NorthernDestinations.com

Tuesday Update 6-13-17

Greetings and welcome!

I have been staying close to home because of the failing water pump in my car. It was supposed to be here yesterday, but they dropped the ball on that and it is out for delivery today. At that point I have not been able to assess storm damage as I normally would. My car sounds pretty ugly so I have been really limiting my driving.

Yesterday I did go and check on a couple of places up by Old J and Harper Rd. They were fine. The damage seems to be south of here 5-10 miles and down to Crivitz and Hwy W. There were also reports of trees down in Mountain and Townsend, and I heard on Facebook that Crooked Lake took it hard.

Once my pump comes I will get a lot better look around.

Gary has a place by Caldron Falls Bar that I will be checking on once I get back on the road. Here is part of what he said..

We left the property just as the the 1st round storm hit and the power went out. Had just finished buttoning and covering everything up. Found we had to drive different routes to go south on 141. Found trees down by Twin bridge, on Thunder mountain road and Caldron falls road and county road P. Luckily could drive the shoulders to get by but boy were there a lot down.

Not good.

Beyond that most of the storm damage that I know of was already posted.

I did see that Hwy 8 washed out up by Cavour, where the highway turns from north to east coming out of Laona. You know that it was a good downpour if it washed out a state highway. A friend up there confirmed that the storms really brought a lot of rain. Radar estimates had that area for 3+ inches of rain.

As it would happen that area is in the Peshtigo River watershed. We are in for some huge water levels, and it is already starting.

When the rain started Sunday afternoon we were at about a +15″, huge for this time of year. As of this morning it is at a +30″ and rising. Our normal volume for today is 444cfs (Cubic Feet Per Second, 7.5 gallons per cubic foot). Today we are at 1,780, just over 4x the mean flow. The record high for today (19 years of records) is 773cfs.

Here is the interesting part.. that graph isn’t done going up, and thanks to the long narrow watershed, the really heavy rain from the far reaches of the watershed isn’t even here yet!

How high will it go? I don’t know, I haven’t seen anything like it in my decades here. I know that it really takes a lot to get over about 24″. The river gets really wide when it gets that high and it takes a lot more water to add to the height. Based on the slope of the graph getting into the mid-30s looks pretty close to a lock.

Whatever the case, rafting is going to be insane this weekend. To paddle over 30″ of water at June temperatures is extremely rare. Don’t miss this one.

The Menominee River enters into this conversation too. They has radar returns that showed as much as 6″ of rain Sunday night. There was a huge highway washout up that way too. That river is running at a little over 9,000cfs. Sane people and outfitters usually stop running it at about 5-6,000cfs. I am not sure if they will be able to run that river this weekend or not. If it comes down enough, don’t miss out, that river is crazy fun over 4,000cfs.

As a photographer on the Peshtigo I much prefer the water down in the 800-1,200cfs range. People can take smaller rafts and funyaks, and there are more chances of wipeouts. When they run the big boats with a dozen people in them it is a lot less likely.

Last weekend we had pretty close to ideal water levels for me. The 3pm Saturday trip set some records. I kept telling people that even with a 3 year hiatus I have never been faster as an action sports photographer. Saturday I proved it. The specs were 190 people went through the rapid in 11 minutes. I took 573 pictures of them, averaging a picture every 1.15 seconds for 11 minutes straight. I have never seen anything like it, but I brought it home. Here is a sequence that was too fun not to post..

Last Saturday was a good day to get wet. The car thermometer got as high as 89ºF. The strong winds helped with the heat and humidity, and kept the mosquitoes down a lot too.

Ut-Oh.. The clock says that I need to post this and come back later to finish up.

Be back soon..

RJB

Monday 6-12-17 Storm Update

Greetings and welcome!
We had some heavy weather come through the area yesterday and last night. As the first wave approached I was watching the live TV weather updates.

They had tornado warnings from Antigo to the Oconto Co line. There was a classic bow echo and inbound and outbound winds on the radar were very close and very strong. Then the radar started showing rotation.

I evacuated when the storm was about 10 miles away and bearing down on the area. It was not bad here or at Rapids Resort. We had a couple of gusts, a lot of thunder and lightning, and a lot of rain really fast, but no heavy weather. One neighbor had a big tree come down, but so far that is the extent of damage reports from Silver Cliff.

Reports at the bar had a lot of damage about 10 miles south of Silver cliff. They said that Thunder Mountain Ranch got hit and Caldron Falls Rd north of there had trees down. Apparently Ranch Rd got hit and had trees down, and the damage continued down to the Twin Bridge Area near Hwy X & Parkway, There was damage north of there, but between X and the Curve Inn (Trixie’s) there was a lot of damage. Popp’s Resort got hit and they had a lot of trees down, and some caused car and building damage.

The storm continued east and hit Crivitz. They had trees down and the power was out. One unconfirmed report said that Hwy 141 even had trees down at one point.

There are damage reports from Maple Heights Campground just south of Townsend with trees coming down on some people’s stuff. Some ATV riders ran into a lot of trees down near Mountain.

A friend on Hwy W between Parkway and Caldron Falls Rd had a lot of trees down.

Wausaukee, Athelstane, Twin Bridge, and Crivitz all had power outages. Some will take a while to restore with a lot of trees in the way and plenty for the line crews to do. The morning news said something like 40,000 people were out of power. A news report out of Minnesota said that the same storm knocked out power for about 130,000 people there.

Closer to home the only real damage here is the runoff just destroyed the driveway hill with erosion. That is going to take some work to fix, but I still have it a lot better than a lot of people to the south of here.

We had a couple of subsequent waves of the storm come through after dark. The radar was ugly with orange, red, and black. Those storms brought a lot of rain and non-stop lightning, but no heavy weather.

E-mail me at ray # northerndestinations.com if you want me to check on your place. I am stranded at the moment, the water pump on the car went out, but if all goes well I will be back on the road before sunset.

People asked if it hit the Peshtigo River watershed. It sure did. According to radar return based estimates most of the watershed saw 2-3”. The river was at about +15” before the storm. A neighbor reported that the river was coming up immediately after the storm, and has continued to do so this morning. The gauge is off-line, so I have to guess at current levels. I would expect it to be close to +20” and rising fast. By mid-week we should easily see +24-30”.

I will update with any more information that comes in about the storm as I get it.

RJB

Sunday night 6-11-17 8:52pm

We had some heavy weather move through the area early afternoon. It had a lot of thunder & lightning, and the radar showed rotation. Tornado warnings, and heading this way @ 60mph.. Left the house at about 1pm and took shelter @ Rapids Resort. The storm was impressive but not severe. Apparently that was about 10 miles south.

8:52pm

Went back to the Rapids late afternoon. Reports from patrons said that there were trees down on Caldron Falls Rd at Thunder Mountain Ranch. The damage path went down Ranch Rd and went south to X & Parkway. One guy said that there wasn’t a driveway on Ranch Rd that didn’t have a tree down. Another report said that the damage hit Crivitz too. These are early reports from people at the bar. Take them as such. I will update as I can.

Looking at the radar there is another big line of red and yellow thunderstorms heading this way.

Oh yeah.. the 10 year anniversary of the Bear Paw tornado was 4 days ago.

RJB

Friday 6-9-17

Greetings and welcome!

I was expecting an intense week and that is what I got. I put on close to 150 miles yesterday and will do most of that again today. Again I am starting with my update here first so that it doesn’t get passed by.

Yesterday at about 6pm the skies got very dark and an intense thunderstorm hit. It was red and orange and in a few spots almost black on the radar. Here on the ground it rained about as hard as it can. The rain came in sheets and was falling so hard that I could barely make out the silhouette of the tree line 500′ behind the house. There was plenty of thunder and lightning too.

Today we have a little nicer weather on tap, then we are in for a hot weekend. The weather for today looks great with sunny skies and about 75 for a high. I will take all of that I can get.

Saturday and Sunday on the other hand look very hot and humid. The TV is saying upper 80s for both days and that is on track with the NWS forecast too. The humidity will be there with dew points in the low 60s. Saturday and Saturday night the forecast includes some wind. The forecast Saturday is for 7-17mph winds gusting to 33mph. The wind numbers only change a little for Saturday night.

There are rain chances for Saturday night (40%) and again Sunday afternoon (50%) and evening (70%). With the amount of heat and humidity in the atmosphere there could be some good downpours, but with only 1,500J/kg CAPE values we are on the low end of risk for severe weather.

Next week could get interesting as the boundary between the really warm moist air mass and cooler dry air sets up a battleground that is expected to be somewhere within about 100 miles of here. That will bring hot weather and a lot of chances for rain and storms. That is kind of a wait n see type of thing, exactly where the battleground will be is very difficult to predict.

So it is going to be a hot weekend. What do you do? Get wet! The whitewater rafting will again be outstanding this weekend. With a couple of good downpours this week the Peshtigo River is at near record levels for today. The mean flow for today based on 19 years of records is 434cfs. This morning we are at 910cfs. The record is 938. That translates into about a +14 or 15″ of water. People are in for an awesome weekend on the river.

I have two events for the weekend so far. One is a free pig roast, meat raffle, and ATV trail ride with the Red Arrow Snowmobile & ATV Club in Townsend. The trail ride starts at 9:30am and returns to the Old Town Hall restaurant by 2pm for the pig roast and other activities.

The other item on the events list is the Oconto County Breakfast on the Farm. That is being held in Lena.

This week I did escape the madness long enough to take Chris fishing Wednesday evening. We were a little limited for time so we were on the hunt for some hungry bluegills. It was a good day of catching, and I kind of wish I would have started keeping them. We tied into some nice ones, and the action was pretty steady.The scenery was nice too with some nice reflections in the calm water, a duck family with little ones, and a big blue heron that apparently was only fishing a few hundred yards from where we were. It was a nice afternoon in the boat. I will have a few pictures below.

When loading the boat back up onto the trailer I ended up with wet feet (no surprise). I liked that the water wasn’t much of a shock as far as temperature goes. In my mind the beach season is officially here with reasonable water temperatures.

The bugs haven’t been bugging me too much this week, but were present. Yesterday afternoon I went to look at a car and apparently stumbled into the mothership of mosquitoes. There was a row of big full pines near the car, and some wetlands were only about 50 yards away. I walked near the pines and was met with a cloud of gators that was just amazing. If you happen into a spot like that Repel 40 is your best friend.

It looks like a pretty decent summer weekend ahead. Hopefully a lot of people get out and enjoy it.

That is about it for this morning. Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!

RJB