Thursday, June 20, 2019

Winchester Picnic in the Park & Boat Parade

Mark July 6th and 7th on your calendar . . . Those are the dates of the Annual Winchester Boat Parade and Picnic.

The boat parade starts at 6 PM at the bridge and the Picnic in the Park is on Sunday, July 7, from 12 PM to 3 PM. There's always great food, fun and games.

Once again, the Friends of the Library are sponsoring the Cake Walk. Folks donate cakes, cupcakes and desserts and the kids play a "ring-around-the rosy" game to see who wins a treat. If you'd like to donate a treat to the game, please have it at the Park by noon.

Hope to see you there.

Saturday, June 08, 2019

Lake Tides Newsletter & Lake Levels

Emily Heald, Water Program Coordinator at North Lakeland Discovery Center, sent an email out last week about and interesting article . . . 

"Katie Hein, the scientist who has been analyzing our lake level data, wrote an incredibly interesting article in the most recent publication of Lake Tides."

UWSP/UW Extension Lakes    You can find the newsletter at this site. You can also subscribe to the newsletter and receive it whenever it is published.

Emily is also our contact at the Discovery Center for the lake level monitoring. Here's a link to the Discovery Center that explains the procedure.

Discovery Center Citizen Lake Monitoring

Every spring they come out and install a gauge right off the shoreline. The gauge is calibrated so that readings from day to day and year to year can be compared.



This is a photo of the most current page in the monitoring booklet. On May 11 the zero point was calibrated at 305.3. You add the reading (65) to the zero point and the initial reading for 2019 was 370.3. If you add the 305.3 to the reading from today (56), you'll come up the actual level of 361.5.

At the end of each month, we submit a photo of the current month and we receive a chart (see below) that shows the lake levels for that month added on the past data.



This year Emily asked if there was one year for which she could do a graph showing the change in levels. I think 2014 is an interesting year. It started out at the highest level and, in five weeks, they had to come out and re-install the gauge in deeper water. They installed the gauge on 5/13/14 and the actual elevation was 395.7 (333.7 + 62 cm). On June 21 the actual elevation was 343.7 (333.7 + 10 cm).


As you can see from the graph, the water level kept falling throughout the summer and started climbing around August when the rain started coming again. The other interesting thing about 2014 is we had 4" of snow on October 31, a day before they took the gauge out.

The highest point since 2014 was last summer when all the docks started floating away.

There's another change this year that should be interesting. A few weeks ago they came out and did a reading that will enable them to compare our lake level to sea level and to lakes around the world. As soon as we get some information I'll post it on the blog.

Saturday, June 01, 2019

Winchester Library and Town Events - June

I received an email from the Betty at the Winchester Library with a long list of events going on at the library and in town throughout the month of June. Thought I'd post it on the blog in case you're up here and need something to do.

 Summer Library Hours are: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Fridays 10-3; Thursday 9-6 and             Saturday 10-12. Copying and faxing are available during those times.
            
June 3 – Town Board meeting at 7 pm, Town Hall

June 4 – Lions Board meeting at 6, Library

June 6 – Jasmyn Schmidt addresses questions and answers about Composting and Recycling at 2, Library
            
June 8-Rainbow Lake Association meeting at 9, Library
            
June 9 – Legion Auxiliary meeting at 5, at Legion Post/Bingo

June 12-15- Our Annual Book Sale; $1.00 a bag on Saturday

June 17-Book Club – Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, here

June 18 – Kid’s Programs start; Picnic, Worm Race and Litter Pick up From 11-12, Library

June 19 – Garden Maintenance begins at 9 in Memorial Garden, here

June 20- Free Lunch – a Cook Out at 11:30; then Susan Corrieri, Vilas County Elder Specialist, will speak on the ABC’s of Medicare and answer questions at noon, Library

June 21 – Basket Weaving 10-3, Dianne Mockler, Library

June 22-Hiawatha Lake Picnic and Meeting, 8:30, here

June 25-Container Gardening for Kids, 10:30; Jaime Martindale from UW-Madison on Visualizing History Through Aerial Photography  at 2, Library

June 27- Attorney Long from Sturgul and Long Law Office in Hurley addresses Elder and Trusts issues at 4.

June 28 – Basket Weaving with Dianne Mockler, 10-3, here