Greetings and welcome!
As each day passes more and more of the snowmobile trail system is opening up. Most of Oconto County is open now as well as most of Marinette County. My hat is off to the scores of volunteers that worked hard in cold or crappy weather to make it happen. THANK YOU!!
When I went to Lakewood, Townsend, and Carter yesterday all of the trails that I saw from the road looked to be in nice shape. The only thin spot that I saw was on a road shoulder that had been plowed down thin and then ridden on.
There has been a fair amount of traffic this week. So far everything looks great.
We have only had about a foot of snow. The groomers are indeed magicians, but that will not be enough to fill in some of the more prominent terrain features like big ruts or dip, thus the early season conditions thing. There is also more brush and trail clearing to do, and that too will come with a little time.
The lakes are not in as good of shape. When I went past Waubee Lake yesterday there were no tracks at all on it and a couple of spots looked wet like the weight of the snow bushed down the ice and flooded it. The same went for Townsend Flowage and the little bit that I could see from the road.
We did not have a cold fall and the lakes were just starting to get a lid on them when the heavy rain and wet sloppy snow from the first storm came. We had some cold weather over Christmas, but it came with 4-6″ of snow, so the ice didn’t improve as much as it could have. For now there are probably places that you can walk out and fish, but generally the lakes are not ready. I heard about a snowmobile and a UTV going through in the past couple of days. The Green Bay TV news said that they measured about 8″ of ice on Lake Winnebago and warned people about going out.
The forecast ahead is not a good one for us. Over the next 7 days only two days have high temperatures close to freezing. Today we are looking at a high of 32 and Saturday 33. Otherwise the daily high temperatures are all in the upper 30s and low 40s. There is some rain possible Thursday into Friday as well. Next week looks even darker with mid-40s and rain early week. There is snow possible farther out in the 16 day forecast, but once you get more than a week out it is mostly a nice cartoon.
A little warm weather and even a little rain isn’t a bad thing. It helps firm up the trail base and make it more durable. It is possible to have too much of a good thing though.
So how is this going to shape up for the weekend? I don’t know. My thought right now is that the forecast has been a lot worse than the actual weather quite a bit this winter. We are going to get 19″ of snow? Ended up 5″ of slushy snow and a lot of rain. Blizzard and whiteout conditions for Christmas? Nope, only some wind and blowing snow. Hopefully our little year-end thaw goes the same way.
Right now I have more questions than answers, and only time will tell. For now I am going to go and take advantage of the warmer day to do all of the stuff outside that I didn’t want to do in a -15 or -25 wind chill last weekend.
Have a good Wednesday and thank you for visiting!
RJB