Sunday January 10th, 2010

Greetings and welcome!

It was another fun weekend in the Northwoods. The trails were a little quieter than they could have been due to the snow downstate, but there were still some riders around. Personally it was a great weekend since I got to see a lot of old friends that came to ride. Thank you to all of you!

We are getting a little snow as of Sunday night at 9:30pm. So far there is about a half inch down, and a total of an inch or two expected.

It looks like our bitter January cold went west and south this year, and we have some warm weather ahead. So far this week does not look as disastrous as it could be. Wednesday is expected to be in the low 30s,  Thursday the mid-30s, and Sunday again in the low 30s. The rest of the week and weekend are slated to be in the 20s. Tonight’s snow is the only snow forecast for the next 7 days.

Looking a little farther ahead, the GFS shows a total of 6 of the 16 days ahead above 32, and some of them possibly with rain. At the moment I am not too worried about it, any more than I would be excited about a snowstorm 10 days out. The forecast has changed a lot in the past few runs, and will again. One of the reasons that I update the Silvercliff site Tuesdays is that the weather forecast frequently changes on Monday.

I do not think that this week will get too out of hand with the warm temps. At least it is not being shown now on my info. We shall see.

One of the scenarios that I see as plausible does include some active weather toward the end of the month. As the big high pressure areas move east and the storms coming in from the west stack up into it, we could see one or two push north and come this way. Now if the models would only pick up on that.

At the moment I am salivating over the prospects for the week. The RXL seems to run really well, the temps will be very reasonable, and thanks to your generosity, the gas fund is in great shape.

There is still plenty of that 4-letter W word that keeps us from riding, but after bruising myself a little late last year pulling extreme long hours, I am putting things back into balance. There will be plenty of work, but also blue room and trail time as well.

As far as trail conditions, I have not seen the aftermath of the weekend. The trails ranged from great to thin on Friday. The new snow will help to mend things up, if it will make it to the weekend we don’t know yet.

My studies show that you guys like to know early week if there will be trails for the weekend. The warm forecast for Thursday will make it a challenging week for us in that direction.

I am planning a late report for Monday.  I am planning on a ride with the camera, but Mondays have a way of filling themselves in. I am pretty sure that I will see Lakewood and Townsend by car as I hit the grocery, hardware store and sled dealer.  I will be fighting hard for a ride though, I am pretty excited about getting some miles in.

Some minor site adjustments to be aware of.. Fisher’s Camp got an ad and a link in the commercial sponsor’s column. Below that is a new link box with links back to Northern Destinations and Koch’s Performance. I will also be putting a link to Chris’s NorthernDestinations.com event page on the events page, she does a good job of keeping up on those, and obviously my version is wanting if I missed last weekend’s events.

That is it for now. Have a good Monday and thank you for visiting!

RJB