Greetings and welcome!
My totals for the storm here were 13″ original fall amount, and 11″ settled yesterday afternoon.There were some much deeper spots that had drifted in. I’d guess the drift in front of my wood shed at 16-18″.
It was a pretty sturdy snow, but thankfully not the really wet heavy stuff. It was not much fun to shovel or plow, but it could have been worse.
It was not that really sticky snow that comes with an intermittent mix of rain and the giant snowflakes and takes down branches and power lines. They had that down toward Green Bay where they were closer to the rain snow line, and they had some power outages. Being farther north we missed out on that and the tree damage. It still rolled off of the side of the plow more like clay than powder.
I wasn’t crazy when I heard thundersnow Wednesday night. The rumbles that I heard were real. The TV news showed the sky down by Green Bay just lit up with big lightning. We only got a little of it, and it wasn’t constant enough for me to see the flashes like that. It would rumble, I would head to the window or door and it would be dark and snowy. I would go back to the computer and rumble rumble rumble. After the third trip to the window it was funny per the Charlie Brown and the football clause.
It was a good layer of snow and even with 4×4 and nice tires the truck was challenged by it.
After my mid-day update I headed outside to plow and shovel.
Plowing came with challenges. The snow was deep and heavy, but the ground under it was soft still. It was hard on the truck, and I had a breakdown that set me back an hour and had me rolling around in a foot of snow. I did a basic plowing job, leaving the rest for the late March sun to clean up in the coming days.
I came inside about sunset, got some dinner, and the next thing I knew it was 1am. I think all of the playing in the snow wore me out, so there was no evening report. Tomorrow promises to be physical too, as I dig out the drifted in wood shed, wood piles, and paths.
I never got close to the snowmobile to even dig it out. I do have plans on buzzing around the driveway and maybe pulling it into the shed for the summer tomorrow.
People have been e-mailing in to see if the trails will open up because of the snow. They closed in Marinette County as of Monday. The latest word that I have is that because the frost is out of the ground in some spots and it is muddy and there is a lot of standing water, the trails will stay closed. A lot of the trails allow ATVs and they could rut up trails pretty bad.
The next question is can you get a ride in on town or forest roads. I am not sure about that one. My first thought is that they are open to snowmobiles as part of the trails, or access to them, and contingent on the trails being open. I am not sure about that one. It might vary from town to town. Maybe someone who knows can weigh in on that.
I think that we are going to have a very limited window of opportunity anyway. The late March sun is wicked, and we are in the 4th week of March and 8 days from April. It is going to be sunny for the next 4 days and even though we are looking at a hi/lo temperature of about 29/5 (normal is 40/18) we will see significant snow melting. I’d bet that the sunny plowed areas of my driveway are dirt by noon today, and we will see a lot of snow consolidation.
Whitewater Rafting…
The whitewater rafting season at Kosir’s opens in 9 days on Saturday April 2nd. Right now it looks like we are in for a good early spring season once the river starts to open up.
Last year finished up really wet, and when all of the wetlands that feed the Peshtigo River froze up, it was running well above normal. That whole system is well charged with water. Slug says that there is a lot of snow up in the watershed, and this storm alone brought an inch of rainfall equivalent to Rhinelander where we are now 0.83″ above normal since Jan 1.
That is all a good set up with a high base flow and a good snow pack. A couple of warm days or some rain will set it off pretty good. If we had some thunderstorms the river would roar. Before it froze up, the river was running way above normal. We had +20 in September. It is running about +5″ under the ice, but it looked a little higher going by.
It holds a lot of promise, but I am worried that our firecracker won’t go off on time. The high pressure behind the storm looks like it will keep us cold for a while, limiting melting.
The river is making passages in the ice in faster moving areas and the calm stretches are starting to melt. It still has a ways to go. Hopefully 8 days is enough.
Right now my guess is that it will open on time, but just barely, bringing some cool ice formations for the first trippers, and water in the 9-12 range..
I am looking forward to a good spring for rafting.
That is about it for this morning. Have a good Thursday and thank you for visiting!
RJB