Greetings and welcome!!
The ice storm got ugly with some seriously slippery roads, and pretty much anything else outside got glazed. Following the ice storm came 40+ degree weather and about an inch of rain. There is no snow left except for the plow piles and the occasional patch in the woods. Today’s 45 and sunny weather should take care of that. The lakes have a lot of water on top of them and they have lost some ice.
After the first of the year forecasts have us getting very cold. Some of the weather buddies are getting excited and calling it historical cold. I’m going to call bologna on that one but it does look like we will see some deep cold.
After a storm on about 1-6 that will go well south of us the GFS is showing upper air temperatures of -33ºC which translates to about -28ºF. That doesn’t directly translate to -28F here on the ground but you can bet that it will be cold. Right now I am seeing overnight temps in the -10 to -20ºF range.
Historical cold? Not so sure about that. Colder than my first year at UW Stevens Point in the 80s where it was -29 every night for a month? Colder than the long stretch when I worked in Wausaukee where we had a high of -5 and a low of -28 for a month or six weeks? That is a pretty high standard. Historical cold? How about hysterical cold?
If you have noticed that I made it four paragraphs without using the word snow more than once you have made a keen observation. Other than a possible 1-3″ snow about the 6th there is no meaningful snow showing up for our area in the scope of the 16 day GFS forecast model.
The U.P. will likely be a very different story. With that very cold air coming across Lake Superior they could see some very bountiful snow.
I do think that we will see some big changes toward mid-January and that might be what we are looking for.
In the meantime I am off to the shop. I have 1 generator to finish working on and a snowblower that I am trying to stuff a 15Hp Chinese Honda clone motor onto (Chonda?). Then it will be time to pull the Twindies* out of the shed for the first time in two years and start going through them. It will be interesting to see if my Startron fuel preservative is good for that long.
*The Twindies- His n Hers 1994 Indy Trail 500 Fans 25 serial numbers apart
With not much to report over the next few days/weeks my updates might be occasional. Hopefully that ends up being wrong and we will have a late start to a great season. Sensing the opportunity to leave a grim report on a high note I am off to the shop.
Have a good new year and thank you for visiting!!
RJB