Friday October 9th, 2015
Greetings and welcome!
The leaves are really getting nice now. The maples that get a deep red are in their full glory, as are the yellow and orange maples. The paper birch are yellow as well. The sumac are full red, and some underbrush is changing too.
Depending on where you are it can range from a sea of spectacular maples, to not much color change with a bright splash here and there. The hillsides don’t have that patchwork of color quite yet, but will soon.
The ride home from Wausaukee had a varied show with some nice splashes of color from the maples. The ride to Lakewood was very scenic with a lot of full glory maples being contrasted by the darker pines.
Is it the peak? I would say that the early males are at peak, but there is a lot of color to come from other trees. It has been a little bit of a strange year for the fall colors, so I really don’t know when the rest of the show will peak. Tomorrow? Next weekend?
It looks like we have a nice weekend for weather ahead with temperatures in the 60s and maybe low to mid-70s Sunday.
We have an El Nino winter coming, and we are actually in El Nino conditions now, and have been since spring. The El Nino looks like a strong one, not quite as strong as 97-98, but not far from it.
The long term forecast has a significant chance of above normal temperatures and below normal precipitation. That is a pretty standard forecast for a medium to strong El Nino.
I am not quite convinced that it will be an easy winter. I am still making a lot of firewood, moving forward with insulation projects, and working on readying the plow truck just like it was going to be a really bad winter, because it just might happen.
Time for me to head off to other things. Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!
RJB
