Tuesday June 22nd, 2010

Greetings and welcome!

The weather forecasts for Friday and Monday didn’t quite work out the way that they were expected to. The Friday storm that was supposed to come our way with potentially severe weather ended up from about Madison south and very strong south of the IL/WI border.

In the case of Monday’s storm it was the opposite. It was expected to stay downstate and miss us, but it didn’t get the memo, and we saw some pretty good rains.

The rain Monday night was heavy in spots. About 10pm I was near High Falls and the roads had huge puddles that pulled the truck around and occasionally splashed over the hood. They saw a lot of rain in a short time. I actually saw lightning flash a few times, something that we haven’t had a lot of so far.

Speaking of predictions that didn’t come true, I missed my river level guess by about 2″ last weekend. The river still came up and was great for rafting, but without Friday’s rain it was lower than I had predicted. No big deal, people had a blast.

Between yesterday’s rain and the rain possible tomorrow I would expect continued good water levels for rafting this weekend.

The insect world is alive and well this second day of summer. The gypsy moths have been chewing a lot of oak trees that I saw in my travels. There are a lot of bare or near bare crowns in the oak forests this week.

I still have not had a big issue with mosquitoes yet this year. The one spot that I walk that is like a Deep Woods Off! commercial isn’t that way this year at all. I am not aware of being victim of a gator bite in the last two weeks. A few horse flies tried buzzing around in my new short cropped hair last weekend, and the wood ticks are still present in force, but it has not been a particularly buggy summer.

As I mentioned above it is the second day of summer. After this it is all downhill for length of day until about the third week in December. For now we get wonderfully long days and for the short term, sunsets north of due west.

Critter sightings were up a little this week. Sunday morning I saw some geese float down the river and get surprised when they were swept into the rapids. They launched from the river right before they went into the big stuff. I can’t say that I have ever seen that before.

Other critter sightings include a badger, the standard deer and turkeys, and a small black bear about 1/4 mile from the house. The big moths have been tripping the motion detector on the flood lights, or more likely it was the bats running sorties on them.

In two weeks on July 5th the State of WI smoking ban goes into place. There will be no more smoking in bars, restaurants, or workplaces. It is a topic of great emotion on both sides so I am going to avoid it other than letting you know about it. Personally I will be trying the E version. I tried a disposable one from the casino smoke shop. It wasn’t good, but it showed enough promise that I ordered a better one.

Today was a hot one. We had to be in the 90s or close to it. There is also some humidity with dew points in the uncomfortable range of the low 60s. Between the two yoiu would think that we would get some T-storms. We will eventually, but today the atmosphere was too stable to get thunderheads brewing.

Later tonight and into tomorrow we will indeed see some rain. There is a lot of discussion on if the storm will swing south like Friday did or nail us like Monday’s storms. There are all of the ingredients for some strong storms, so someone will see heavy rain, T-storms, and maybe some severe weather. Right now it looks pretty statewide, it might not be an either/or situation.

Late Wednesday and Thursday look a little cooler and with less chances for rain. Friday brings the beginning of what could be a wet weekend. The GFS is showing several waves of rain associated with approaching low pressure hitting over the weekend. QPFs are in the 1-2″‘ range.

Because it is so far out and the models have been struggling lately I am going to suggest watching later forecasts for changes. It might not be all that it is cracked up to be. It could just as easily go south, or come early/ late weekend as hit us. The NWS also advises looking for future updates, and for now offered a 40% chance of rain across the weekend.

There are a few events this weekend. Here is the list so far..

Saturday July 3rd the Dark Horse Band featuring Tommy Greywolf (formerly fidlist for Brooks & Dunn) will be performing here at Rapid’s Resort. The show starts @ 9pm. These guys come very highly recommended by me. Catch this one if you like good country, and especially with Tommy G.

My apologies that I was so late today. It was an unusual day. Have a good week and thank you for visiting!

RJB