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Tuesday April 26th, 2011

Greetings and welcome!

It is not a very nice day outside today. Like the rest of the Upper Midwest we are getting the wind and rain of a very large storm. Some places are reporting as little as 0.5″ by Fon du Lac up to an inch and a half in Shawano.

The radar returns are showing 2-3″ south of here, but with so much rain between here and there reflecting the signal, the radar is not showing our area or the watershed well.

Here in Silver Cliff I would guess our rainfall at the moment to be in the 1.5-2″ range and growing. It has been a steady series of waves of moderate or heavy rain.

At some point around noon the power came back on based on the flashing clocks. I wasn’t here so I am not sure if it was an outage or just a brief blink.

The TV weather channel 2-2 is showing a 24 hour temperature drop of over 20 degrees for most of the area. Athelstane Weather is showing a 23.3 degree difference. It was very nice out yesterday, today is a sharp contrast to that.

Last weekend I predicted that the Peshtigo River would stay steady or maybe bump up a little. It bumped up a little and gave people that came whitewater rafting a really fun river. People had a great time. I will have a photo gallery posted on the Facebook page a little later tonight and linked into Kosir’s page.

The whitewater rafting section of the Peshtigo River will be wild this weekend. Right now it is running at about +12″ and rising very quickly. With a couple of inches of rain today and more coming, I am going to start my water level prediction for Saturday noon at the 20-30″ range. If were to go for a specific number I’d guess 24.

I have it from a reliable source that the ground up in the watershed is still soggy from the frost coming out, and there are even still patches of snow in the woods. With a couple of inches of rain running off quickly from the already saturated or still frozen ground, the rain goes right to the river and makes it rise quickly. That is what Spring whitewater rafting is all about.

If you are into whitewater rafting, this looks like the weekend to go. The rain has fallen and it is a *sure thing* that the river will be big and fun and worth the ride from IA, IN, MN or IL. This is most likely the biggest weekend of the year for water levels.

We will see the river rising as the week progresses. With a long narrow watershed it takes 2-3 days for rain in the upper watershed to get here. That times out well with Friday and weekend rafting trips catching the big push of water from the storm. We will see an initial push from the local watershed, but the big rise should come Thursday-Saturday. Here is a link to a page that I made many moons ago about the Peshtigo River and its watershed. http://www.silvercliff.com/rafting/rafting2.html

There is another storm showing up on the models for later this week. It is sort of an unusual scenario, so I am not taking it too seriously yet. If it happened as shown, we would see more rain for Thursday followed by a warming trend for Friday and Saturday and a possible storm for the second half of the weekend.

Well, duty calls, so I have to cut this a little short. I am planning on coming back later with some weekend pictures. Have a good week and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Friday April 22nd, 2011

Greetings and welcome!

Thursday turned out to be  a pretty nice day. It does not look like today will be. There is rain moving in as I type this in the late hours of Thursday night. We are expecting off and on showers Friday followed by more Friday night.

The total expected on the storm is in the 1/2 to 3/4″ range, with expected totals going up 1/4″ as you go northwest toward Rhinelander.

The best part of it is when the rain clears out Saturday morning and leaves us a nice weekend. Saturday should be getting better as it goes, with a little wind and a high of about 50. Sunday looks great with partly cloudy skies and a high chasing 60º.

Rafting with Kosir’s should be fun this weekend. The river is running at about a +10.5 and should stay about there or maybe even go up a little. That is a cool level because you can take a raft or a funyak.

It is usually a fairly quiet weekend Easter weekend, but rumor has it that there will be a couple of fun groups around. According to the Facebook page for Kosir’s..

The Peshtigo is hanging tough around +10. Get some winter camping in: this weekend Kamping at Kosir’s is FREE!! And rafting trips are $10 off!!!

The snow from the storm this week didn’t last long. I don’t think that it made 2″ here, and the sun ate it quickly in open areas. It didn’t hit us for very long, and when it did, it was landing on warm ground. We might have had 2-3″ but it never added up to that.

The ground around my place is firming up nicely. I worked outside yesterday in tennis shoes both in the wood yard and down by the work shed. Wednesday I took a walk back by the creek in similar footwear and did fine. It is still soft in sheltered areas, but most of my travels were on moist but firm ground.

While I was on the way out there I opened up the well house and shut down the heater and heat tape. Wednesday night we got into the mid-20s and it made me a little nervous, but it was fine. I will welcome the $30+ drop in the monthly electric bill.

While I was out there the friend that I was with brought back the first ticks of the year. It is a little early but I can’t say that I am surprised. My back field is tick paradise in May and June.

Hooray an event!

Saturday April 30th 3-9pm Fishers Camp -Our first V.I.P. drawing (pontoon rental for a day) and Meat raffle with other party favors given away.

The only lake that I have seen since Monday is Waubee, and as of this morning it was still socked in with ice. It has opened more along the shore and the open area in the middle has grown considerably. It won’t be long. When I went by last Sunday the upstream part of Caldron was open, as was Landing 11. There is still ice on the lakes, but similar current and sun prone areas are probably open.

One last little note.. there are now links to the Kosir’s blog and Facebook pages as well as my Riversport Digital page in the Whitewater Rafting section to the right with the moving raft animation.

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

RJB

Tuesday April 19th, 2011

10pm

Greetings and welcome!

The storm did not hit here like it did 50 or 100 miles south. As of 10pm I have about 1-2″ down and it is pretty much over for now.

A lot of the snow fell on radar but not on the ground, and quite a bit melted on contact. It finally started snowing a little before sunset, and at last light I had an inch or so down.

Farther south they got nailed. Green Bay saw 8.7″, the most in a 24 hour period this late in the year. Apparently there are some big power lines down on I-43 on the west side by Atkinson Dr that has shut down the highway until morning.

From Green Bay south and west saw about 6-8″. There was a lot of lightning with this storm, so some had thundersnow.

The storm supporting this is a doozy. There are watches or warnings from Dallas, TX to Columbus, OH and on up to Sault St Marie. The radar shows a lot of red and orange, and some ugly hook echos too. Usually they mean supercells and tornadoes.

Anyway, the storm didn’t add up to much around here. Farther south they got spanked.

Have a good night and thank you for visiting!

RJB

2pm

Greetings and welcome!

So far the storm has been staying to our south. It looks like the area between Green Bay and Sheboygan are winning the contest at the moment. I have not seen precip here yet, but it feels like it is ready.

I still expect to see part of the storm make it this far north, but the higher end of the 5-8 or 6-12 predictions are not quite as likely. I am looking more for 2-4 or 3-6, but you never know.

I did my Lakewood-Townsend run this morning. Waubee Lake was still frozen except right by the Beach Club and one spot right across the lake. The Chain bay right north of Lakewood was tight and so was Townsend Flowage where you could see it from the road. There was some melting in spots and along edges, but it is not quite ready to float a boat.

Townsend Shell has good no-ethanol premium 93 gas, and it was $4.19, regular was $3.84. Thank Wall St speculators. We have a surplus of gas & oil, but thanks to speculation the market price has decoupled from the market conditions. ABC News last night had it pegged for a 30 cent a gallon cost, I’d put it closer to $1.50. We are not short on oil, it is more of a glut. I read yesterday that OPEC actually cut production slightly because there is plenty available. Grrr.

I forgot to do the wildlife update, so let’s do it now. The deer are out playing by the roadsides. With their coloring against the dead brown foliage they are really tough to spot until they move. Do beware.

Sunday I was down by the Tommy Thompson Park with some friends when we ran into a Tom turkey and his harem, and he was more than happy to display and strut for us. It was cool to see.

The frogs in the pond have been pretty quiet the past few days, even as the water in the pond rose. I haven’t seen the barred owl since a few days after I posted the picture. That time I got an idea where he roosts and where his nest is.

Last night the cat was yowling to go outside while I was making dinner. That stopped abruptly when the coyotes started making a big ruckus down by the pond. It was pretty loud even inside. I am not sure if they found a meal, love was in the air, or if they were calling here kitty kitty, but they were enthusiastic about it. The cat was considerably less so.

That is about it for now. I am off to deal with firewood before the snow starts. According to the radar I had better get on it.

RJB

7am

Greetings and welcome!

We are under a winter storm warning this morning. Right now it looks like the storm is going to hit the hardest between here and Green Bay, but we will likely still get a taste.

Checking the various regular sources and the RUC too, it looks like the models have the low going about 80 miles south of where yesterday’s scenario had it.

The NWS warning has us for a possible 5-8, and the TV weather channel is on board with that. In my opinion that might be a little strong, but we will see.

We are looking at between 0.5-1.0″ of rainfall equivalent, normally 6-12″ of snow. Between the heavier density snow, some possibly being a mix, and the first layers melting on the ground, it might add up to something more like 3-6 or 4-8.

I will also hold out the possibility that this might be a colder storm than expected. It is only in the mid-20ss right now, and there is more snow than expected on radar where the storm is hitting southern WI right now. Being on the northern part of it we might dodge the wet heavy snow thing.

As predicted, between the rain mix and heavier snow there is a chance that it will stick to tree branches and power lines and the gusty wind could take some down.

It looks like my day will be headlined by storm prep. There is firewood to work on, cover, and bring in. I will grab an extra couple of gallons of gas for the generator (or snowmobile?) and a few supplies in town. I’d already be at it, but it is only about 25 outside, so I am going to stall for an hour.

Someone asked about the ice going out on the flowages last week. They were pretty tight last week. They have come a long way since then. The landing by X & Parkway is still about half iced up. There was open water outside of the bay and by the bridge, but some ice yet. Caldron was clear of ice by Landing 11, but there was still ice downstream on the lake. I would expect that the wind from the storm will help break some of that up.

As of right now you could get onto the river end of Caldron. I would guess that you might be able to get into High Falls by 6 & 7, but might not get far. By X & Parkway was still too iced in.

I will get a look at Waubee Lake and Townsend Flowage later this morning according to the plan.

The snow is expected to start around here between about noon and 3pm and continue overnight. The Channel 11 Weather  just showed us in the 6-9 band with the 9-11 band starting a few miles south of here.

RJB

Monday 4-18-2011

Greetings and welcome!

It was a wild weekend around Kosir’s. The weather wasn’t very nice at times and it added to the adventure. The river was running big though and a lot of people got great a run through the rapids.

For what it was, Saturday wasn’t too bad of a day. It was around 40 and overcast with some snow. There wasn’t too much wind, and that helped a lot. The snow kept coming, and Sunday found us with a inch or two by afternoon.

Sunday morning the wind kicked up and the snow was blowing around. At times it was intense, other times the clouds would part, the wind would calm, and it was petty nice out. Then the next big blue cloud would blow in and bring more gusting winds and snow. With temps in the upper 30s and a sharp wind, it wasn’t nice out for a lot of the day.

There were a lot of people rafting this weekend in spite of the less than ideal weather. We had the DPoD group, a large group that has been coming rafting in April for many years, a scout group, and others too.

The weather wasn’t nice but the river was, and people stuck it out and ran the rapids. They were rewarded with the Peshtigo running between 16-18″. There were quite a few flips and swims, and some epic burials and wipeouts.

I brought home a lot of nice pictures and had a lot of fun with the slow motion replays in the videos. I will look into getting some video posted later in the week. In the meantime here is a photo gallery that I posted yesterday.

Michelle from Firelane was funny when she posted this on her Facebook page..

INSTALLING SPRING…

???????????????????????????????? 44% DONE.
Install delayed….please wait.
Installation failed. Please try again. 404 error: Season not found. Season “Spring” cannot be located. The season you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. Please try again……!!!

You don’t know how true that is..

We are under a Winter storm watch at the moment. It looks like another southern storm is heading our way for Tuesday night and Wednesday. It could be a nasty one for us.

There are a variety of scenarios being offered by the models and forecasts. The North American Model is showing us seeing 1-1.5″ of rainfall equivalent, and yes most would be snow. The GFS and HPC are pushing the storm south and showing it a little less intense, dropping the QPF to the .5-1″ range.

The TV weather channel is showing us in the area between 6.5-9″ of wet heavy snow and is running warnings about power outages and broken tree limbs.

The NWS has issued a winter storm watch and is expecting about 6-10″ of wet heavy snow. They are uncertain of the storm path at the moment, but the best scenario has it hitting north and west of Green Bay.

The TV weather channel just updated their forecast at 5 pm. Now they have us in the 4-7 band and areas between here and Lake Winnebago in the 6-10 band. It looks like they have the storm going south more and bringing us a little less snow.

Not to worry, there are several more big storms on the 16 day outlook, include one possible for late week.

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

RJB