Monday April 19th, 2010

Greetings and welcome!

I have a lot on my plate this week, and it looks like it will get hectic, so I am starting off with a Monday report.

The weekend was nice but very windy. Friday was supposed to be the windy one, but Saturday came up with 15-30mph winds that put a chill in the air. Sunday was nicer.

It was also cold at night over the weekend. The clear skies let radiational cooling and the cold front from late last week have their way, and overnight temps plunged.  The NWS in Rhinelander doesn’t show anything under 33 over the past few days, but Athelstane Weather was in the 20s. I am inclined to agree with the local source. When I got home late Saturday night, it was 58 in the house. This morning there was frost in the field.

In spite of cold nights and a little wind it was a fun weekend. The DPOD group was up at Kosir’s. After coming there every year for decades they have a good time down to an art form. They had fun on the river and off, and it spread to the people around them too.

If you were driving down Highway C last weekend, you might have encountered some people doing a highway clean up. That would be our local 4-H Club, the Silver Stones. Cool stuff guys, thanks!

Speaking of working along the roads, the county continued work along Parkway North, also known as Highway I. They have been cutting trees and brush along the road and opening it up. Since it became a county highway they are improving it.

They widen roadsides for a number of reasons including being able to see wildlife before you meet them with the grill of the car. Also very desirable, it lets sunlight hit the road making sand and salt operations more effective in winter. Right now they have it cleared about two lanes wide on each side of the road. You don’t want to drive there though, there are a lot of stumps that will soon be hidden by the foliage.

A lot of people have asked about improvements to the road itself. I am not privy to the exact timing of it, but the last that I heard they want to eventually improve it initially up to the Goodman and McClintock Parks. The road is just over 20 miles long, and it would cost  lot to pave it. More likely they will do it in sections, with the above mentioned section the priority.

In the great outdoors Spring is continuing to spring. I noticed that the popples are starting to get the first green leaves to their crown. It is a delicate haze, but unmistakably leaves. The grass is now almost fully green in the yard. I have seen a few moths and other flying bugs as new species emerge. The nasty bug award remains with the wood ticks, which are atypical in April. Not this year. They are not June thick, but they are increasing.

Our drought continues with no obvious end in sight. The week looks dry. There is a slight chance of rain Saturday night and Sunday, but it is questionable. The models have been consistent with showing the force field of high pressure saving us from the evil rain as it has for the past few years and keep the majority of the rain south of Hwy64.

I keep expecting it to turn around as the El Nino declines, but it just isn’t happening. The El Nino is declining, and the forecasters expect it to return to ENSO neutral conditions by summer. The problem is, it is not showing up on the forecast maps. The 16 day GFS continues to show the ridge of high pressure from the north repelling any chance of storms. There was a good storm showing up for about May 4th, but oops, no. It vaporized on the next update.

Between the last couple of drought summers and the snow poor winters, water levels in area lakes and rivers are at or near record low levels. It isn’t something that an inch or two of rain will fix anymore. We need a protracted storm and a wet period to turn things around.

I do believe that it will eventually happen. We are not headed for desertification, but rather a change in the cycle.

Some of you have been made privy to my trees in the swamps theory. If not, here we go. The way that it goes is that by my observation that swamps around here have a lot of dead trees in them, and the dead trees are all about the same size, maybe 4-5″ in diameter.

As the theory goes, those trees were rooted and killed all about the same time. Presumably that would be related to precip patterns over a longer time scale where in drought times like the last 5-10 years the trees root and grow in the dry swamps. When the cycle turns around, those same trees find their roots under 2′ of water and die off when the swamps and lakes refill with the increased precipitation.

The best that I can tell is that it is about a 20-30 year cycle, which would loosely coincide with the PDO, the Pacific Decedal Oscillation. The PDO is on roughly a 30 year time scale. I have not done the leg work to correlate them yet, but the timing is somewhat paralell. We did just come out of a warm phase PDO and into a cool phase.  That end of it remains a hypothisis.

What gives me hope that it will turn around is that the new trees growing in the dry swamps are almost as big as the dead ones. If my theory holds water, the rainfall should be gradually increasing in the coming years, and our surface water tables will again rise to kill them.

Maybe you guys can contribute to or comment on this theory. I’d be interested in some input and discussion on it.

As far as rafting goes, Kosir’s and the other outfitters are running trips regularly. The Pesh is low at about -3″, not the end of the world, but low.

The Menominee River is bigger and dam controlled, and doing a little better at ~1,000cfs. It looks like Kosir’s will be starting trips on that river this coming weekend. Normally in April it is a huge torrent, and too high to safely raft. The record for today is something like 18,000cfs, and generally 5,000 is about the limit for rafting it. Since it is runnable, the weather is nice, and the Pesh is getting low, they are opening the Menominee to give people more choices.

Speaking of rafting, I put a video on You Tube over the weekend. It is at this link, or go to Youtube and search for Riversport Digital.

I have not heard about when Kosir’s will start renting the flat water stuff. Last year they started tubing trips on non-whitewater stretches of the Peshtigo River. Later in summer they introduced canoes and sit on top kayaks that you can rent and paddle on Caldron Falls Flowage.

Personally I thought it was a great expansion. It brought families with children too young to challenge the whitewater back, and gave others that might not be inclined to the whitewater new and fun activities.

I will try to track it down, but I’d expect that they will be starting up as soon as the water is warm enough to play in without a wet suit. That shouldn’t be long with no snow melt and warmer than normal weather.

Speaking of summer stuff returning, it looks like the Big Bear Outpost will be opening again May 7th. They will be open Fri-Sun, and will again have the ice cream and camping supplies.

In the weather department we have a pretty normal week ahead. Today and tomorrow we should see mid-upper 60s, with the balance of the week on the 50s. There is no rain in the forecast until the weekend, and as we discussed above, that looks doubtful. As tempting as it is to start gardening, resist, low temps are still in the 20s and 30s. Clear nights will bring cold temps and frost as usual. Our normal last frost date is about June 1, though personally I would say 6-10.

The ATV trails reopen this weekend. That comes a week early thanks to dry conditions and minimal frost thanks to a warm and dry El Nino year. Other than that I don’t have anything for events until May.

Thanks goes out to Neal H, who gave me some much needed encouragement this weekend. Thank you!

That is about it for now. I will try to return and add some pictures of Spring springing. In the meantime, have a good week and thank you for visiting!

RJB