Greetings and welcome!
We are going to learn a new word today. First the regular stuff.
We have a wet week going on. It is raining today and we have about 3/4″ down already. Tuesday and Wednesday we saw about 1.5″ of rain. As a result there is zero chance of dusty ATV trails and gravel roads but there might be some puddles.
The whitewater rafting will be outstanding again this weekend. The Menominee River is running at 3,850cfs, a really fun level. The Peshtigo is right around a +12″ and on the rise. Either river ( or both) would be an excellent choice.
We have more rain on tap for the weekend. There is a good chance of showers and storms tonight and Saturday night, but my NAM model is showing a break in the rain for at least part of Saturday, most likely Saturday afternoon. Sunday looks wet again.
I did see my first deer fawn last week. As usual the Mom wasn’t happy about it but the youngster was playfully bouncing around and checking everything out. I have seen a few turtles crossing the gravel roads to lay eggs. So far there have only been a couple of them and they were all smaller ones.
As far as the bugs go.. it is summer. Nothing new or unusual here. Bring Repel. I use the 40% stuff.
Ok our new word of the day is noctilucent. Nocti would mean night (as in nocturnal), and lucent would suggest light. Noctilucent clouds are clouds that are lit up 1-2 hours after sunset. They have waves and undulations sort of like northern lights, but not quite the same. It takes a very specific set of conditions for them to form, and apparently this year is a good one for them.
In short they are clouds literally on the edge of space 40-50 miles up and they look sort of like cirrus clouds. Because they are so high up the sun will continue to light them up well after sunset. Here is a link to an article that explains how they form. (New tab)
At any rate, the Noctilucent clouds were visible across northern WI and MN last weekend. Here is an article about it from a MN paper along with a lot of pictures and links. Here is a link to a Vimeo video of them along with some sappy music.
I didn’t know about this phenomenon until yesterday, though I have seen it quite a few times. I guess that there are people that chase these things like tornado hunters.
It is another cool northwoods phenomenon and I thought I’d share it with you.
That is it for me today. Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!
RJB