Tuesday June 15th, 2010

Greetings and welcome!

Wow what a weekend! If you weren’t here you probably should have been. The weather turned out pretty good. It was a cloudy and cool weekend where it only rained a little at night.

The whitewater rivers were huge fun last weekend. With levels quickly rising the Peshtigo was a blast for a lot of people. A rising river is pushier and bigger, and that is what we got. I predicted +2″ and well over 300cfs for the Saturday noon rafting trip. That is one prediction that came home right on the mark. There were a lot of people very happy about that.

But wait.. It wasn’t over yet. The river continued to rise, and Sunday saw levels go past +4″ and close to 450cfs. It probably peaked at about +5″ about midnight Monday morning.

The fun was in full swing on the Menominee River. The Menom came up a full two feet between last Tuesday and last Saturday, and went from 96 year record lows (5-600cfs) to very close to it’s median flow. People fortunate enough to raft that last weekend found water levels over 2,200cfs. I don’t have pictures yet, but years around that river tell me that there were big waves and crashes, and that a lot of people had a lot of fun.

We also saw a few kayakers this weekend. In a very unusual scenario, the Wolf River did not share in our rising water bounty. Usually the Wolf is a good crystal ball for the Pesh. The Wolf rises about a day faster, and the rivers have adjoining watersheds and similar rainfall. For some reason the Pesh peaked out at about 440cfs yesterday, and the Wolf is peaking at 250 today. That is a pretty uncommon scenario, but it was real, and as a result I got to see some of my hardboating friends last weekend.

There were quite a few web site visitors around last weekend. Thank you to all of the people that said hello. Greatly appreciated were the two web site visitors that slipped me a fiver as a tip for what I do here. The suggestion of ‘have a beer on us’ was taken to heart, thank you.

Overall it was a heck of a fun weekend. I am sure that I am not the only one that really filled it up or that ended up pretty worn out.

If you weren’t here, don’t worry about it, it looks like we are in for another great weekend next weekend. The forecast is for a wet week early and late, with Wednesday, Thursday, and the weekend dry.

Yesterday we had some scattered showers, and it picked up this morning. As I type this a 7am there is a big blob of rain and thunderstorms heading for our region, and it looks like it will go off and on until early Wednesday. Again Friday we are expecting rain, and then the GFS has it clear in time for a nice weekend.

As far as the rivers and the rafting go, we should still be in good shape. The rain today could get heavy at times, and the late week rain should boost the river about the time the early week rain starts peaking the river Thursday and Friday. Right now the HPC has the week’s rainfall predicted at 1.25-1.5″, but we could see most of that today.

The Friday storm is not shown as a huge rain producer, but with temps in the mid-80s forecast, I’d deduce that there might be some thunderstorms and possible heavy rain. At the moment the jet stream forecast and GFS would put us in the focal point of that.

This coming weekend is prime time for events.

I am pretty sure that there will be additions to that list as the week progresses.

The turnaround on the drought has been nothing short of miraculous. Two weeks ago I was talking about a 100 year drought, and D-3 and D-4 extreme drought conditions. Today the rivers are pretty normal, the ground is good and wet, and there were actually big puddles for the ATV, mud truck, and enduro bike guys to enjoy last weekend.  The green world is flourishing and vigorously growing as a result of the rain. I will be checking out Waubee Lake levels later today when I go that way, but I expect some recovery.

I expect to be back tomorrow with another update. I will likely find events for Lakewood and Townsend and points west when I go that way today. The forecast will have updates, and I will work on some pictures too.

In the meantime have a good Tuesday and thank you for visiting!

RJB