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The year Wisconsin skipped winter
Plus: a lake trout cut, a new trail bridge at Sauk City, and Spooky Lake Month heads back into the lake
Forrest Koslowski
November 05, 2026
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Mornin’ to a stump on Roberts Lake in Forest County. About 40 years ago, a musky wrapped Dave Grisar’s line around it and got away. Grisar, now a Saukville dentist, didn’t land his first musky until Oct. 7. It was the 57.5-inch state record we told you about two weeks ago. “I can still see the stump,” he says. Everybody’s got a stump.
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This week’s weekly:
🐟️ Fewer lake trout for the Apostle Islands
🌉 A new trail bridge opens at Sauk City
👻 Spooky Lake Month heads back into the lake
🌸 STORY OF THE WEEK: The year Wisconsin skipped winter
🐟️ Fewer lake trout for the Apostle Islands LINK
The Natural Resources Board cut the lake trout harvest around the Apostle Islands by 15% for 2027, down to 57,000 fish. The population there is at its lowest in 30 years. Two years ago, managers were celebrating a full recovery.
The culprit is sea lamprey, an invasive, eel-like fish that latches onto trout and sucks their blood. Treatments that keep it in check got missed during COVID. It’s exactly as gross as it sounds.
The cut runs from Bark Point to Saxon Harbor. West of Bark Point to Superior, the quota holds at 14,000. Lake trout season opens Nov. 28.
🌉 A new trail bridge opens at Sauk City LINK
A 500-foot bridge for bikes, walkers and snowmobiles now crosses the Wisconsin River at Sauk City. The ribbon cutting is today, Nov. 5, at 2 p.m., at the new park on South Water Street.
It links up with a 100-year-old railroad trestle over a side channel, and it was built to match the old trestle’s industrial look. Brand new, made to look old. We relate.
On the Sauk side it meets the 11.5-mile Great Sauk State Trail. The 3-mile Walking Iron Trail on the Dane County side opens in 2027. The long-term goal is to reach Devil’s Lake State Park.
👻 Spooky Lake Month heads back into the lake LINK
Geo Rutherford, a UW-Milwaukee grad, just wrapped her seventh Spooky Lake Month: 31 days of videos on the creepy, true science of water. Last year’s season pulled about 45 million views on Instagram and TikTok.
Every season opens with her walking out of a lake to say “Um, yes, hello.” On Nov. 1 she walked back in until next fall. Not a bad plan for November.
She lives on Fish Lake by Sauk City, where rising water in 2019 left several homes standing in the lake, Crock-Pots and couches still inside. Missed it? Every episode is on her Instagram.
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🌸 STORY OF THE WEEK: The year Wisconsin skipped winter LINK
Three days after Christmas in 1877, the Darlington paper reported that a man named Jerome Cutting had plowed his garden. There was no frost in the ground. Cherry trees were blooming. Folks sat in their parlors with the front doors open. We can’t get our garden plowed in May.
That was the winter of 1877-78. The State Climatology Office just dug it back up and calls it “The Year Without a Winter.”
How warm. Back then, only La Crosse, Milwaukee and Madison kept daily temperatures. La Crosse averaged 34.2 degrees that winter, and Madison 31.7. Both are still records. That December, Madison spent fewer than 180 hours below freezing. A normal December has about 560.
What it looked like. Lake Mendota’s ice lasted just 62 days, a record that held until 1982-83. With no frozen ground, the roads turned to soup. The Waukesha Freeman called it “the muddiest mud possible.” By late January, folks had gone soft. The Waupun Times joked that 7 above felt cold, when a few years earlier nobody would have complained much at 17 below.
Why. A very strong El Niño, one of the most powerful on record. El Niño is when the Pacific along the equator runs warmer than normal. That tends to push the jet stream north and keep the cold air up in Canada.
Sound familiar? It should. The office lines 1877-78 up against 2023-24, the “Lost Winter,” Wisconsin’s warmest since 1895. That one had just a moderate El Niño, plus a warming climate behind it.
And this year? The office’s November outlook says “likely mild,” with 50 to 60% odds of a warmer than normal month across most of the state and 60 to 70% in the northwest. But El Niño is one piece of the puzzle, not a promise. The strong one in 2009-10 brought a colder, snowier winter than normal.
Want to tell the climate folks how wild weather hits your corner of the state? The office is holding free Extreme Weather Roadshow meetings, starting Dec. 9 in Rice Lake.
Now get out ’der, mud boots and all.
WISCAMPSIN WEEKLY POLL
Last Week's Trivia Check
We asked why a lake turns into a tough-to-fish "dead zone" right when fall turnover starts. You guys know your water! Nearly 59% of you nailed it, while 31% figured plunging cold water was shocking baitfish into the weeds.
The Correct Answer: Rotting plants and zero-oxygen bottom water get churned up to the surface.
The Takeaway: All summer, the deepest water collects dead weeds and loses oxygen. When chilly 39-degree surface water sinks in late fall, it stirs the pot, pushing that murky, oxygen-starved water everywhere until autumn winds re-oxygenate the lake for winter.
This Week's Trivia
Next Tuesday, November 10, marks the anniversary of the 1975 sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, which departed from Superior, Wisconsin, right before getting caught in a monster storm. Every year around this week, the infamous "Gales of November" turn the Great Lakes into raging inland seas with 30-foot waves.
What specific clash of nature triggers these violent Great Lakes storms every November?Give it your best gut check: |
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A review from the trail…
Five cheeses for the bats. We’ll pass it along at dusk.
Well, how'd we do this week? |
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