Greetings and welcome!
Here we go with year 27.. 1998-2025
We are off to a decent start. The weather recently has been cold and a lot of lakes have got first ice. You can tell that shaded spots have started the ground to freeze. Last night we went down to 13 degrees.
Last week a big bad clipper hit lake effect spots with some snow and very cold wind. One town in Door County got 8”. Other areas in the UP and Lake Michigan snow belts got a lot more. We got a dusting that didn’t last long. Here are some maps that I saved up.
Yesterday a small storm brought as much as 4-5” in an area around Stevens Point and Iola. We had clear blue skies.
This year looks like we will be having an ENSO neutral year. That hopefully means no ElNino or LaNina to screw up our weather. That doesn’t guarantee anything but is very much in our favor. MOST neutral years end well for us but I have seen them come up short.
I have been watching some unusual stuff going on in the oceans that I have never seen before. That is hopefully in our favor.
The sun has been very active. While there isn’t a concrete connection there are theories that an active sun brings active weather.
I have a thing called the RPI.. The Ray Preparedness Index. This year it is negative and has a three digit exponent. I have so many projects going that I might be able to tune up the sleds roughly August 17th, 2026. Ok it isn’t that bad but I really have my hands full. In years past when I was this overwhelmed we had a good snow year. That is in our favor.
A lot of long range forecasters are singing the same tune- cold and snow and plenty of both. Not sure about that..
On the other side of the coin, we are in a D3 severe drought at the moment. Rivers and lakes are very low. I can walk across my little pond without getting muddy. Most years there is at least 1-2 feet of water in fall. The question is.. how long does this severe drought last? I am not seeing any indication of a dramatic turnaround in the short term. It would be great to see a big turnaround about mid-December.
My other bit of skepticism is the rubber band theory. The line of thought is because we had a bad winter last year we should have a good winter this year. It snaps back like a rubber band. I will point out that the rubber band didn’t snap back for us last year, and two bad years doesn’t pull the rubber band back twice as far.
Right now looking at the 16 day GFS forecast model the only thing to get excited about is a couple of storms possible for Nov 30-Dec 1 that could graze us.
Anyone that has followed my posts for a while knows that the GFS always has a promising storm 14 or 16 days out that never comes to fruition. It kind of reminds me of Charlie Brown, Lucy, and a football.
Right now I am cautiously optimistic. I am sure hoping that this year will be better than the last two. I’m hoping that it is a lot better.
I am not going to update daily like I used to. I will be right on it when something important happens like a storm or big thaw.
I will remind you to register your snowmobiles, join a club, and get the trail pass process started. Last year I didn’t do any registrations or trail passes. I used to have the snowmobile registrations staggered to every other year. Now I am in for a double hit on the registrations. Oh well.
(Lifting a glass) Here is to an amazing snow year and a 12 weekend season. Cheers!
RJB over and out!