Greetings and welcome!
Time to dust off the summer blog and bring people up to date.
We are well into the mud season. The frost is coming out of the ground in sunny areas, and shaded areas still hold snow and ice.
The snowmobile trails are all closed now, and as of last Friday all of the ATV trails in Marinette County are closed as well. Usually ATV trails re-open the first or second weekend of May. That all depends on how fast that the ground dries out. Road weight limits (road bans) are in place for most of the area.
If you see cars parked at the end of driveways and barriers up mud season is why. If took the truck up the driveway in peak mud season I could make ruts a foot deep, and without some momentum, it would be easy to get stuck. My secret, when I can, is to go up the driveway after a cold night when the top couple of inches has refrozen.
We had an awful winter for snowmobiling. Our biggest storm was about 8-9” and there wasn’t much in the way of small snows either. I would guess our total snowfall at about 3 feet when it should be five or six. We had a total of three weekends with open snowmobile trails.
We have had some interesting weather lately. A storm came through late last week that brought rain and fog. At the tail end of the storm we actually had heavy rain and thunderstorms.
When the cold front came through it brought some very strong winds. The initial blast was a huge roar, that I would guess at 50+mph, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it were closer to 70. The power went out immediately, but the heroes at the WPS line crews had it fixed in about 90 minutes. The next couple of days were pretty windy, and unfortunately one of them was an otherwise nice day in the 50s.
That spring wind has always been an annoyance of mine. You get a nice sunny 55 or 60 degree day and you go outside excited about doing yard clean-up or other tasks, and there is a stiff cold wind. It is just the way that spring days happen around here. I don’t get too mad about it because there isn’t much that I can change about it. I’m just happy that it isn’t -20 and windy like that.
There have been a couple of nights with northern lights lately, and pictures on Facebook show that they were pretty visible last night. I haven’t been watching for that too much lately because we are in a grand solar minimum. I guess that I need to pay closer attention. From what I have heard we have a decent chance of some northern lights this weekend.
Whitewater rafting should be good this spring even though there isn’t massive snow melt runoff. If you check some of my posts from last fall you will see that I was warning deer hunters that low areas were really full of water.
When winter came the watershed and aquifer that feed the Peshtigo were really flooded with water. A lot of that water is still frozen deep in the forests of the headwaters. All of that water will make a very solid base flow as it slowly melts.
No matter what happens with the rain or snow melt, the river will be at good levels this spring. Right now without a lot of melt water hitting the river it is running at almost +12”. On a warm day it will spike.
Kosir’s usually starts spring rafting the first weekend of April. That weekend you can run both trips down the river for the price of one trip. Check with them for details.
There two events coming up-
We have some new businesses coming to the area.
First up there is a new Dollar General at the corner of X and Kottke Rd across from Country Convenience. That was a winter build and I guess that they are open for business.
Next up I saw on FaceBook this morning that there will be new owners of Vacationland Fun Park, and they hope to open in May. That is the place with the mini-golf and bumper boats across from Sportsman’s Cafe on Hwy X just east of Popp’s. Good luck!
There are big excavators and bulldozers and other heavy equipment on the east side of Hwy 141 in Crivitz just a little south of McDonald’s. They are there to build a new Quick Trip gas station.
I see that there is a new lock-up room coming to the old Ellis Junction restaurant kitty corner to Gateway Bar in Crivitz. That is one of those deals where you need to use clues to solve the mystery to unlock the room and escape.
I also heard a rumor that Cellcom will be bringing 5G cell service to the area this summer. Hopefully this time they will build it big enough that the network doesn’t go down every weekend.
I also got notification that Star-Link will be available in the area this summer. That is Elon Musk’s constellation of low orbit sattelites that supposedly will bring us 150Mb-400Mb internet. It is $99 a month with a $500 box and $89 shipping. I signed up as a beta tester and they let me know that I can place my order and get hooked up sometime this summer.
That would be a welcome addition to the area. The internet options around here are poor or none. A lot of people would love to remote work from the area but the lack of reliable internet is always the deal killer. Hopefully Star-Link will be the answer.
Well it is a sunny 60 degree day outside and the wind ISN’T howling for a change. I am off to go and be a part of it.
Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!
RJB