Friday May 3rd, 2013

Greetings and welcome!

I stopped by the dam at Caldron Falls Flowage on the way to work Thursday afternoon and saw that Caldron Falls was ice free. From what I could see on the way by, High Falls was too. We have had a windy few days, so some wave action in addition to the warm week definitely helped move some ice off of area lakes.

The rivers are roaring from the warm weather and snow melt. The Peshtigo and Menominee Rivers are setting records for this date. That isn’t too surprising, the thaw is a week or two behind this year.

On the Peshtigo it will bring exceptional whitewater rafting for the weekend and beyond. The roaring Rapids section is roaring indeed, running at about +31 and 1,870cfs of water.I consider anything above 300cfs the fun zone, and above 800 merits a YEE-HA! 1,800+cfs is huge.

The river between High Falls and the Caldron Falls dam was looking a little swollen when I went by this afternoon, and it wasn’t a surprise. The dams will be releasing some water for sure. One cubic foot of water per second (cfs) adds up to about 1.98 acre feet of water per day. At 1,870cfs x 2 acre feet per cfs, the Peshtigo is putting 3,740 acre feet per day into Caldron Falls Flowage. At current flow rates it could raise Caldron 3.67 feet in a day. That is a little water.

The Menominee is a much larger river, and there is a lot more at risk when it floods.  Right now Niagara is under a flood warning, along with the rest of the areas that the river passes through on the way to Lake Michigan at Menominee/Marinette. The Niagara dam is wide open and the river is running at 12,000cfs. Slug is reporting that the river is over its banks by Bear Point and that people should be careful of floating debris lifted by the water going into the woods.

At Koss, MI pretty close to where it goes into Lake Michigan the Menominee is running at 15,200cfs. That is pretty huge. At that rate it could raise Lake Michigan about an inch every four days.

Anyway, if you are fishing the rivers this weekend be aware of swift currents and watch for floating debris. If you are not fishing, you should go whitewater rafting.

Now we are doing pretty good this spring compared to our neighbors to the northwest. If you go to northwestern WI they just got 12-16″ of snow, and 20 is possible some places. They are talking about 2′ of snow in the woods yet, and there won’t be much fishing on the lakes because they are still frozen over. They are expecting excellent conditions for cross country skiing this weekend though. Here is an article from the Milwaukee fish wrap.

Right now the boundary between the warm and cold air is over northwest WI, as it has been for a few days now. There was some high pressure to our east that was blocking its eastward movement. At that point the waves of precipitation were going along the boundary one after another like train cars on a rail.

Thursday afternoon that blocking high started breaking down, and we saw some pretty good waves of rain come through. Some FB friends spoke of a few rumbles of thunder, but I missed that. As of 12:30 am it is still raining, and now the porch has an icy glaze. The cement under it isn’t icy yet, but give it a little time to cool and it could get that way by morning.

Right now it looks like the whole stationary boundary thing is breaking down in a big way. If it all goes well it will rain a little Friday and then clear out and leave us a dry weekend. The forecast at the moment is for cloudy & 60 Saturday and partly sunny and 60 Sunday. If there was a Buy It Now button on the forecast I’d push it. It could be a lot worse.

The rain had the deer out in force tonight. I had a 13 mile ride home and don’t recall more than about a half mile or mile between e-stops for deer along the road, except on the county highway(C) between Red Pine BP and Kosir’s. West of Kosir’s it was back to deer every half mile.

The guess is that the rain and freshly greened up grass is moving them around. We just got our first green grass this week, and a lot of it will be in sunny areas along the road. They have been out in force for that. Rain moves them around anyway, and the lure of fresh green browse is bringing them out by the roads. Keep an eye out for them over the weekend.

Also noteworthy this weekend.. I saw an article a month or so ago that the OWI task force will be out in the Town of Stephenson and Crivitz area this weekend. Make good use of designated drivers this weekend.

I think that pretty much covers my list for the overnight update. If I think of something in the morning I’ll add it. Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!

RJB