Greetings and welcome!
It is just like old times updating at 2am..
Saturday didn’t go well. It was sunny and we hit a high of 46 degrees. It was still 36 at midnight. The snow got as soft as cake frosting and is definitely melting. Looking out of the front door a little while ago I’d guess that the snow went from 4-5″ down to 2-3.
The driveway had only been plowed one plow width wide, so I took the opportunity to push back the banks while the snow was soft. The snow moved easily, even the plow piles. It would not have gone well today with any kind of traffic on the trails right around here.
Something that I noticed was that I peeled up a little sod too. The ground was not well frozen when the snow came, one of the reasons that I didn’t plow the driveway yet. Snow is a good insulator, and apparently it held back the frost even with our month of below normal temperatures and nights that went -12. That left me wondering if maybe there wasn’t some good in this meltdown if it meant freezing up soft spots and putting some frost into the ground. If places with more snow ended up with an ice base that wouldn’t be all bad either.
We still have Sunday and Monday to go before the big thaw ends, and we are looking at a high of about 45 both days. There is a chance of some drizzle Sunday into Monday and then rain Monday into Tuesday. We could see a couple of inches of snow as the storm moves off to the east Tuesday. Between there and about Christmas the weather looks quiet with about normal temperatures. Christmas could bring some clipper snow and much colder weather.
None of that adds up to great conditions in the short term, at least not right around here. There will still be riding opportunities out there after the thaw, it is just a question of how far north that they will be.
Have a good Sunday and thank you for visiting!
RJB