Greetings and welcome!
It is a pretty nice March day outside today. Temps stayed in the upper 30s most of the day and could peak out in the mid-40s. We have had off and on very light snow flurries, and occasional gusts of wind.
It is not what you would expect for May 3rd. What should you expect? The normal high/low for Rhinelander is 61 and 36. Yesterday we missed the high by 27 degrees and the low by 6. Today it looks like we will be normal minus 16 and 10.
The LaNina cold Spring game is getting old. I burned a generous pile of wood this winter, more than I normally have put up. After that ran out I burned the popple piles, and policed the wood yard for another load. I went and cut a load Easter Sunday, and now that is almost gone. I can easily go cut more, but that isn’t the point. It isn’t normal to go through this much or be burning all day maple and oak fires daily in early May.
The rest of the week and weekend look a little better. We are looking for highs around 60 right through the weekend, and lows in the 35-42 range. There is a minor chance of rain about Thursday, and the weekend storm looks like it is going south of us. Both storms show a QPF of 0.01-0.1″, pretty much a non-event.
This should be a big weekend around here. The fishing season opens Saturday, and the ATV trails open up Friday. Hooray!
Speaking of ATVs, there is a committee meeting in the Town of Stephenson tomorow night (Wed May 4th @ 6:30 @ the town hall) about how they manage ATV trails with the new people elected to the town board. ATV supporters will want to go there, people against them should go to the Thursday night meeting. (hehe)
Also large on the Stephenson Town Board’s docket is the DNR proposal for Boat Landing #9, the one with the beach by Thornton’s. The forest plan has provisions in it for the DNR to make the beach wider and roped off with bouys, move the parking lot back up the hill, for vault toilets, and for a large picnic area and shelter over by the bay on the left as you go in.
What they need from the Town is for them to deed the road over to the DNR so that they can put up a fee collection box. If the town says NO the landing stays like it is now. The beach, landing, and porto-lets would all be maintained by WPS per the dam license agreement, and it would be free.
It is no secret that I think that the DNR played pretty loose with the laws planning the forest. They planned it inappropriately as a type of property more suitable for a nature preserve and put ‘native community’ forests at key spots to keep the ATV trail out. Now they want to do a big development on wetlands next to one of their native communities. One or the other is inappropriate, and it is the forest plan.
Fishermen and women this weekend should find lakes free of ice. When I saw Townsend Flowage and Waubee Lake driving by last Friday they were both open. Over the weekend I saw Caldron Falls Flowage by the dam, and it was open and had swells from the wind. There might be secluded lakes or bays that still hold ice, but I didn’t see any in my travels.
We have had colder than normal spring, so water temperatures are likely below normal. That should be catching up as we get some warm sunny days.
The whitewater rafting last weekend by Kosir’s was out of hand. The river was running big and people had a great time. I brought home some amazing pictures, and I will have a gallery of them on the Riversport Facebook page later.
The Peshtigo River is falling from last weekend’s levels but will still be great for this weekend. I am expecting it to flatten out somewhere around +9-12″ and be close to that range for the weekend. Based on what I see in the near watershed there is still standing water in low spots and swamps, so I expect that the river will stay high for a while.
That is about it from here. Have a good week and thank you for visiting!
RJB