Tuesday September 28th, 2010-Paddler’s Alert!

Greetings and Welcome!

It is very abnormal for me to start today’s report with whitewater related stuff, but it has been a very unusual year.

The rain last week really brought the area rivers up, and they are staying up. The Peshtigo River peaked at about 24″ last Saturday night, but has NOT fallen much. By my estimation, it is still running at +20 or +21. Not only did paddlers not have to raft in April  icewater to get the big flow, the river was beautiful with fall colors.

The normal level right now is about -5″. The +24 level was probably the highest water of 2010, the previous record was about +13″ in June when it rained for like a week straight. There is still time, but it seems unlikely that we will break last weekend’s level by Dec.

The rain was not lost on the other area rivers. The Menominee River was at about 7.5′ when the rain came. The next day it shot up to 10.75, over a 3′ rise in one day. Five days later it is still at 9′. That river is setting records at Niagara where the gauge is 17 years old. Upstream at the Twin Falls dam the gauge has been there since 1914, and the 1951 record still stands.

Chris and I are going to try to get out and see a few waterfalls late week to try to catch them while they are so full.

All of the area rivers are way above normal. As I told the river guys, the rivers will be staying up for a while. If the swamps and bogs are so full that it went that high, it will stay up for a while. It also bodes very well for big water in the spring runoff season.

The fall colors took a beating with the rain and wind last week, but were still nice for the weekend. Some of the nice early maples got knocked down, but there is another color wave right behind them. We should have good color again this weekend.

A look ahead at the weather proved interesting. We have a little light rain coming for Wednesday into Thursday, and after that the forecast is mostly clear.

There will be a little precip in the region for the weekend, but it looks light and scattered, and at the moment we are not in the path of it. It does look like a chilly weekend. Saturday looks like the upper 50s and upper 30s, with Saturday night in the low 30s and Sunday around 50. Based on upper air temps, there is a good chance that a few places in the UP and the northern Lower UP could see their first snowflakes of the year over the weekend. According to the GFS, we will see ours somewhere between the 10th and 15th of Oct.

We have some good events for this weekend. These really snuck up on me. The hayride was really fun when we went a few years ago. The indoor mini-golf is fun too, with each bar making their own creative version of a put put golf hole. The fall festival sounds great too.

Here are a few rafting pictures.. Click a picture to make it bigger, then hover your cursor over it to click to the next one.

Right now is a time that I call the fall squeeze. There are a million things to do that are time sensitive, like getting dirt moved, the roof patched, and firewood cut. Also on that list is stuff for getting snowmobiling web sites up and running for the year. That and a wave of new business has me really hopping. It is a great place to be, but a little challenging. I am off to dive into the challenge head first.

Have a good week and thank you for visiting!

RJB