DELAFIELD - If you had called Dick Smith’s Live Bait and Tackle for the local fishing report this week, you would have heard a recorded message just slightly dated. Owner Becky Smith recorded the message Jan. 6. She hasn’t had a reason to change the message because southeastern Wisconsin’s virtual winter has snapped the line on ice fishing, along with many other outdoor activities. "If nothing has changed with the weather, I don’t know what to say to update the report," she said.
Smith also hasn’t bothered to calculate January sales revenue for her business at 2420 Milwaukee St., because, she said, "I don’t want to know. I’m not going to ruin my day. I know it’s horrible."
With some nice below-zero temperatures in December, Smith and other Lake Country business people who cater to the ice fishing crowd thought they were headed for a big catch this season in terms of sales volume. Then the jet stream shifted and winter crawled into a cave to hide. "Christmas sales were great and we were having the time of our life and one day it started thunderstorming and raining," Smith said.
While January’s average low temperature in the Milwaukee area is 13.4 degrees, the average low this month has been a balmy 29.8 degrees, said Peter Speicher, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. Also, during the first 18 days of this month, the average overall temperature of 34.2 degrees was exceeded 50 percent of the time, or on nine days, Speicher said. As if those statistics weren’t flaky enough, snowfall in January has added up to a scant 0.4 of an inch. That contrasts to the average January total of more than a foot of the white stuff - 15.2 inches.
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http://www.gmtoday.com/news/local_stories/2006/Jan_06/01212006_04.asp
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