Greetings and welcome!
The rain has finally stopped. The USGS gauge says that we had 2.5″ in the last 3 days, but I think that was a little understated. I know when I was going to Crivitz yesterday it was raining so hard that I couldn’t go 50mph with the wipers going on high. The moderately heavy rain stayed with us for a few hours too. My wild guess is 3-3.5″ in the last 3 days.
As mentioned in the title, the Peshtigo River is WAY above normal, and is running at +24′. That is big whitewater excitement right there. Its mean flow for today is 300cfs, and we are at 1,490cfs. Private boaters should have an absolute blast this weekend. The graph did not show the river leveling out, so it is still on the rise. What is next? +26? +28? It wouldn’t surprise me at all.
The rain finally blew out of here this morning. I say blew out of here because it was followed by some very strong winds overnight. The roads had a lot of leaves on them this morning. It did cost us the color on a lot of the earliest trees like my maples and paper birch. Other species are still spectacular, but there are some bare ones in the mix now. It is amazing how fast things change around here. We went from full peak magnificent to 10% past peak in one day. That is ok though, some of the later season species of trees are coming into color. It is still a great show.
The leaves were not the only thing that went away. Yesterday’s high temperature of 58 was replaced by today’s high temperature of about 44. I looked and I don’t expect to see 50 degrees again until late next week. In the meantime I am expecting low and mid-40s and mid to upper 20s for overnight lows.
The cold weather was not lost on the mice. My trap line has been busy the past few days with three so far. It is the time of year where they try to invade and I am ready for them. After almost 20 years here I have tried a few things to stop them. This is the ultimate rig in the picture. It is a T-rex style trap with dry roasted sunflower seeds. The T-rex traps work good and are easy to empty and reset. The dry roasted sunflower seeds are the ultimate bait. They far outperform cheese, peanut butter, and the $9 for 2oz bottle of miracle attractant from the exterminator. They taste pretty good to me too..
Once in a while I will get a smart one that needs a sticky trap, but not very often. For those I use the seeds too. I put a pile right in the middle and scatter a few off of the sticky. They get a taste of the free ones and commit to the pile in the middle of the trap.
Mice are a fact of life around here. They are double jointed and have no collar bones, so they can squeeze through a very tiny gap. Even the nicest tightest houses can get them. This is how I deal with them and it is very effective.
I am going to close with one of those cool nature things.. Recently I have seen a few people/articles/movies claiming that the moon doesn’t rotate, that is why you see the same side all of the time. I disagreed, saying that it rotates, but does it a lot more slowly than the earth. Ok so I had to look it up. The moon does rotate, but instead of doing it on a 24 hour cycle like the earth, it takes 27 days for a rotation. At that point on a full moon, which also comes roughly every 27 days, it will show the same side as it did 27 days ago. It would be easy to think that it doesn’t move. Here is a link for more info.
That is it for me today. Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!
RJB