Sunday December 1st, 2013

Greetings and welcome!

Today is the first day that Michigan trails can open. From what I can tell surfing the net they have snow, but it is very early season conditions. One post reported about 15″ so far around Gogebic, and another had similar totals around Newberry in the east central UP. Michigan Interactive has a report out today that says not quite yet for riding. I think if a guy was hot to do some ditch banging or test runs you could probably do it, but conditions might be a little on the early side to go any distance (no base, closed gates..).

There is a storm showing up in the models for Wednesday. It is not a very strong storm and I am not expecting much out of it. It will probably start as light snow, switch to rain, and then a little more snow. The HPC QPF says that it could bring 0.25-0.5″ of rainfall equivalent. In a perfect world that would translate to about 3-6″.

The GFS model’s take on it looks like the low will track about over the NW 1/3 of WI. Usually we want the low to track between Milwaukee and Green Bay. If it goes too far west we end up in the warm side of the storm and get rain. Right now it is too close to call four days out, but my current guess is for a snow, then rain, then snow type medley, and maybe an inch or two to show for it when it is done.

We have a new link today in the weather links section to the right. The bottom link is a snow cover map from the NOHRSC. The map is interactive with a lot of variables like zooming and different values like snow depth, moisture content, and density, snow melt, hourly snowfall, and more. We will see in the coming days how well it works. It is an ambitious venture, and if it is accurate, could be a great tool. Hat tip to Riding With Dan & Dylan for the link via their Facebook post.

I am off to go and take advantage of our 30 degree day. Compared to recent weather, it sounds like a pretty good day for some outside work.

Have a good Sunday and thank you for visiting!

RJB