Greetings and welcome!
It was a very busy weekend around our area. Lots and lots of riders hit the trails. Some of the trails got a little wavy, but the groomer came by at about 10pm Saturday night to make it better.
We have some more snow to talk about. There is a storm on watch for Wednesday and again for Saturday night/Sunday. The Wednesday storm looks like 3-6″ affair. The rain/snow line will not be an issue. The main storm is shown passing over southern Indiana and into Ohio, but there is enough going on with the northern periphery of it that we could see some snow out of it.
The Sunday storm looks like a good one with 6″ plus possible. The GFS model is showing it tracking just perfectly for the biggest snow in our area. The TV says that we could see 5.5-6.5″. We can look at that one more as it gets closer.
I am starting to win the battle of snow removal. Most of my roofs are shoveled off or out of danger. I still have work to do on the driveway and some paths, but the heavy roof stuff is done. I am pretty sore but it is a happy sore. I got a lot closer to doing some riding today.
When I was outside I was shedding layers of outerwear as I shoveled. The day was only about 25 but I could tell that the sun was out. It cleared my dark car of the dusting of snow by 10am. The roofs didn’t start dripping until mid-afternoon, so other than dark stuff like roads we didn’t lose much. The TV said that we added 3 minutes of daylight today.
Here is a chart that I made showing sunrise and sunset time, where it is in the sky when it rises and sets, and length of day. I did this for the winter solstice (12-21), today, and April 1st.
Sunrise- Sunset- Length of day- change since the day before.
December 21st (Winter solstice)
| 7:29 am ↑ (123°) | 4:12 pm ↑ (237°) | 8:42:52 | −0:03 |
Today Feb 18th
| 6:49 am ↑ (106°) | 5:24 pm ↑ (254°) | 10:34:08 | +3:01 |
April 1st
| 6:33 am ↑ (83°) | 7:20 pm ↑ (278°) | 12:47:06 | +3:10 |
[[[Sunday March 10th Daylight savings time starts ( Spring ahead an hour)]]]
At solstice the sun is farther south in the sky. On April 1st the sun has moved 40 degrees farther north. (About 2:30 and 9:30 on the clock) We pick up 4 hours and 5 minutes of daylight from the December solstice until April 1st. That is a huge change in both sun angle and length of day, and we are about halfway there.
It will take a lot to burn through our two foot deep snow pack. Barring some 70 degree days in March some of it will be there well into April. What we will see get sunburned are roads and plowed driveways, and the occasional corner or sunny spot. We have a couple of weeks of great trails ahead, but after that we will need steady snow to keep sunny areas happy.
The moral of the story is ride soon.
Thank you to everyone that came to visit at Rapids Resort last weekend!
Have a great Tuesday and thank you for visiting!
RJB