Greetings and welcome!
It was a good weekend. There were some people around to do all of the fun stuff that we do, but it wasn’t crowded or overwhelming.
The story starts on Friday afternoon. The final gasp of our week of bountiful rain came in the form of a line of thunderstorms that set up camp and had wave after wave of storms come down the line like train cars. The line set up a little south of here ( C & F in Silver Cliff) and had a slight SW to NE tilt. I didn’t see a lot of rain here, but they did a mile or two south, and elsewhere along the big line.
Wausaukee chalked up 3.77″ Friday alone according to the news. Reports had ditches full and water over the road in spots. It came hot n heavy once it started. I saw plenty of gravel washed onto roads.
One friend from Lakewood said that he measured about 6″ of rain for the week near Lakewood Golf Course. I can only wild guess, but I’d put my rain total for the week someplace in the 4-6″ range.
I saw on Facebook that Niagara, WI (near Iron Mountain) took a hard hit from the rain last week. They had a similar scenario to the training where they saw close to 4″ of rain in a few hours. With their hilly terrain there were washed out and damaged roads, and I saw pictures of trucks going down 141 almost bumper deep. One cloud looked a lot like a tornado, but I am not sure how that worked out.
Since then we have had some cold nights. Last night was down to 33, and the night before was 32. Those might be a little high, I had frost on the car windows both mornings this week.
I tell people to not plant delicate plants until about June 10th. It is really tempting to get started with nice days in May, but I have seen many early June frosts.
This year it looks like we are good to go as of today. I looked at the medium range forecast models and didn’t see anything that would support 20s or low 30s. We can still get clear nights that will get cold (tonight low 40s), but the really cold air mass looks like it will stay up in Canada for a while.
When I was at Rapids Resort Saturday night the people were having a great time recalling the outstanding whitewater of the day. There were flips and swims and crashes and a lot of people had a great time. You can’t go wrong when the Peshtigo River is all big like that. It will still be great this weekend too.
The Menominee River got too big to run last weekend, but I expect that they will be back out on it this weekend. It just came down to the max runnable level today. There is still plenty of water in that watershed, so a trip to that river is highly recommended for this weekend too.
We are having a dry week so far, but that will change for Thursday and Friday. We will be back in the warm humid air, and showers and storms are expected to develop. When I looked at the models last night it didn’t really show a focused low pressure area with a swirl of precip or a defined line. It was more that conditions will be right and where and when might be a little elusive.
I am happy to report that it is expected to clear up in time for Saturday and the weekend. We can expect nice weather and highs in the low 70s. The best chance of rain is Sunday night. With lows in the low 50s, it might even be nice enough to enjoy a campfire and some stars.
After a busy and fun weekend I finally got the boat into the water. Sunday afternoon Chris and I hit Caldron Falls for a first boat ride. I am kind of sorry that I didn’t bring fishing stuff, but it was ok just touring around a little and doing a shakedown tour.
I had a new trolling motor and a huge new battery, so we just cruised around on electric for a while. That was pretty relaxing. Next time I will bring fishing gear.
One last item..
There is a place being built on the east side of Silver Cliff that will be a vacation rental home for large groups of up to 14 people. It will have 7 bedrooms, a big common area, a kitchen and 2 1/2 or 3 bathrooms. It looks really nice. They are wrapping up construction, and it will be ready to rent later this month. I will bring you more details in an upcoming report.
That is about it for today. Have a good week and thank you for visiting!
RJB