Thursday 5-19-2022
Greetings and welcome!
Last week I said that spring and the great green-up was set to go off like a firecracker. Indeed it was. Everywhere that you look there is something new or greening or blooming. The grass has grown like crazy and needs cutting. The dandelions are flowering too. Most trees have some level of leaves on them, even the oaks and maples. The trillium are starting to bloom and the yellow marsh marigolds are everywhere with ground wet enough to support them. I am pretty sure that I saw some black raspberry bushes starting to flower. The ferns have their ugly brown flowers out and they are starting to fiddle head with their new leaves unrolling.
In the insect world the ants have made a huge comeback and I have encountered a few wood ticks. So far that has been the extent of the pests.
Last Sunday we traveled up to the beech forest to see if we could catch the magic of the first leaves up there. It wasn’t quite time yet and the day was too sunny, so that was a swing and a miss, but still a nice ride.
I saw my first snapping turtle crossing the road. It was only a small one, but there he was. That tells me that it is time to go fishing. I have done some of my best bass and pan fishing right about now before the lilly pads get too abundant.
About a week ago we had two days of heavy thunderstorms. Around here it was mostly a big sky show, some heavy rains, and a lot of thunder. There was enough rain to cause minor erosion, but that is about it. Farther south in Oconto County the rains were much heavier and it washed out a lot of roads. We are not talking about gravel forest roads, but rather paved and main roads. A wild guess was that they had close to 20 detours around damaged areas. In one case a culvert had washed out and the pavement buckled right as an Oconto County Sheriff’s deputy was driving across it. His car got swallowed up and eventually flushed downstream. He was ok, but the road and car weren’t. Check out this news article and the pix and video.
https://www.wbay.com/2022/05/13/oconto-county-deputy-has-narrow-escape-washed-out-road/
After two days of heavy thunderstorms I thought that maybe, just maybe, fire danger would be low enough to burn some of the huge pile of brush left from winter storms and fallen trees. Much to my surprise that was NOT the case. The next day the humidity was very low and the wind was gusty, so we ended up with very high fire danger. How the ___ can you have so much rain that it is blowing out roads and culverts and have fire danger very high the next day? Crazy.
The fire danger is low today, but by the time the 6pm to midnight burning window comes around there will be showers and thunderstorms in the area. Curses! Foiled again! Someday I will get to burn brush safely. In the meantime the monstrous pile grows daily.
We have some racing action going on this weekend. Pine Ridge Raceway is hosting an event, and the new dirt track by Lena is having side by side races too.
Spring is indeed springing and a lot of it is really spectacular. Get out there and enjoy it. Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!
RJB
