Monday 12-21-2021

Greetings and welcome!

We have a lot to talk about today.

Last week’s storm and 55 degree weather had us out of power for about 36 hours. It also took down a lot of trees and devastated our snow cover. The clubs organized work crews over the weekend and got a lot of the mess cleaned up thanks to all of the volunteers that stepped up.

Trails in northern Oconto County (Chute Pond and north) will open Friday the 24th. The same goes for Iron Snowshoe and northern Marinette County trails. The Near North, Pemenee River Riders, and Dun-Good trails are open now north of Hwy C in Silver Cliff but riding both snowmobilers and ‘wheelers is discouraged due to thin base in open areas and corners, and everywhere else is all ice. The River Road Riders does not open until January 10th, and Ranger City Riders and the Kumalong trails remain closed.

The trails in Lakewood and Townsend looked ok with an icy base. As I went west toward Langlade things got pretty thin (or bare) in open areas.

We got about 3″ of puffy snow this morning and about another inch over the weekend. That will help a lot but we are still looking at early season conditions between the weather issues and trail crews continuing work on clearing trails and grooming. You can ride but don’t expect beautiful February conditions and watch out for that ice.

One club also mentioned that lakes in our area are not safe yet and that there will be wet areas in swamps. I would not fool around on lakes at all until they freeze a little more.

The short term weather looks pretty reasonable. Friday changes that. We are looking at 40 degrees and a mix of rain and snow. Hopefully that 40ยบ will help to bond the snow to the icy base. The good news with the rain is that it does not look like there will be very much precipitation with that storm.

Starting Sunday the 26th there is a parade of small snow storms showing up on the GFS forecast model. I’m ok with a foot of snow 3″ at a time. There is a storm showing up for Jan 3rd that does not look good. That one would bring a lot of wind and rain, a lot like the last big storm, but at least it will skip the 55 degree temperatures. The storm track only needs to change about 300 miles and it would be a very bountiful snow storm for us. With that almost two weeks out I am not going to worry about it too much.

That is news for today. Have a good week and thank you for visiting!

RJB