last Saturday. Spring is just starting to find those areas.

Normally we would have started the whitewater rafting season with Kosir’s last weekend, but the late winter put the kibosh on that for us. There were still ice bridges across some of the rapids, and since it was still winter in the watershed, there wasn’t much for melt water coming down the river.

That will change this week with the warmth and rain from the weekend and the big storm this week. The slow water areas of the river right by the bridge at Kosir’s opened up a lot Sunday alone, and the rest is starting to clear out too. The process is just starting, but it is under way, and the river is rising.

In some years in the past decade the melt has come early, and the big spring flows did too. That isn’t the case this year. As I mentioned, they were still snowmobiling on good trails up in the watershed last weekend. All of that snow and ice is still in place, and will make the river roar when it does finally melt.

There are two elements to the river’s flow, the base flow from the spring creeks and swamps, and the fast run off from melt and rain. Both look pretty good right now.

A lot of the melt has been soaking into the ground here in Silver Cliff. That is good in that it will raise the groundwater level, and increase the base flow that is always there. That bodes well for the longer term, bringing expectations of a good spring season in to May and beyond.

As far as the run off, that firecracker is lit, just waiting to go off. There is still knee deep snow layered with ice piled up in the watershed, and there are no less than four big storms in the two week forecast.

As far as the rafting goes, I think that it would be hard to pick a bad weekend to go in the next month. The river is already into the fun zone and rising fast, and it is just starting to see the first melt water. I am expecting a good weekend this weekend and some big water after that. From my chair, a fantastic whitewater rafting season is pretty much a lock.

For now we are playing in the mud. It is pretty common to see cars parked at the end or driveways because the frost out make them too soft to be passable or passable without rutting it up.

I have been seeing a lot of spring critters out already. The chippys are out, squirrels are active, there were skunks and porkys out last week, and I  even saw some sand hill cranes yesterday.

Turkey hunting is getting started, and we are not short on those. I probably saw 30+ along the road on my trip to Lakewood yesterday. I told a friend last week that he’d have better luck turkey hunting if he spread out a big tarp in the woods and painted up up like a road since that is where they all seem to be hanging out. It was funny at the time.

Well as usual the clock is not my friend, so I am off to dive into another full day. Have a good week and thank you for visiting!

RJB