4:15pm update-
Curt E-mailed in that he couldn’t leave a comment on the no-ethanol gas source page. There was a conflict between the theme and the comments on that page for some reason, so we are back to this look. Thanks !
RJB
Greetings and welcome!
Hopefully everyone had a good Christmas weekend.
Today we have a sunny day with temps chasing 40 degrees. It would feel a lot warmer outside if it wasn’t for a brisk wind.
It looks like we have a warm week ahead with most days in the low 30s. There is a little light snow possible for later in the week, but it is not the one that we are waiting for.
There is not much to get excited about again on the GFS. It is a depressing thing when you keep looking 16 days out and don’t see any big storms for the region. We do have a parade of smaller disturbances showing up, and from time to time one of them is shown grazing us. A couple at the far end of the model even suggest a little heavier snow.
I suppose that it could be worse. We could be stuck in the El Nada snow pattern and have a lot colder temperatures. Having a daytime high of 5 degrees and no snow in sight is definitely worse than what we have now.
There is a lot more to this, but part of the problem is that we don’t have the usual blocking high pressure out over the Atlantic. Usually there is a big high pressure area that serves us by pushing the storms north into our neighborhood as they approach the western periphery of the high. That is one of the reasons that we aren’t seeing the big storms make it past the IL state line. We are also not seeing any big pushes of sub-zero Arctic air.
Will it ever change? Glass half full Ray says yes, January will bring much different weather. Cynical Ray says yeah, it will change, but not until March 15th when it won’t matter. (Be quiet you..) Reasonable Ray says that we are about due for a pattern change, they usually last 6-7 weeks, and this one started in Late November. I am going with the last one for now.
When I ran to Lakewood this morning it looked like most of the area had a white Christmas thanks to the half inch or so that we had Friday. Some of that is going away with the 40 & sunny day, but there is still a lot left. The forest roads and RR grade visible from the truck looked inviting with the ice base and a little snow on top, but knowing that it was <1/2″ of snow my enthusiasm was tempered a little.
Passing Waubee Lake I saw that it is frozen over and there are actually two ice shanties out there. That might be a little early, I haven’t heard a report over 5-6″ for lake ice yet. The way that late November and early December started up I figured that we’d have great ice by Christmas, but it hasn’t been that cold. Be very careful if you do venture out onto the ice, and you probably want to leave the truck at the landing.
Right now I am headed back outside to take advantage of the weather. there is firewood to cut and work on the shed and sled will continue. It beats doing it at 5 or 15º, so I have to take advantage of the 40 degree day.
Have a good week and thank you for visiting!
RJB