Greetings and welcome!
The storm was about as expected. It started with 2-3″ of snow and then it got warmer and turned to rain and drizzle. That dropped the snow down to almost nothing by Monday afternoon. Monday was breezy and there were a few flurries. Athelstane Weather showed 0.31″ and the Rhinelander NWS put it at 0.28″. My wild guess number would have been 0.5-0.75 based on how sloppy the snow was.
A lot of people are excited about whitewater rafting with Kosir’s opening this weekend. Normally we start rafting the first weekend in April, but the thaw is running late and the river was still iced up. Now the question is, will it break in time for this weekend, and if it does, how high will it be?
If it rose at the rate that it rose Monday, it would be about +9″ and about 600cfs for Saturday. We are not expecting a lot of rain this week, but we will have some, and days in the upper 40s and into the 50s.
With some extra melting my guess is that it will be more in the 700-900cfs range, roughly +10 to +14. If the rain from Tuesday night or Thursday night/Friday surprises us or we see some warm days it could be more.
The next question is, will it be enough to flush out any ice blocking the way? There is a ways to go, but it could happen. The river was up 10″ higher 9 days ago, then it fell to about zero because of the thaw, now it is on it’s way back up to (by my estimation) +10 or 12. The lifting and dropping of the ice will help to break it up.
Will it be enough? As Mark commented, there is still some pretty solid ice in the calm stretches and above the rapids. My best guess is that it will open enough, and that people will get to see some great ice formations along the trips.
The GFS forecast model holds big things in store for us a little farther down the road. Starting about Sunday afternoon it is showing two big storms coming early next week one after the other. That should set us up with big water for weekend number 3, and there is warm weather and another big storm on tap for about the 20th too. It looks like we will have a late start but a great month for spring rafting.
The owl that was in the pictures Sunday was a barred owl, so named for the horizontal black stripe (or bar) on it’s tail. Apparently right about now is their courting season, and that would explain repeated daytime sightings. According to the EEK site, they grow to be 21″ tall with a 4′ wingspan. Cool stuff.
Driveway season is in full swing. The storm didn’t help matters any either. There are a lot of places around here that are deep mud. Gravel driveways are bad enough, backing the truck up to the work shed or wood yard would leave bug ruts.
Beyond that I don’t have a lot to offer today. I have been mostly inside working on the photo and video computers in anticipation of the rafting season. I have three that I run on Linux and two that I run on Windows XP. I have been trying out various Linux distributions. I have also been fixing and building computers and doing wireless network stuff for people. I will tell you all about it in an upcoming page.
IN the meantime have a good week and thank you for visiting!
RJB