Day 2
5pm
It appears that the worst of it is over. The wind is sill blowing and strong, but it is not howling in the trees like it was. It has also been a while since we have had one of those house shaking gusts that come with a roar.
The storm is quickly losing strength. The RUC model shows it weakening into a 1000mb storm by about midnight and moving off to the east.
At it’s peak the storm set all time records for lowest pressure of a non-tropical storm recorded over the US and in WI. Superior, WI recorded a pressure of 961, and if I recall right, a place in MN had a 958.
We lost power for about 3-4 hours and it has been back on for a while. Many areas are still out. The Internet is back up and fast again.
Lakewood was out for a while today, closing the store and gas stations, but rumor has it that they are back up. Likewise the local BP in Silver Cliff is back in power as of a little while ago.
I am headed down there in a few minutes and will get a look around. Reports have it that there is not much damage from the storm. The storm blew stuff around and mostly dead trees were blowing over and taking down power lines.
According to the NWS Rhinelander had 25mph average winds, 37 for highest sustained speed, and 60mph for a gust. There were much higher gusts reported, along with 21 foot waves near Door Co.
10am
It was a rough night. The wind was supposed to slow down a little, but that didn’t happen. We had some real house shaking gusts early this morning.
The power is now out here and was before all of the way to the BP station. The old Honda generator is paying for itself again, is was the foresight to get extra gas.
The Internet has gone buggy too. It probably took 15 minutes to get logged in and the page open to do the update. I had a good signal, but there was something beyond the towers on the backhaul that was slowed down. Now the signal is hit and miss. It is not a good day to be a cell tower, but they are still working.
The winds have been merciless. We have sustained winds in the 25-30 range gusting to 50 or 60 according to the TV. There are a lot of dead oaks down and stuff blown around, and widespread power outages. Obviously the power company has their hands full.
Here at the house the maples shed a few dead branches, and a dead for 10 years hickory by the pond went down.
The forecast has the winds going strong until tomorrow night. The storm has progressed as expected, and the now-strong low is going to wobble around a little over Northern Minnesota before heading off to the northeast.
Later today we should see snow mix into the rain. The storm has started taking up a lot of cold air on the south and west sides. Eventually that will come here.
North Dakota looks like they are just getting pounded with snow and high winds. It has been that way for a while and it has to be ugly out there.
According to forecasts, we are not expecting too much snow to accumulate, but it will probably be blowing around later today and tonight. I am not so sure about the no accumulation forecast, I kind of expect to see a little add up. Oh! Here we go.. the radar shows snow just over the county line.
Anyway, the forecast at the moment has minor accumulations in far NW WI and Northern MN. They showed Superior with an inch and a half and Hurley with about 2″.
It is indeed a big nasty storm, and it will go on for a while. Most of the time having a lot of cold air introduced into the back of the storm weakens and the strength falls off rapidly. This storm doesn’t seem to be impressed. We are still in for strong winds until Friday.
There isn’t much you can do with a storm like this other than ride it out.
Mark sent in a comment asking if any trees were down on buildings. I haven’t seen any yet, but I am sure that there are some. The wind has been merciless and the dead trees are falling. There isn’t any widespread damage like that, but there probably are a few places with trees down.
The net is getting flakey again so I am going to get this filed.
RJB
12:44am
The storm continues to hit us with high winds. The power has been off for a long time in some places and not at all in others. Here it has been shutting off just enough to shut down the ‘puter, 4x in a half hour. One more and I head for aux power.
The sustained winds are starting to catch up with things so affected. It was supposed to calm down a little overnight, but, no joy. The RUC is showing the storm not going into decline until later today.
My sunset ride back to the Twin Bridge area found some areas with power, some without. Some have been out of power all day and into evening. There was not a lot of new damage as of sunset, and my ride home on back roads was uneventful.
So far it is mostly dead trees down, but the wind is continuing to really howl.