Tuesday June 1st, 2010

Greetings and welcome!

The weather for the big holiday weekend worked out pretty well for the most part. The exception was Sunday night when a thunderstorm rolled through and stayed a while. The storm brought thunder and lightning but was benign with the winds. It rumbled and rained for a few hours.

The rain gauges between here and Iron Mountain are showing between 1/4″ and 1/2″. That seems low to me. I could hear the rain pounding on the roof for quite a while in some of the good downpours.

Monday started off a little cloudy and gave way to a very nice day. Monday night around the campfire a cold front came through and dropped temps 5-10 degrees immediately.

Today we have another nice day, but it is already clouding up a little in advance of the next storm. That is expected to come tonight into tomorrow.

After that the weather forecasts start getting less clear. The models are not in agreement on if we will have a mid-week storm behind tonight’s, and on the timing of the storm for Friday or the weekend. In the case of the midweek storm, the GFS says that it will stay downstate, the NAM has it coming our way a little.

The weekend goes the same way. The GFS is showing a storm coming Friday and Friday night, and the precip done by Saturday morning. The NAM has it timed out about 24 hours later with rain still on it’s way here Friday night, and rain for Saturday and Saturday night, and lingering into Sunday.

The NWS seems to subscribe to the latter scenario, leaving a chance of rain in the forecast all weekend.

I think that the whole thing needs to stew a little and get another look once some consensus starts forming.

The weekend seemed to go pretty well. There were pretty many people around to do all of the fun things that we do around here. It was not as crowded as some years, something easily blamed on the economy and high unemployment. There were still a lot of people around.

From what I heard the sit on top kayaks and tubing at Kosir’s was a smash hit last weekend. Apparently a lot of people tried it out and loved it. Both are very fun, but I am partial to the sit on tops and exploring the Caldron Falls Flowage.

The first weekend of June brings some good events. First of all, it is free fishing weekend. You do not need a fishing license this weekend to fish in WI next weekend.

An event that is not listed is that it is a free parks weekend in Marinette County this weekend. Most of the parks and waterfalls require a $3 daily tag or an annual sticker to enter. This weekend you can go and see what you have been missing for free. We do have some exceptional parks and waterfalls in Marinette County.

There was a lot of discussion about the drought over the weekend. I am not sold that we are out of the woods yet, but I think that we might be heading that way. There was actual rain for more than 10 minutes last weekend, and all of the forecasts have more. The HPC QPF is for an inch of rain this week. The GFS which can be a little excitable (convective feedback) does show several large rain producing storms possible over the next two weeks.

The words of encouragement that I had for people was to consider the plight of Atlanta. Last year they were in crisis as the drought drained their reservoir. Since January they have had enough rain and snow to raise Lake Lanier levels 7′, half of their deficit from normal levels. That is a lot of change in six months.

I am also hoping that we are at the bottom of the cycle or coming back up.  In my research last night I encountered a dam that has been measuring flow for 96 years. The previous low flow record was in 1958 was 815cfs, and today’s flow is a record shattering 450. That is fairly significant.

I see some hope ahead. The dreaded El Nino is fading into memory. There are some other teleconnections in flux, and it looks like we are in for a strong hurricane season. Sometimes played out hurricanes from the Gulf of Mexico travel up the Mississippi River Valley and end up giving us a few inches of rain. Sometimes they get cut off and bring more.

The downside to that is that we could see rising gas prices as the summer progresses. A significant amount of our gasoline infrastructure is near the Gulf of Mexico and vulnerable to hurricanes.

That is about it from here. Have a good week and thank you for visiting!

RJB