29. A quiet & grey day along the south shore, calm winds creating some pollution problems.
Clouds hung around all day south of Lake Superior and then expanded southward towards central Wisconsin as a stationary front has begun dropping south. A weak impulse has been moving east, triggering light snow flakes or freezing drizzle across the area today, but nothing serious.Temperatures were a little subdued with the cloud cover and calm conditions. Yesterday's high was 29.5 while today was 24.7, still pleasant. Some pollution advisories are in effect in MN
Watching CBS news from Duluth I found out that the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) has issued an advisory for most of Minnesota.
"The MPCA has issued an Air Pollution Health Advisory through Friday due to elevated levels of fine airborne particulates for most of Minnesota, with the worst air quality occurring in the Twin Cities and Rochester." Pollution advisories are rare for this region so today's news headline caught my attention. Even across Wisconsin there are elevated levels of particulate matter... I chalked the reduced visibility today up to the mixed precipitation, but it now seems that some of the haze was man-made. Advisories for Wisconsin are not in effect as our pollution levels are forecast to remain below problematic levels.
Ice Fishing Today I saw many guys out on Chequamegon Bay ice fishing. Wow, I didn't realize that the ice was that thick already, but with the number of people I saw it must be. The guideline is 4 inches of ice is safe (though some people who know what they're doing walk out on 1 inch) for human weight, 5 inches for ATVs, and at least 8 inches for cars (heavy trucks might want over a foot). If I had my camera, I would have stopped for a picture. Inland lakes have been frozen for a month, but Chequamegon Bay is an extension of Lake Superior and takes a little more time to freeze. In some years Lake Superior freezes over completely, majority of them it doesn't freeze in the middle.
In lieu of one of my pictures, I found some pictures from northern Wisconsin on a guide's website. (Above) is one from near Cumberland last winter. It's a Northern Pike over 30 inches, it's a little skinny in my opinion. They don't seem to have any other fish pictured on their site, but you commonly see Walleye, Perch, Crappies, and once-in-awhile a Musky. I grew up doing this on Butternut Lake in Ashland/Price counties. None of that jigging crap, we had a tip-ups and a heated ice shack. Wonderful memories :)
Looking ahead
The storm system that is forecast to move across the midsection of the US over the weekend needs to be watched. Models are starting to agree, but the GFS seems to be an outlier. The system has potential to bring quite a bit of snow to Wisconsin, regardless of the exact path lake-effect snow will be guaranteed.
Temperatures will continue to hover in the mid to upper-20s, maybe even reaching 30 during the next seven days. The coldest air will continue to hover just north of the border... no complaints here, and some more snow wouldn't hurt either.
Some pollution advisories are in effect in MN
Looking ahead