Greetings and welcome!
I did an update last Friday and never got to finish it. That is posted below.
Since then we had warm days until today. Now it is 25 outside with a wind howling to 40mph and beyond.
I expect it to stay below freezing Tuesday as well, then the warm air comes back. We will go down into the 20s at night, but daytime high temperatures are expected to be in the mid and upper 30s.
There is a small area of rain possible for Friday, and a little bigger storm coming for Christmas. That one shows as rain as well, not even close to a chance of snow. In fact there is no chance for snow anywhere in the 16 day scope of the GFS forecast model. After the Christmas storm the GFS is showing a lot of cold air coming. Hopefully there is a storm or two in the pipeline. At least we are in the game with the cold.
The El Nino bad news is even affecting the UP. Usually they have snow and trails by now. We just haven’t had the big cold winds to fire up the Lake Superior snow machine. I saw a post yesterday by the Big Mac bridge where they only had one patch of snow where the snowplow had left it, and it wasn’t expected to last the day. Another post showed a UP club organizing an ATV/UTV ride since doing it on snowmobiles wasn’t an option.
This is why we hate El Nino winters.
I got an ice report from a fisherman on Caldron Falls Flowage. He went out by Fisher’s Camp (Boat Landing 10) and found as much as 6″ in the bay. Farther out where the river channel passes the mouth of the bay was not even close to ready.
The state is rebuilding Boat Landing 11 on Caldron Falls Flowage. They got into a lot more rock than expected, slowing construction. Between that and materials issues that project went unfinished and the landing is closed for the winter. A lot of people like to fish Crane’s Bay, and that is how you get there. You can travel up there from Landing 9 & 10, but with little or no ice that might be a while. For now the only way in would be walking down the snowmobile trail from Landing 12 Rd. It isn’t just snowmobilers hating the El Nino winter.
Anyway.. here is the Friday update that didn’t get finished..
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It is an El Nino winter. So far we have had two small storms that brought an inch or two. It was enough to whiten and ice up side roads a little but not much.
It has been warmer than normal. Today we got up to 43 and the snow got knocked down quite a bit. Now it is mostly grass with patches.
We have been having nights in the teens and twenties. The ground and lakes have slowly been making progress freezing up. I have no local report. I did see a guide from Shawano that said that he found 2-4″ of ice 30′ out in spots. Another article showed a tow service fishing an ice shanty out of the lake. Personally I will wit for a lot more ice.
There isn’t much to cheer for in the 16 day forecast if you are a snowmobiler. The weather ahead shows warmer than normal weather and no big storms ahead. In fact today’s GFS is showing Christmas & Christmas Eve quite a bit warmer than normal. My wild guess is 40-45ยบ+.
Now hold on before you break out the cyanide capsules…
I have been watching some brutally cold air over northern Europe and northern Asia. How cold? Like -50 to -60C, which translates to -58 to -70 F. Dang! Well eventually some of that cold air is expected to come our way after Christmas or around New Years.
I don’t know how cold, or if it comes with snow, but colder is an improvement.
It is a very quiet time of year around here. Decembers are always brutal for local tourism based places until the snowmobile trails open. A lot of trail stops are closed until the last Friday of the month. Even in years where we have trails it is slow until after Christmas.
The winter solstice is on 12/21. We have 8:42 of daylight, and sunset is at 4:12pm. That is just under 7 hours less daylight than we have at the June solstice.