Greetings and welcome!
It has been quite a week in weather. Wednesday we had 3-4″ of wet heavy snow. Happily most of it melted off of the roads fairly quickly. It did not melt as quickly off of grass and cold surfaces. Thursday morning found 2+ inches of cement snow on the car and the grass. The snow had melted down and then refrozen into some really thick ice. I was pretty sure that we had seen the last of the grass for the winter.
Yesterday we had a very powerful storm hit the state. You probably saw on the news how Green Bay saw as much as 3.5″ of rain and Oshkosh saw as much as 4.5″ of rain. There was news footage on the morning news of people in Oshkosh driving cars through a foot or more of water, and reports of over 40 cars getting swamped and needing a tow truck. One guy had water in his basement right to the ceiling.
We had a wild ride up north too. We had some crazy clouds as smoke from western fires got trapped in mid levels of the storm and gave us some weird coloration. Normally that smoke needs to go into the stratosphere 5 miles up to reach us. It had not so we were not expecting smoky skies. In an unusual scenario the powerful storm had trapped some of that smoke in the mid levels.
Anyway, at times yesterday the sky was as dark as it would be 45 minutes after sunset. We had snow for a while, enough to slush up the roads a little. That was followed by rain. Early afternoon I was in Lakewood and left earlier than planned because the roads were freezing up in spots making glare ice. I crawled home in 4 wheel drive. In many areas it was just wet. Just when I thought I was safe the ABS light would start flashing indicating that all of the wheels were not turning at the same speed. Back to a crawl. Eventually the rain thawed the roads.
Later in the day we had a line of thunderstorms line up on us and do the train thing. The line was camped over us and the thunder and lightning came in wave after wave like train cars going down a track. We probably had two hours of thunder and lightning. My thunder shy dog was not having a good night.
In the end we got about an inch of rain out of it. Here is a screen capture of the radar precip estimates. You can see the distinctive line going over our area.
I looked out out of the window late last night and even the thunderstorms had not eliminated the ice/snow layer on the ground. As mentioned before I was wondering if we had seen the last of the grass for the year. This morning found only patchy areas remaining.
When I went to Lakewood yesterday I noticed that every low spot, swamp and ditch was full. Some areas had a ~1/2″ layer of ice on top. That prompted me to look up historical rainfall. According to the USGS rain guage by Kosir’s (which frequently under-reports rainfall) we have had 15 inches of rainfall since July 1st. We have had 4″ of rainfall in the past month, with two of them in the past couple of days.
Right away my thoughts turned to people with hunting land that have low spots. Don’t be surprised when those low areas are well flooded.
Now rain has not been the only challenge this fall. I don’t think that we have seen 50 degrees in the past couple of weeks. Normally the typical high temperature does not go below 50 until the beginning of November. This month we have been consistently 10-15 degrees below normal. Doing firewood at 38 with a strong wind and drizzle is a lot different than a sunny 50 or 55 degree day.
Next up… my worries about freezing plumbing. We have been in the danger zone for that several times already with nighttime lows near or below 20. We are going to have that again tonight through Sunday night when expected low temperatures are around 23. Monday is the deadline when Monday night’s expected low temperature will be 16 degrees. That will break stuff.
Between the cold weather and near daily rain October has been an absolute disaster in my world for trying to winterize, work on cars, trucks, power equipment, and snowmobiles, and do firewood. I am weeks behind. We will get a little break in the rain after Sunday’s snow, but the cold is still stuck here for at least another week. The first week of November should warm up a little but there is a good chance of a significant storm at the end of that week. That is likely the beginning of winter. I love living here but it is not without challenges.
I am off to get on my work before the snow starts up again this afternoon. Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!
RJB
