Monday April 15th, 2013

Greetings and welcome!

It has been an interesting 6 days since I updated here last. Late last week our server company got hit with a hacker attack that lasted a few days. They kept the servers up and running, but I couldn’t log in to post. The Big Snow Page is on a different server and so I had to do my late week update there.

We were making good progress with spring last week until Thursday. The frost was coming out of the driveway and it was finally firming up. A lot of the side roads were getting thinner on the glacial ice layer from the winter.

Thursday brought some rain, followed by about 4-5″ of snow in a hard driving wind Thursday night. It was near whiteout conditions for a while. Thursday night got down into the 20s and firmed everything up a little. They didn’t plow some back roads, and by Friday night they were frozen up with 4″ plus deep tire tracks. Winter was back.

I really expected the snow and cold to lock the river back up, but it didn’t, and we started the Kosir’s whitewater rafting season Saturday at noon. We had a full trip of adventurous people hit the river, and they were rewarded with a rare view of some really scenic big ice formations on the river.

That is pretty hard core, right? Well, these guys were camping in snow, rafting in an ice maze on the river in 40+ degree temps, and walking through knee deep snow and ice to get there. Saturday night it got down to 14 degrees and solidly froze in the water, ice, and puddles from the snow, along with any footprints or tracks. Some were tent camping it in the snow.

There wasn’t any whining going on, they were partying like rock stars and making the best of the adventure. It most definitely was a very memorable opening weekend, and if you looked up hard core in the Funky Wagnal’s there would probably be a group picture or two from last weekend at Kosir’s there.

Heading up to the river to do my pictures I found that it is still full blown winter not too far north of here. The side road hadn’t been plowed, and there was 4-5″ of snow on top of the winter’s ice base. That made turning in corners kind of a suggestion, and the smallest error brought a stuck truck. The snow on the way down to the river was knee deep or better, and heavy with the ice layers and last week’s rain. I was thinking that it was a shame that they had shut down the snowmobile trails with conditions like that.

Sunday brought an overcast day and a pending storm. It snowed on radar for a few hours before it snowed here on the ground, but eventually we got an inch or so before it turned to rain about sunset. The rain was pretty cold, the roads were cold from the weekend, the sun was setting, and it was just under 32. At that point we likely had some icy roads for a while.

Later the rain came heavier, and a couple of waves could be heard pounding on the roof. Early morning brought a seriously dense fog, but it didn’t last long once the sun came up. Now we are headed for a sunny 50ish April day.

With the extended winter the Peshtigo River was just open enough to raft. The big melt hasn’t even started yet. As I mentioned above, it is still straight up winter in the watershed. It was hard to quantify the river levels last weekend because of ice on the river messing with the USGS gauge and focusing the water. Looking at the center rock at First Drop, I’d guess that it was somewhere between +6 and +9″.

As the river is breaking up it is building and blowing out ice dams. That is causing spikes and valleys on the gauge. As the big ice starts to move this week and next I would expect some really big ice dams and huge rushes of ice and water to roar down the river when they blow out. It is one of those cool and just overwhelmingly powerful forces of nature.

With the amount of ice and snow still locked up in the watershed I am really excited about the prospects for rafting this April and May. Today is the first day in quite a while that we will hit our normal high of 50, so not much has melted yet.

This week will be close to normal for the most part, so the thaw should start but not be too dramatic. There is a storm for about Thursday that could bring around an inch of rain, plus a little snow on the finish.That should perk up the river a little and bring good water levels for the weekend.

We should have good water levels for whitewater rafting next weekend and for the foreseeable future. Looking at the 16 day GFS forecast model I am seeing a pretty gradual thaw, with the first really warm (60+) temperatures coming around the end of the month.

Here are some pictures from around Kosir’s Saturday..

Thank you to all of the people that made last week very interesting!

Have a good week and thank you for visiting!

RJB

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