Saturday 2-3-2024

Greetings and welcome!

Today is the day of the big outhouse races at Firelane and the sumo suit kickball at Wendt’s Sandbar. It should be a nice day for it. Friday we saw the Near North groomer/tractor heading up Firelane Rd. Apparently they took it down to Firelane and scoured up every speck of snow on the property to make outhouse racing lanes. I love the don’t give up attitude, and that the show must go on.

Today we are looking at a high of 41 with mixed sun and clouds. Every day for the next week we are expecting high temperatures over 40, and as the end of the week gets closer we could see temps close to or over 50. There is some rain possible late in the week.

That rain storm is the front edge of some cooler air (finally) and maybe even a little snow for St Valentine’s Day. I’m not sure after that, but it looks like a return to warmer temps.

I still have 2-4″ of snow in the yard, but anywhere that it was cleared it is down to dirt. A lot of places are thinner than the 2-4 depending on sun exposure.

We picked up an hour of daylight in January, and the sun is 6º higher in the sky. In February we pick up an hour and twenty two minutes of daylight and we get the sun 9º higher. At the winter solstice we have about 8:43 of daylight. At the end of February we have 11:07 of daylight. That is a difference of  two hours and twenty four minutes of extra daylight.

I’m not sure that it will matter. The frost is coming out of the ground to the point that most towns have weight restrictions on the roads and Marinette County has shut down the trails through the county forest.

Once the frost comes out of the ground we are pretty much done. We will be wishing for a cold snap to put at least a couple of inches of frost into the ground, and then wishing for a foot or more of snow. It is getting to be a long wish list, but we still have all of February and March to go.

This morning we had a hoary frost. Yesterday we got up to 40. Overnight it dropped to 17ºF, and that froze some of the moisture in the air to the tree branches. My phone kind of cartoon-izes stuff like this but here it is.

As long as we are doing pictures here are a couple of event posters that I saw at the Lakewood grocery store..

I think that is about it for today. Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!

RJB