Tuesday December 21, 2010-10Pm

Greetings and welcome!

10pm

Surprise!

The storm has camped over us all day and into the night. As a result we have at least 8″ down here and probably a little more than that to the south. The radar shows us and much of Oconto Co seeing heavier snow.

Since late afternoon the flakes got a little bigger. In place of the fine powder or mini-snowballs we now have flakes 1/8-1/2″. It is still snowing, and the TV says we could see another 1-3.

When I went out at 10 to take measurements I had a hard time finding spots that had been cleared between storms but not cleared again today. The couple that I did find solidly measured 8″ or a little more. Add in another 1-3 and you really have something.

The hope is that even though this was fairly fluffy snow, it will pack well. Right now at 10:30 it is almost 30 degrees out. My guess is that it will pack well with grooming and traffic.

11am

It is very pretty outside this morning. It is still snowing a little and I have my official measurement of 4″.

The TV weather channel has areas like Mountain, Rhinelander and Antigo as high as 5.5″. Their prediction by the time that it is done is for 7.1″ for us, pretty much the highest total in the region.

The NWS is on board. They are looking for 1-2 today and 1-2 tonight for a total of 4-7″. Also in our favor, they are looking for highs in the 299-32 range tomorrow. That will help settle the snow and let it pack down for some base.

So far, so good!

[popeye]

5:38

2-4am

It is 2am Tuesday morning. It is snowing, and there is an eclipse going on. The snow has only given us a dusting.

The eclipse is being blocked by the heavy cloud cover. I knew about that and kept checking anyway. It is considerably darker out than it was an hour ago. Earlier I could see almost across the pond with the diffused moonlight, but there was enough cloud cover that I couldn’t tell which direction the moon was in. Now it is just plain dark out. There is no red sky as I had hoped.

The snow was expected to get a slow start overnight. The NWS has us expecting 1-2 by morning, another 2-3 during the day and maybe a little Tuesday night as well. Their expected total is 4-6.

That is good, we could use it. I didn’t go far in my travels today, but we were ready for more snow. There were some thin spots and not much of a base. Roads and plowed driveways didn’t have much base either. You can ride, but it is early season conditions and all that you can expect out of the first foot of powder.

Our blizzard brought us a foot or so, and it was a nice start. It was powdery, so it didn’t set up like a foot of heavier snow would have. More snow and the warmer temps (20s) expected this week will hopefully set up a better base and fatten up trails.

As of 4am we have about 2″ down.

The Christmas storm looks like it is fading out. There is still a chance of snow, but it is not being shown as a big storm. The New Year’s storm is still on track with 3-6 or so and maybe a little more. The GFS shows the storm deepening as it passes, so that will stay on the watch list. There are no really big storms for us on the GFS right now, but you never know. It is winter.

RJB

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