Greetings and welcome!
Yesterday someone showed me video of some of the storm damage. The debris was scattered in all directions indicating that the damage was probably caused by a tornado. What they did not know was where the footage was from (FaceBook). My guess is that it was from one of the areas west of Lake Winnebago that did have confirmed tornadoes.
According to the news that was just on the NWS did a damage assessment and said that the damage in Oconto and Langlade Counties was NOT a tornado. They said that it was a macroburst.
A macroburst happens when the cold air on the top of the storm pours to the ground violently, hits the ground and spreads out ahead of the storm with straight line winds. We talked about how violently that the hot air was rising with a ton and a half of force lifting a 2.2 pound parcel of air. That violently rising air isn’t going to go into some magical stretchy balloon, the cold air that it is displacing is going to fall violently too. That is what the experts say happened.
In order to be a macroburst instead of a MICROburst the area of downrushing winds has to be 2.5 miles wide or more. A macroburst can have winds over 130mph and last as long as 30 minutes, and have damage similar to an F3 tornado. The storm was moving at 60-70mph so it wasn’t going to last 30 minutes in one spot, but rather it would affect a large area as the storm moved E/SE. The TV weather guy mentioned 100mph winds.
With the straight line nature of the damage that I saw, the widespread nature of it, and the extent of the damage, all of that is believable.
Whatever the case, areas from Antigo east to Hwy 32 and from Carter to Mountain and beyond really got clobbered. A lot of that was the same areas that got hit by the Bear Paw/Riverview tornado about 9 or 10 years ago. One person commented that a tornado would have been preferable, the damage path would be a lot less widespread.
There are still a lot of power outages along the Hwy 32 corridor. I just got word that the Lakewood grocery store opened back up. The map shows a lot of people still without power. This is as of 4:19pm Monday afternoon. (Link)
As mentioned in my early morning update the Forest Service has shut down all of the ATV trails in the Nicolet National Forest, and they don’t want help cleaning it up. Storm damaged trees can have other trees laying on them or twisted up trunks and limbs and a lot of power stored up waiting for someone to release it with a chain saw. They don’t want untrained people in danger when that energy releases.
I have done storm cleanup before with a friend that owned a tree service. I have seen branches fly up hard enough to knock me over, saw still running, and I have seen huge trees spin like they were in a drill when one branch was cut. They aren’t being jerks, storm cleanup IS really really dangerous and they don’t want to see club members hurt.
At any rate I still think that we got very lucky with this storm. That is hard to swallow for a lot of people that took damage, and not fun to say. The setup in the atmosphere last Friday was tremendously dangerous and could have easily spawned an F4 or F5 tornado. The dynamics were very similar to those the day of the Joplin, MO tornado (Link) with a 4,000+CAPE and shear over 40k. That ended with a mile wide 250+mph EF5 tornado that killed 158 people and injured almost 1,200 more. The ground was scrubbed clean of anything less than a cement slab.
At any rate that is the latest update on the storm damage.
I am going to repeat this next bit in future posts because people need to know about it.
ATV riders are about to lose all of the roads and many of the ATV trails in Marinette County.
The word on the street is that they are considering a 30 day closure of all of the Marinette County roads to ATV/UTV traffic. The problem is people keep riding on roads that are signed no ATVs or not open to ATVs. There have been so many problems and complaints that the county is looking at closing their roads to the wheelers and future roads about to be approved have been stopped. They are considering a 30 day ‘punishment’ closure first. If the problems continue we are going to end up with a lot less ATV trails and road access.
But wait, it gets worse..
There are several towns reconsidering ATV access to town roads too. The problem there is people doing power stands and donuts on gravel town roads. Those roads are graded a couple of times a year, but the townies have to go and fix damage after every weekend or more often. They are not happy at all.
ATV riders need to self-police. When you see some jerk spinning cheerios on the gravel road or blazing past a no ATVs sign do something about it. That is the guy that is going to wreck it for everyone. We are right on the edge of losing a lot of trails. Once these roads and highways are gone it is going to be REALLY hard to get them open again.
It is really nice being able to ride right from the house and not have to trailer every time that you want to ride. Everyone wants to keep it that way including the towns and the county.
Have a good week and thank you for visiting!
RJB