This week’s Wiscampsin Weekly brought to you by… potentially you? See below.

Mornin' to the police officers who rushed into a burning barn to rescue cows trapped by the flames. This is the Wiscampsin Weekly - the email that gets you in the know on the Wisconsin outdoors in 5 minutes or less. New reader? Subscribe here.

What we’re forecasting this week:

• Wisconsin’s weather update 💧 

• Black bear state record 🐻 

• How to prevent the spread of invasive species 🌱 

Wisconsin’s Drought (And What’s Ahead)

Yes, Dad, we know it “wouldn’t be bad if it weren’t for the humidity.”

Nearly every outdoor activity we ‘Scons love to do rides on one thing: how much cheese can we possibly pack in—erm, we mean, the weather. 

Hiking, biking, climbing, it’s all riding on what the skies have in store on any particular day.

But let’s zoom out past the day’s forecast and see what’s going on at the bird’s eye view, ‘cause some pretty big shifts are coming our way.

Wisconsin’s weather/climate

• 92.8% of the state is currently in drought conditions

• El Niño should bring relief towards fall/winter

• Wisconsin is actually seeing more rainfall than it did 50 years ago

The dry, dog days of summer

Currently, a whopping 5.5 million of you ‘Scons are in a drought (up 8.2% from just last week).

On the drought scale, 7.3% of the state is “abnormally dry,” 65.4% is “moderately dry,” 24.6% is severely dry, and 2.7% is extremely dry. Hope Culver’s has plenty of custard on hand to cool us off.

Additionally, this last May was the 4th driest on record (since 1895).

What’s this all mean for our outdoor recreation? Be careful with your fires.

This year, we’re up 6x the amount of acres burned compared to last year (2x from 2021 and 8x from 2020)!

Over 98% of wildfires in the dairyland are caused by people, so do your part to prevent them. Here’s a flame wildfire dashboard for your info.

Wet days ahead

The good news is we are still trending about 5-20% more precipitation in the state than 50 years ago (depending on where you live).

We will continue to see this 5%+ increase in precipitation over the next 40 years, according to people smarter than us.

And to add to that, there are El Niño predictions for this fall/winter, meaning higher temps and more rain (with less snow).

El Niño occurs when a band of warm water in the in the central starts warming the stratosphere, which affects the jet stream and weather patterns almost everywhere.

This weather pattern can hang around from a few months to a few years, and scientists are still figuring it all out.

Anyway, despite this current drought, our rivers are still running higher than usual due to the last decade of above-normal precipitation levels. So that’ll keep us cool while we wait for the changing weather!

Now get out ‘der!

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Wiscampsin Weekly Poll

Well folks, must be a lot of muddy lakes out there as 116 lakes in WI are named Mud Lake and 82 are named Bass Lake (55% of guesses were for Mud Lake & 28% were for Bass Lake).

Nuts and Seeds 🌰 

🐻 We can bearly believe it: A Wisconsin bowhunter just tied the state-record black bear and landed himself the 4th spot on the Pope & Young list. Last fall, Bill Foster took a black bear with a skull of 22 11/16 inches, tying the previous record from 2003. Wisconsin DNR typically issues over 11,000 black bear tags annually, with harvest numbers floating around 3,000. Make room in the the freezer!

🚘 Dude, where’s my car?: … at the bottom of the Rock River! A fisherman, in attempts to find walleye for a fish fry, scanned something on the river bottom that looked odd. Turns out, it was a car reported stolen all the way back in 1993! But police theorize that the owners, who parked the car on a hill by the river bank, forgot to put it in park, and it ended up rolling in the river. Criminy, must have had a couple two-three too many beers!

🌱 Do your part: Invasive species, oh my! Yup, they come in and choke our native flora, eat our native fauna, and overall wreak havoc on our ecosystems. If you’re a camper, boater, gardener, or anyone with a heartbeat, check out the 5 ways you can help prevent the spread of these nuisances.

Meme of the Week 😂

A review from the trail… Great readers this week! As always.