Thursday March 25th, 2010

Greetings and welcome!

We are expecting a cold front to cross into the area today that will make it a very different day than yesterday. Yesterday was a nice day with fair weather and temps in the low 60s. Today the NWS is looking for highs between 33 and 38, along with a little cold wind.

Thankfully our cold will be short lived. We should return to the 40s for Friday and about 50 for the weekend.The normal hi/lo today is 42/19 for Rhinelander.

There is a storm coming through the region this weekend, but it will again bless our friends around the WI/IL state line instead of us. There is a chance of a little rain coming from a disturbance on the outer periphery of the low pressure area and bringing us some sprinkles Sunday, with a total QPF of <0.1″.

Yesterday I made as much progress on indoor work as I could stand, and headed outside. The day started with a tour around the yard. The absence of tall grass, ferns, and other vegetation revealed that I have a lot of work to do cleaning stuff up.

High on the priority list was, believe it or not, firewood. I am on a mission to get as much of my big January wood cut and piled to split as I can. The idea is that it has a lot longer to dry and will be a superior fuel if I get it cut and drying now instead of after Labor Day.

It was an unusually cool summer last year, and I had a lot of wood up by August. The stuff that I cut last spring and summer I can start with a dice sized wax block or a sheet of newspaper once it is split to size. That extra drying time really matters. Usually I can’t cut in April with the snow & frost mud, but I am taking advantage of it while I can.

Item two is the spring shape up from those extra winter pounds. A truckload of 20″+ diameter green oak logs will remind a portly old geezer such as myself  just how out of shape I am pretty quickly.  It did.

I would be a hurtin unit today had a frozen to the ground log not convinced me to dip my saw into the ground to cut what I thought was that one last scab of wood. That dulled my chain and ended my mission just in time to be a little sore, but not bad. After unloading the truck I really wanted another load but thought better of it. Left to my own devices I would be very sore today. There is still time.

Yes the ground was still frozen not too far below the surface, and it was only a mildly sheltered area. I had to kick loose the logs on the ground.

In addition to being out of shape and hot to get my wood split and drying, there is another motivation to getting my wood done.. Oak wilt. Ideally you won’t cut oak between 4-1 and 7-15 to limit the spread of oak wilt. It doesen’t really apply to the area I am working now because they are healthy trees dropped for land clearing. If I want others beyond that, it should be done very soon.

Driving around this week I saw that Kitch had maple sap buckets out hanging on the trees, and I saw it again near Lakewood. In passing I saw the sun shine through one of the buckets, and it was filling up.

Another sign of spring, I saw the first buds. The past few days I have noticed some of the poplar/cottonwood trees getting a haze to the crown, and then the the first pussy willow like flowers. Yesterday they were getting obvious. Today I will try to slow down a little, ID the species of tree and maybe snap a picture.

Something travelers of Parkway north will notice.. The county has been busy cutting trees along the ditches of the road.  This will help the sun hit the road in winter and make it less of an iceberg, and it will help with spotting deer and other critters as you drive.

Here are some events for the weekend..

Slug sent in a comment that he was in Kansas last week and they had 7″ of snow. Yep. It has been a strange and stubborn weather pattern.

Between the El Nino Modoki and the Arctic Oscillation, all of the arctic cold was sent south, along with the storms. Where the clippers and cold fronts used to nail us, they were instead taking that frigid air west and south and freezing the great plains and deep south. The storm path went that way too, so we saw snow down south, and all of the precip that caused the flooding out west a few states.

In the meantime we stayed in the lee of it all with 25 degree January days and 60 degree days in early and mid- March. The downside is that we didn’t get much snow. I can think of three major storms, none of which brought a foot here. DC got 38″ in one storm and had back to back storms. Rhinelander had 46″ all winter.

The joke around here is that I want to get a place down south to go snowmobiling, but I can’t decide between Georgia, Alabama, and the Florida Panhandle. Thanks Slug, I’ll add Kansas to the list.

As much as I hated the effect on our snowmobiling season, it is really hard to hate last year’s cool summer, our warm spring days in the 60s, a January where -30 nights don’t happen in two week stretches any more, and high temps are in the mid-20s. If it would storm here and there it would be pretty attractive compared to the normal climate.

Don’t get used to it. It will eventually change. I am still working on when and to what, so I’ll have to get back to you on that..

Well, that is about it from here. Have a good Thursday and thank you for visiting!

RJB