Greetings and welcome!
We saw a couple of inches of rain this week, so it is a good weekend to take to the river and do some whitewater rafting or some flat water tubing at Kosir’s.
The bulk of the rain came early week when we had about 2″ fall. We didn’t see much yesterday when the big cold front came through, maybe about 1/2″. We were expecting more rain than that and possibly severe storms, but the line of storms came through about sunset and they were losing the power of the afternoon heating. If they were going to be severe, that is just as well anyway.
The rain this week took the Peshtigo from a no fun -6″ to a yee-ha level of +4″, and it should be in the fun zone for the weekend. For the best time I like to see over 250-300cfs of flow and we are at 417 this morning.
The Menominee River also came up, and that river has been running at about 1,400cfs, again in the fun zone.
The rain was not all fun and good times though. In the case of my driveway the big hill washed out pretty bad and there are about 10″ deep ruts. That’s bad for the neighbors & I, but good for the gravel guy. I also saw a couple of trees down, but they were very widely scattered.
Over on the western end of the UP in Duluth, MN they had a lot more rain. The NWS official count is 6.5″ in one day, but it was closer to 8-10″. If you have ever been to Duluth, you know that they have terrain that resembles a ski resort, and all of that water running down the huge hills caused a lot of problems. There were big washouts on roads and a lot of flooding in low areas. The zoo was in one of those areas, and they lost some animals to drowning and had to round up a few escapees. I guess that makes the grass growing faster around here a pretty minor complaint.
We are expecting a little rain over the weekend, but it isn’t as bad as the NWS forecast makes it look. They have a 40-50% chance daily from Fri-Sun with the exception of Friday night.
My research shows that the HPC has us in the 0.25-0.5″ band for the weekend, with Saturday night being the focus of it. The GFS is showing a storm with about that amount for Saturday night. The North American Model shows the bulk of it to our north and south, and our 1/10th of an inch or so coming early Sunday morning.
Either way it is hardly a washout, and we should have a mostly good weekend. Look for mid to upper 70s Friday and mid-70s for the balance of the weekend, with comfortable nights in the 50s.
Yesterday was the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. Sunset last night was at 8:45pm. Now the days start getting shorter until about the third week in December.
There is some discussion if this is the start of summer or not. Meteorological summer starts on June 1st, but yesterday was the beginning of the summer based on the solstice. Either way summer is too short.
Critter sightings this week were pretty normal with some deer along the roads, including one fawn. There were a few small turtles up on the gravel roads on their egg laying quest. The moths around the outside spotlight have been an impressive collection of species, including some of the bigger ones, and the bats have been running sorties to feast on the bounty. The gators (mosquitoes) are still really minimal, ticks are still present.
In local news.. last week the Town of Stephenson made a significant move toward opening up all of the town roads for ATVs. There will be a few exceptions where safety concerns take over, and they will be working on that on an ongoing basis. Now the clubs need to get the roads signed up to standards before they can be officially opened. With deer hunting down, summer tourism down, and snowmobiling down, this is a big deal for the town.
Today still finds me a little sore from Tuesday’s fun when I went out on the jet ski from Fun in the Sun jet ski rentals. We went out Tuesday afternoon, and I rode it like I stole it all afternoon. It was only my second time since the stand up ones of the 80s, but I was getting a handle on it. I am still working on the timing of wake jumping, but I did manage epic big air a few times. On a 1-10 fun scale I’d put it at about a 17.9… It was huge fun, and if I wasn’t poor I’d have two of ’em.
That is about a wrap for this visit. Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!
RJB