Greetings and happy Thanksgiving!
The storm yesterday brought rain and snow about as expected. What wasn’t expected was how much the snow would stick to trees and branches. It gave them a thick heavy flocking and then the wind blew hard. The end result was a lot of trees and branches down and a lot of people out of power. Right now at 1:30am Thursday there are still 932 power outages affecting 20,571 customers. This morning it was 989 outages affecting 32,716 customers. They are working on it, but there are trees and branches down everywhere and the weather is nasty so it isn’t an easy job.
Facebook photos showed a few trees down on back roads, and some on power lines. I know that I broke a few branches here, and not just dead ones.
Here at C & F in Silver Cliff I have had a few brownouts, including a couple that were pretty significant. I do still have power.
The snow has now frozen in. In some places there are 4″ some places only 2-3″. Under it is an icy base, and on top a pretty good crust. Once the crust was broken it was easily pulverized to make a path, but again it had a bit of an ice base. The truck that I didn’t clear the windshield on the snow is frozen on pretty tight.
We have another storm heading our way for the weekend. Usually I don’t have much confidence in the models right after a big storm but they have been consistent with the weekend weather both before and after the storm so I believe a little more than usual.
Anyway what I see this morning is a slow moving storm, slightly weaker than the last one, moving along the same path. The expected precip amounts are about the same with the GFS model looking at 1.5-2″ of rainfall equivalent and the NAM model showing 0.75-1.0″. We will also be doing the rain/snow line dance with rain or freezing rain some times and snow others. It is going to be a close one.
It looks like the storm will start Friday night about midnight and continue until Sunday afternoon or evening. The heaviest of it looks like it will come Saturday night.
I would really like to see some more frost in the ground and ice on the lakes before we start building an snow and ice base, but I don’t get to write the script. We are on the path to build a nice little starter base on roads and trails. With the winter solstice 24 days away and the sun mostly well hidden behind storm clouds the sun is not a big factor. Temperatures next week look like they will stay in the low 30s so we should keep what snow and ice that we get.
A word about snow totals.. I was right on the rain/snow line for a lot of the storm. Places north and west saw more snow than I did here. It tapered down to a couple of inches near Crivitz and not much east of 141. In a storm like this Lakewood, Goodman, Dunbar, Townsend, Carter and Wabeno all get more snow than I do. I haven’t figured out if it is an elevation thing, or if it is just a little colder there.
Over the years I have identified places that the rain/snow line will set up. Coming out of Crivitz on A sometimes it is right at Hwy X, and again at A & C heading west on C. Heading north on Parkway Rd Benson Lake Road is a big one. They always have more snow there than here on a close storm. Heading toward Lakewood on Hwy F there is distinctively more snow west of McCaslin Mountain. Close to home my friends over toward Old J and Harper Rd frequently get a couple of extra inches more than I have here.
The point is especially on a storm with a close rain/snow line consider my snow totals and photos very local. Just like I get more snow than Crivitz, the Hwy 8 or Hwy 32 corridor often gets more snow when the storm is a close call.
Don’t forget the buffets at Rapids Resort and Hilltop Resort today, especially if your power is out and a big dinner got cancelled. Both have a nice spread and are very reasonably priced.
Have a good Thanksgiving and thank you for visiting!
RJB