Greetings and welcome!
My apologies for not posting a Tuesday update this week. There just weren’t enough hours in the day this week. It is great to be busy with work, and there sure is a lot of it.
Anyway. One item that was missing from last week’s updates were the turtles. Last week and into this week the snapping turtles were coming up out of the lakes and swamps to lay their eggs. They like sandy or gravelly soil, so a lot of turtles could be seen along gravel roads and driveways.
Last night when I was out driving the deer were pretty common along the roads. I also saw my first spotted fawn of the season, a really tiny little guy that was just getting his legs. It is fawn season, so keep your eyes open for them.
Quite a few people have been seeing black bears. Some people that are new to the area seemed surprised by that. We do have a very healthy black bear population.
It has been very dry this Spring & Summer. The Peshtigo River is setting record low flows (14 years of stats), The Menominee is too (19 years of stats), and the Wolf is very close (45 years of stats). It looks like we are just about done with that for a while.
We have a large scale weather pattern setting up that suggests that we will be seeing some rain over the next week or so. There is a large area of high pressure over the east coast that is blocking the eastward progression of storms and disturbances. As the storms move in off of the west coast they run into this blocking high pressure and head north into our neighborhood. Most storms don’t get past eastern lower Michigan or the western edge of Ohio.
There are identifiable storms like the one showing up on the models for Saturday night, but for the most part the timing and placement of the little disturbances will make weather forecasting very challenging in the short term. Conditions will be favorable for some rain, but I am not expecting all day rains or a washout weekend. It is more a hit and miss thing. I think that the NWS is on the right path with a 40-50% chance of rain daily through the 7 day forecast with the exception of Friday and Sunday nights.
One of the reasons that I think that we will get some drought relief is that the HPC QPF is showing us getting close to 2″ of rain between now and Tuesday. For areas west of about Rhinelander, the numbers jump to about 4″ of rainfall. No that is not a typo.
I do expect it to rain this weekend, be ready for that. I am not expecting all day rains though.
Friday and Saturday are progged to be in the mid-80s, and Sunday around 80 in the wake of Saturday night’s cold front.
The event calendar suggests that it is not a good weekend for a wet forecast. There are a couple of big motorcycle rides in the area. One is the 1st Annual Bug Splatter Ride to benefit Twin Bridge Rescue Squad with the Lakeside Bar & Grill on Newton Lake. They give you a target to put anywhere that you want on your bike, and the bug splatters closest to the bull’s eye win prizes.
The other big ride in the area is the Jeff ‘Digger’ Diges Memorial Ride with Gateway Bar in Crivitz. They raise money for a scholarship fund, and this has been a huge ride in the past.
There is another big ride coming up in early July with the Super Dave ride, July 5th through the 7th with Curve Inn. That one will end back at the Curve with live music.
This weekend Chris also has one even on her event calendar
That’s news from here. Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!
RJB