The day · Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Golden hour · 44 min left
Sun 7.2° up, in the west · Great Lakes & St. Lawrence Lowlands
The kind of day it is
Wet
and high overcast
Rain on and off. Worms come up, slugs come out, mushrooms start their two-to-seven-day clock, and rivers colour up.
Check the mushroom ground two to seven days from now, and stay off wet beds — you'll compact them.
The day, phase by phase
Happening now · 18:03–19:01
58 min long
Golden hour
Where the sun is this minute. Its highest today: 49.8°.
The sun drops back through the low angles and the long atmospheric path returns, warming the colour of everything. Shadows stretch to many times the height of what casts them.
Where the light lands · Great Lakes & St. Lawrence Lowlands
The light goes long and warm across the water and the whole basin turns amber. Every east-facing bluff lights up while the water goes dark.
Up close
Mayflies come off the surface in their millions on a June evening. It is the shortest adult life in fresh water — a day at most, no mouth, one purpose.
The whole landscape
Walleye lift off the breaks all across the basin at the same relative moment: not a clock time, but a light level. Sunset moves an hour and a half between Quebec City and Thunder Bay and the fish move with it.
In the water now
Walleyebest now
Up on the shoals and weed edges in two to four metres, hunting into the shallows as the light goes.
Smallmouth bassbest now
Rock points and current seams; up on top at first and last light, and willing to chase a surface lure then.
Muskellungebest now
Moving along weed edges and over deep points, often following without taking. The last hour of light is the famous one.
Rainbow troutbest now
Working the seams and feeding lanes where current delivers food, rising freely to a hatch.
Run-off colours the water and brings food in. Fish the inflows and the seams.
In the garden now
Out earlier and later than any other bee — a bumble bee can shiver its flight muscles warm and fly at 5 °C, in drizzle, in wind.
Feeding hardest in the first and last hour — it burns through the night's reserves by dawn and must refuel before dark.
Motionless on a flower head or stem, waiting. A mantis hunts by sight and needs the light.
Sitting head-down at the hub of the web. Many rebuild the whole orb at dawn, eating the old silk.
Slugs work all day, not just at night, and blight moves in wet warm air.
Sitting this one out
Honey bee · Hoverfly · Monarch butterfly · Swallowtail butterflies · Lady beetle · Green lacewing
The full guide
Everything for Milwaukee this week in one place.
Great Lakes & St. Lawrence Lowlands
The region this day belongs to, and what lives in it.
The almanac
The year's arc: day length, the moon and the water behind the air.
The week ahead for Milwaukee
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