Greetings and welcome!
It looks like we had well under an inch of snow from the storm. There is a dusting on the truck and sleds, but where it drifted in the driveway there is about 1/2″. We only saw a high of 34 and it was overcast all day, so we didn’t lose anything on the trails.
It occurred to me that the big storm that SE WI saw yesterday was about the same day that we had the big 16-17″ of wet heavy snow last year. My hunch was right, the big snow came on Feb 28th last year.
Last year I was seeing some warm weather behind the storm that ended up getting way out of hand, and eventually ended up bringing 80 degree temps in March. I am not seeing that this time. There are a couple of pushes of warmer air showing up on the 16 day GFS, but they keep getting driven back south by the northwest flow before they get here. Hopefully it plays out as shown.
This weekend is a lock for good trail conditions. Other than some bare areas on plowed roads and an occasional sunny spot, we should be golden. Tuesday night’s ride was on excellent trails.
The weekend of the 9th looks like a decent bet, though there will probably be some spots that the sun eats. That would be the extra weekend that our big ice base will get us.
The weekend of the 16th is much more iffy. The sun gets pretty ugly by then, and if we don’t see extra snow to keep things going we will end up riding forest roads and sheltered areas, or maybe heading up by Hwy 8 and points north. A little snow would fix that.
After mid-month any riding weekends are definitely bonus laps. It would take a good mid-week storm to keep up with the sun.
March 20th brings the Northward Equinox, the halfway point between the shortest day of the year, the Winter Equinox (12/21), and the longest day of the year, the Summer solstice (June 21).
The difference in daylight between December 21 and March 20th is about 3 1/2 hours and the sun angle goes from 22.1º to 45.6º. The length of day on March 20th is 12 hours 10 minutes.
Get it while you can!
Have a good Thursday and thank you for visiting!
RJB