Greetings and welcome!
This is one of those days where I have to say a lot of stuff that I don’t wanna say. It looks like tomorrow could be the last of great snowmobile trails around here.
The forecast models have been very consistent with the projected track of the Friday night to Sunday storm. It isn’t a sure thing until it happens but everything in front of me says that it will.
The show starts Friday night with snow changing to a mix and some freezing rain. Saturday morning the freezing rain continues until it warms up enough to make it just rain. The morning news said that we could see close to 1/4″ of ice accumulate. (note to self… check the generator) Then it changes to rain or a mix and gets close to 40 degrees. Saturday night barely gets down to freezing and the models show some pretty good rain, downpours, and a chance of a few thunderstorms. Finally Sunday it will switch back to snow before the storm departs leaving us with a 40 degree day.
Sigh. None of that sounds very good for our trails.
It was about a week ago that we were expecting 6-8″ of snow but got skunked when the storm took a hard right turn and made it snow in northern Indiana. We need that to happen again. Instead of snowing heavily in far northern MN, we could get snow. Hey a guy can dream happy dreams, right?
I took a ride around the neighborhood late Tuesday morning. Most of the trails were in nice shape with the base. There were bare sunny spots in a few places and a couple that were on the dirt side of snirt. The sunny 40 degree day wasn’t doing us any favors. I rode early before the trails were too vulnerable and parked it about the time that it started getting really soft. Half of the trails that I rode were beautiful. The other half looked like they did Saturday night and had me grinding through the whoopties on my old 1994 sled. That stretch has since been groomed.
Yesterday we had a high of 35 and the sun was out. Today we are looking at a high of about 30 but the sun is out. That sun is not our friend at this time of year, and sunny spots will degrade a little, even on a sub-32 degree day like today.
There are some bad spots to be sure but I expect to find mostly good trails other than road trails. Plowed and treated roads are shot from the sun.
I have a car down and if I can get it running again I might get a ride in this afternoon. It could well be the last ride of the season if the forecast holds up. Right now I am still holding out hope that it won’t be as bad as the forecast makes it sound.
Have a good Thursday and thank you for visiting!
RJB
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