10pm
Greetings and welcome!
Gosh where do I start? Mother Nature apparently slammed winter into reverse with the throttle still pinned. Wow.
Yesterday we got up to about 45 degrees. There was some melting, but it was just getting started. Last night it was still 40 degrees at 8pm.
The rain came about 10pm. It wasn’t a little rain, it was a pretty good downpour and it went on for quite a while.. It flooded low spots in the roads. More importantly it made places with packed down snow insanely slippery as the rain froze in place and then gathered water on top of the ice. The cleared roads were too warm to get iced up for the most part. Roads and driveways that held snow are just about impassible without studs or ice skates. One friend called his driveway a luge track. That sounds about right. I only got 3/4 of the way up my hill even with top notch Winterforce tires. One local business had parked cars sliding down the hill in the parking lot. There isn’t much that you can do. The salt gets diluted and sand gets encapsulated in the ice rendering it mostly ineffective. Almost all of the area schools closed due to icy roads. Round 1 goes to Mother Nature.
Today we got up to 45 degrees again. It was foggy, damp, and overcast. I always say that fog is a snow thief. The saturated air is an excellent thermal conductor and is very effective putting the warm air to the snow. We lost a lot of snow and the trails, while still intact, look dirty from all of the stuff packed into the snow over winter stacking up on top as the snow melted. I only saw one bare spot, and it was a thin spot where the groomer hits a high bump. NBD.
We are down to 36 at 10 pm, but the NWS expects rising temperatures overnight, taking us into the low 40s. There is a huge plume of fairly heavy rain about to hit the area. It reaches all of the way to the Gulf of Mexico, and areas down south could see severe weather. There is plenty of yellow and orange on the radar map, and it is lined right up on us. We could see up to an inch of rain, and a rumble of thunder is not out of the question. Out in the Dakotas this storm is a major blizzard.
Round 2- Mother Nature.
Tomorrow the forecast is for that rain to continue as we reach a high of 55. and lows in the mid-30s tomorrow night. Friday through Sunday we are looking at mid to upper 30s for highs and lows in the mid-20s. Next week we go back into the mid-40s for daytime highs.
The rain is a mixed blessing. It helps to make trail base and cover road trails. It also makes stuff icy and adds weight to already overburdened roofs. The fog is a killer. The other bad element is mid-40s and mid-50s without freezing temperatures overnight. That is a one-two punch.
I expect most of the trails to survive the assault but it probably won’t be pretty. This is probably one of our last weekends.
I will update on the carnage again tomorrow.
Have a good Thursday and thank you for visiting!
RJB