Greetings and welcome!
We had a very busy Friday and Saturday in the area. It was good to see people coming back around and the area businesses bustling. Today is a lot quieter with the rain. Folks that headed out this morning made a good choice, it has been raining all day. It has been a steady rain with lighter and heavier waves. The NWS Hazardous Weather Outlook from 3pm said that we could see 1-3″ of additional rain tonight and tomorrow.
The storm is a dandy. It is a slow moving area of low pressure that has nice moisture support from the Gulf of Mexico. It is going to be with us for a few days and it will have plenty of moisture to bring rain. The Weather Underground is already reporting 0.76″ in Silver Cliff and 0.57″ as of 5:45pm Sunday.
A couple of thoughts about the rain..
The first one is that Memorial Day weekend whitewater rafters will be in for a treat. The Peshtigo is at about a +7″ right now, a great level for just about anyone. The watershed has been getting hit with rain and will continue to get hit into tomorrow. That will bring the river up to really nice levels for next weekend, especially if we get a couple of more inches of rain.
Next is that the rain is just what we need to fuel the green explosion. We are behind quite a bit this year on the great greening of the land. With the late start and the big rain nature is going to go off like a firecracker. Right now the cottonwoods have gone from hazy first leaves to a good start on a canopy in less than a week. The maples have red flowers. The choke cherries have started blooming, and a friend saw his first trillium a few days ago.
So far the bugs haven’t been bad. I have had a few annoying gnats, a couple of wood ticks, and exactly two mosquitoes. I haven’t used Repel at all yet this year, but I will be looking for it this week. My guess is that the bug world will benefit from the rain just like the green plants.
I have noticed over the years that usually the second or third week of May we get a cut off low pressure area that brings us 2-3 days of nice steady rain. Here we are again. Some years it comes earlier or later, but it is here just about every year. One year it came on Memorial Day weekend and no one liked it when it rained for three days straight. This year it seems well timed.
The final thought on the rain is that hopefully it will keep fire danger low for the big holiday weekend. We are still under a burning ban where brush burning and burning permits have been suspended between dry grass from last year and COVID fears. You can still have a grill or a campfire but they were being discouraged.
The weather this week looks nice right through the weekend once the rain clears out. We could see 70s (even upper 70s late week and for the weekend) and nice weather. There is a chance of showers Saturday that doesn’t look like anything organized. Stay tuned on the weather forecast, It’s a 5 day outlook and timing is everything.
That is news for today. Have a good one and thank you for visiting!
RJB