Greetings and welcome!
I am not a happy snowmobiler tonight. We are way behind in getting the season started and the short term is not looking good.
We have a little frost in the ground but not as much as we would normally have. When I checked the big bay on Caldron Falls Flowage at Boat Landing #9 (By Thornton’s) it was frozen over, but the ice was only about 1/4″ thick by the beach. Bays and smaller bodies of water will be ahead of that. I have heard reports of 2-3″.
Looking at the 16 day GFS I don’t see anything that is even close to enough snow to get the season started. There are a few chances for snow, but all look like minor snowfalls. Saturday’s small storm looks like it will mostly stay south of Green Bay. We could see snow Tuesday but a 1-3″ snowfall sounds generous. Our next chance comes on the 22nd, again 1-3″ looks generous.
I suppose that is a good thing as far as getting some frost into the ground and some ice on the lakes and wetlands before the snow comes.
That isn’t really going well either. Our normal high & low temperature (Crandon is the closest climatology) is 28 for a high and 14 for a low. For the next couple of days we will be way above that. The weather gets closer to normal for the weekend into next week.
It is pretty much a sure thing that we are in for a LaNina winter. That is the cold phase of the El Nino Southern Oscillation. (ENSO) It is my opinion/observation that LaNina can be as good or bad as El Nino. A mild ElNino or La Nina can bring very good things for us. Last year we had a mild El Nino (Sea Surface Temp anomaly =~0.5º) and we had tons of snow. It is when the SST anomaly gets to 1 or more degrees away from normal that we seem to have rough winters. Right now we are at -1.2ºC. The models do have that moderating as winter progresses so it isn’t all doom & gloom.
Here is a link to the latest ENSO power point presentation from NCEP/NOAA published December 7th.
With zero hope of the trails opening in the next couple of weeks I am not going to start daily updates yet. When things start getting interesting I will update accordingly.
As far as meeting people at Rapids I haven’t quite figured that out yet. At the least I will stop in as a customer and get people’s pictures on Saturday. They want me to bartend, I have been resisting. We will see how that works out. One way or another I will be at Rapids on Saturdays when the trails are nice.
Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!
RJB