NorthernDestinations.com

Thursday 5-25-17

Greetings and welcome!

The big Memorial Day weekend is just one day away. The clouds have FINALLY parted and it is looking like a nice day outside.

I had a lot of plans to spend time outside this week. That didn’t work out at all. Monday was supposed to be a fishing day. Between the gusty winds and occasional showers that got cancelled in favor of a wildflower tour. Tuesday and Wednesday brought more overcast and occasional showers. Finally this morning we got to see the sun. I am looking forward to a walk to the mailbox when I am done here.

The weekend weather looks nice enough. The high temps are expected to be in the low to mid-70s, with low temps around 50. There is a 20-30% chance of rain Saturday-Monday, but I wouldn’t worry about it too much. There is no organized storm heading our way, but rather conditions where a shower or storm could pop up at any given time, with the afternoons bringing the best chance. I sure wouldn’t adjust weekend plans over it, but I will have rain gear in the car just in case.

I have checked the local shopper papers, Facebook, and the grocery store posters for events for this weekend. I did not get clarification on the Crooked Lake events or Trixie’s grand opening. The Doghouse grand opening is both Saturday and Sunday.

The Crivitz celebration is billed as the Red White and Music Festival, and that is Saturday from 11-11 at the Crivitz Veteran’s Community Park. They will have 3 live bands, and from 11-6 there will be bounce houses and stuff for the kids. One of the sponsors is the Falling Waters Winery in Crivitz, so there will be a little wine too. The raising of the flag and national anthem ceremony is at 11:45am.

Here are the posters that I have gathered up. A personal note on the Dave Schultz benefit.. I have met Dave many times at ATV and snowmobiling related meetings. You might not know him, but he is one of those guys that really put in a lot of miles supporting ATV and snowmobiling, and has a lot to do with the trails that you ride in Marinette Co. I would expect this to be a very popular event as people turn out to support him.

Whitewater rafting and paddling will again be outstanding this weekend. The Peshtigo River remains high from last week’s heavy rains. Right now it is running at about a +20″, a record for today. I would expect it to fall into the mid-teens by Saturday. That is a perfect level for either a raft or a funyak. I expect that a lot of people will have a great time on the river this weekend.

The Menominee River rafting season starts this weekend too. That river is also high, currently running at about 5,500CFS. People taking that run are in for an amazing ride. When you get over about 3,000cfs that river gets really big and exciting. If you are looking for maximum adrenaline to feed the rat, that would be my first stop.

This is a very old picture of a raft going into the first of the Twin Sisters rapid. A wild guess would be that the water is between 4,000-5,000cfs. I have been that guy in the front digging the paddle into the wave totally getting blasted. What a spectacular ride!

That is going to do it for me today. If I run into more events or posters I will get them posted. Likewise if there is a sudden change in the weather outlook I will keep you up to date. In the meantime have a fun and safe weekend, and don’t forget why we have this holiday.

RJB

Tuesday 5-23-17

Greetings and welcome!

Last weekend brought huge water to the Peshtigo River whitewater stretch, and hundreds of people showed up to play in the big water. The weather held off until about 3pm Saturday, so people got a lot of their Saturday in without getting rained on.

I predicted 36-40″ of water in the Peshtigo River, and got close. We ended up peaking at +32″. Considering the amount of guesswork involved missing by 4″ doesn’t seem that bad. Right now we are down to about +24″ and it is falling about 6″ every 36 hours. When I was in the near watershed yesterday there was still a lot of water to drain, but it was not coming at a rate that would support a continued 24″ plus level.

The guess for this weekend is not an easy one. There is nothing carved in stone that says that it will fall at the current rate and not go down faster. At the same time there will be a floor where all of the water reserved in swamps and wetlands will hold us above normal. Right now my best guess for Saturday’s water levels is +6 to +12″ with a hope that it stays closer to 16 or 17. I don’t see a scenario with the water going much below +6″, so good water levels this weekend is almost a lock.

Item two is weather for the holiday weekend. The setup that I am seeing on the GFS forecast model has us in warm moist summer-like air. There is a very weak low pressure system that will pass over about Milwaukee Sunday. Being in the periphery of that for Saturday-Monday there will be a chance of a shower or storm popping up just about any time. We are not looking at an organized storm or all day rain, so I wouldn’t change any plans over it, but rather be prepared for it and enjoy the weekend.

People that get to start the weekend on Thursday or Friday will be well rewarded with nice 70ish weather, and we are expecting low to mid-70s all weekend. Campers will appreciate lows in the mid-50s.

Right now the events that I know of are just kind of generalized things that I recall seeing posters, signs, or Facebook posts about. I will track them down as soon as I can.

Crivitz Red White & Blue Festival

Silver Cliff Memorial Picnic Grounds- The local Legion Post will be having a memorial service and picnic. I believe that it is Sunday.

Crooked Lake- Meat raffle & picnic with the VFD??

Grand opening at Trixie’s Bar (Used to be Curve Inn)-

Grand opening at the Doghouse Bar just south of W on Parkway-

Monday Chris & I went to town and took the long way through the national forest. It rained a little on us, but not the whole time. I took a bunch of pictures of wildflowers and scenic areas. Added to a couple of rafting pictures from last weekend here is my gallery for today. I really like the trillium picture with the rain on the leaves around it, and the second pond picture that shows the various shades of green as the new leaves unfold. Other than a minor gamma adjustment on one rafting picture these are untouched other than sizing them down for the web. I love my Nikon cameras!

Many of you have seen the pictures and videos of the gas station and Burger King in Iron Mountain by Walmart burning down. The gas station caught fire and the whole building is on the ground now. While fighting the fire one fireman had the whole front of the building come down on him, and he was trapped under a burning wall for about 2 minutes before they could free him. He and two other firefighters sustained non life threatening injuries battling the blaze. Thankfully the fire did not involve the fuel storage or it could have been a lot worse.

That is my update for today. I expect to be adding to it as the week progresses with weather, river, and event updates. Stay tuned. Have a good week and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Thursday 5-18-2017

Greetings and welcome!

The big news this week was obviously the rain. We had strong storms and heavy rain, and it came wave after wave for three days. The USGS gauge by Kosir’s tallied 1.4″ since Monday, and almost an inch of it from yesterday. I find it a little hard to believe that Monday & Tuesday’s rain was only a little over 1/2″, or that yesterday’s hours of pounding rain was less than an inch. Right now I am more inclined to believe the radar returns with their 2-2.5″ estimate, and that could be low.

I can tell you that my pond is much bigger that it usually is, and much bigger than it was on Sunday. I also saw a FaceBook photo this morning of a friend’s dock on a nearby lake that was under water by quite a bit. Whatever the tally was we have seen a lot of rain.

My thoughts turned to the Peshtigo River and whitewater rafting. Here is a screen cap of the radar return based estimated rainfall. I cropped it, moved the scale to our area, and did a very rough approximation of the Peshtigo River watershed.

My guess Tuesday morning was that the river would jump from about a +6′ to about a +16 or +17″ from Monday’s rain. We can flush that idea. In the past two days we have seen the river go from about 550cfs to almost 1500, and the slope of the graph indicates that it isn’t done coming up. Right now the morning gauge reading translates to about a +26″ level by my estimation.

(But wait.. if you order now..) Yes it gets better… The really heavy rain was way up in the far reaches of the watershed. With a fairly elongated watershed that rain takes 2-3 days to get to the whitewater stretch that we play in. Tuesday and Wednesday’s heavy rain hit hard way up by Crandon, Laona, and Armstrong Creek. That water should start reaching our stretch of river today and tomorrow.

Whitewater rafting this weekend will be epic.

I have watched this river for a couple of decades and I am usually pretty good at guessing weekend levels. This set up has me scratching my head. It takes a lot to raise the river farther once we get to about 24. The river channel widens and throws an extra dynamic into the equation. At the same time the radar returns are just estimates, and if 5-6″ is really 3″ that will throw me too. Anyway my wild guess for Saturday is that the Pesh will be in the 36 to 40″ range. Whatever the case, the water will be huge.

A couple of added bonuses- First of all we often don’t get water this high in spring when the snowmelt+runoff+frozen ground brings the big water. When it comes then, the water is usually in the 30-40 degree range. This weekend’s water will be much much warmer. Bonus #2 spring rafting pricing ended last weekend at Kosir’s and you can take a raft trip for $30 instead of $50. Bonus #3 is that you get to do it at above freezing temperatures. Bonus #4 there is so much water in the watershed that we are pretty much guaranteed fun water levels for Memorial Day weekend. I don’t see how it could possibly go below the fun zone in 9 days.

We really have a lot to look forward to in the whitewater department this weekend and beyond.

Not everyone will be happy about all of the rain. Contractors, loggers, excavators and other people that work outside had a tough week. There might be some driveway and trail erosion. I also saw some pretty attractive mud holes that used to be two lane ruts roads.

I am going to post what I have for the folks that check in at lunch hour and post the rest in about an hour.

Break

Today in the wake of the storm we have gusty winds and much cooler temperatures. Yesterday we were close to 80 and very humid. Today through Sunday we will be lucky to hit 60. Tonight we are expecting widespread frost and a low around 30. Friday night will be a little warmer at around 40.

Saturday they are predicting mid-50s for high temps and a low around 45 Saturday night. There is a 70% chance of rain Saturday, and 60% Saturday night.

There is a storm coming for Saturday that looks like it will affect us for about 12 hours with the main precip area. The GFS has it holding off into the afternoon, the NAM forecast model has it coming at about noon. The rainfall estimates are  GFS=0.25-0.5″  NAM=0.25-0.5″, bordering 0.5-0.75″. Dice it or slice it, it doesn’t matter, Saturday looks wet. It would be great if the storm stalled and took a couple of extra days to get here, but that is only wishful thinking.

Sunday looks a lot better with only a chance of lingering showers and highs in the mid-50s.

Thinking about the ATV trails.. we won’t have to worry about dust this weekend.. and there might be some biiiig puddles and mud holes. Yeehaw!

I always like to exit on a happy note, so I am going to go. Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Wed May 17, 2017

Greetings and welcome!

4:30pm

We have another round of storms moving through. It is raining and rumbling now, and the TV just said that we could see a couple of more rounds of storms. The heaviest stuff again went a little to our west and then up into the UP. We are still getting some solid rain though, I am using my phone as a hotspot to write this because the satellite internet keeps getting blocked by the rain.

The last wave of rain also hit the Peshtigo River watershed quite nicely filling in any gaps that showed less than an inch of rain, and pushing most of it to the 1.5″ range. Part of the heavy rain area east of Crandon is now showing radar returns in the 3-4″ range. Great whitewater on the Peshtigo this weekend is definitely a lock.

I put on a lot of miles today, and in one case I shaved about 20 miles off of my trip by short-cutting down a couple of forest roads (What a Bummer!!). Here are a couple of more flower pictures. The shooting stars are new today. I thought that I saw some yesterday, but was at highway speed and couldn’t be sure. Now we know.  The trillium are now more common, and starting to really fill in.

On to the morning report..

Thanks Sara!

RJB

5am

It is raining pretty good as I start my update at 5am. It has been raining most of the night, and we had a few heavy waves that brought thunderstorms. The 4am update of the USGS gauge by Kosir’s showed 1/2″ down. The current wave of rain is dark green on the radar and a good sized blob of it. The roof-dar says that it is a moderate and steady rain. My guess is that we will be at an inch plus before long.

The storm has brought some very strong weather, and it brought a tornado in Western WI. There was one line at sunset that looked really wicked with several concentrated red areas on the radar. It was making a due east bee line right for us. Thankfully that weakened as it got farther east. I was watching it on radar and lightning tracker and it looked like it was going to slam us here in Silver Cliff. Instead it took a left on Hwy 32 and went north.

Crandon, Laona, Armstrong Creek, Goodman, and Dunbar all got significant rain. The radar returns are showing them getting 2-3″ of rain, and that was before the last two waves hit them. Why do I care in Silver Cliff? Because that big orange stripe of heavy rain fell on the far reaches of the Peshtigo River watershed.

The river is running at about 600cfs right now, probably a +5. Our median flow for today is about 400cfs, so we are already well above normal. With the above normal flow, Monday’s rain, and last night’s rain, I think that we have a lot to look forward to playing in the whitewater this weekend.

There is still more rain ahead for today and Thursday, including some that could get heavy. Unfortunately there is also a little rain in the forecast for Saturday. It doesn’t look like a lot for quantity, but the forecast has it coming prime time Saturday afternoon.

I put on a lot of miles yesterday and got a good look around. The trees and underbrush are starting to fill in now, and forests that I could see 100 yards into a week ago are now blocked with green after about 100 feet. The trillium started blooming here in Silver Cliff about Sunday, and there is a good start on them in my woods and front yard.

I made a couple of stops on some forest roads to take pictures of marsh marigolds and the swollen creeks from the rain. The marsh marigolds picture after sunset was too dark, but the creek picture from an hour earlier came out nice. At both creek crossings I was greeted by an ample cloud of mosquitoes and quickly driven back to the car. I guess that season is here.

When I cut the grass Sunday a few gnats and wood ticks were the only pests. Apparently the trout streams have a more generous mosquito population.

Well the alarm is going to ring in a couple of minutes, so it is time for me to go and jump into a really busy day. Have a good week and thank you for  visiting!

RJB