Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
PARKERS CREEK at Saxon Harbor would normally flow at a trickle this time of year, but it was raging Thursday morning after two days of thundershowers. The dirtier water is from Oronto Creek, where the two streams merge near Lake Superior.
Students aboard a bus from Rhinelander, Wis., waited out rainfall and heavy fog Thursday morning in a visit to Saxon Harbor as the Gogebic Range continued to get battered by thunderstorms.
The students were treated to lightning flashes through the fog and a muddy Lake Superior as they got a lesson in northern Wisconsin weather.
The sky brightened later in the day, but not before dumping additional rainfall across the area.
The Ironwood weather station off Cloverland Drive recorded 1.6 inches of rain for the 24-hour period to 7 a.m. Thursday and it rained more after that, to be recorded with Friday's statistics.
The Marquette National Weather Service office said the Thursday rain total set a May 25-26 record for Ironwood, covering the past 115 years.
The Ironwood area has gone in less than a week from Red Flag fire danger warnings to swollen streams and saturated grounds.
There will be no dust problems along the all-terrain vehicle trails for this weekend's annual ATV Rally in Hurley.
It had been a dry month, but the rainfall this week pushed the May total to 3.08 inches, above the long-term average of 2.61 inches for this point in the month, according to the NWS.
It's been a wet 2016, as the precipitation total of 14.96 inches is about 140 percent above the long-term average of 10.43 inches.
The Memorial Day weekend forecast calls for more thunderstorms today and Saturday, with clouds on Sunday and sunshine on Monday for the services at area cemeteries.
