Thursday 12.23.2010

Greetings and welcome!

We have a nice cloudy day outside this afternoon with temps in the upper 20s. The word hot off of the trail is that they packed down really nice with yesterday’s warm weather and grooming. I have no less than three reports talking about good or excellent trails that have come in this morning. I like it.

The Christmas storm still looks like a non-event for the Northwoods. Maybe. Most of the models and forecasts have the area west and south of a line from Milwaukee to Superior, WI getting snow, and east of there not. The storm is expected to get about to the western WI state line and dive southeastward.

The TV weather channel 2-2 isn’t pushing the storm quite as far south quite as fast. This morning their Predictor animation showed us getting a little (1/2″) snow out of it. I am not sure if the models that I use are catching up or if they have some that I don’t use. IC.. The latest GFS plot reflects that scenario. OK.

Either way we are looking at a pretty nice weekend with temperatures in the upper 20s and lows in the mid-teens.

The New Years storm has been interesting to track on the GFS. Two days ago it was showing as a rain and snow storm. Some of the model runs were kind of scary with heavy rain. Yesterday the model started showing a classic double whammy storm with the first low pressure area bringing rain about the first and a second storm smacking us with really heavy snow on the second and third. The latest run available to me is back to scary. It shows over an inch of rain for us before it changes over to snow for a couple of inches on new year’s day. The QPF on that storm is 1.5-1.75″ with most of it rain.  It will change again.

Personally I kind of like the double low scenario. That has happened quite a few times over the years on our New Year’s  storms. Usually it ended up with us getting some base building rain followed by a foot of snow.

I called Rapids Resort to see if I was working this weekend. Apparently they will be closed for Christmas Day. At that point, finances permitting, I will likely head down to Curve Inn. They have been closed a few days this week for painting, cleaning, and remodeling, and that is their reopening. They have a really outstanding pizza and the suds are cheap too.

That is about it from here. Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!

RJB