Greetings and welcome!
I am inside hiding from the cold today. It is 15 degrees (high for the day) with a 15-20mph wind. That is about a -2ºF wind chill.
Anyway we don’t have any snow. There are a few patches in the very sheltered woods but that is it. It gets worse. There is no hope of snow in the forecast for two weeks. There is a big storm way out on day 16 of the GFS forecast model that is showing a 6-8″ plus snow. Any storm two weeks out has all of the credibility of a politician’s promise, so whatever.
I know that I go on about getting the ground and lakes well frozen before the snow comes. Well by the end of next week we should be able to drive on the lakes. It is getting close now in spots, but the highest daytime high temperature for the next week is 24. A lot of those days are predicted to be in the mid and upper teens with single digit low temperatures. We will be well frozen and that will help us if the snow does ever come.
All of this cold weather has been really blessing the UP with snow. Most lake effect areas have open trails and conditions vary from pretty bare to fantastic. It is going to be cold all week so they should be in great shape by next weekend.
I have two jobs to clear in the shop before I pull in the first of the snow ponies, a generator and a beastly snowblower. The generator is an absolutely beautiful 5KW generator that I bought as salvage for the 9hp Honda motor. It is a professional/rental level generator that listed for $2,200 in 2009. It ran good (142 hours) but didn’t generate. I went and fixed the generator part and now it is staying a generator. The job there is hooking it up to the house transfer switch to see how it handles power outage duty. My 8KW backup generator never really grunts, so I’m sure that it will do the job.
The snowblower is an 11hp 30″ Craftsman with a tired motor. I pulled the Tecumseh and replaced it with a 13Hp Chinese Honda clone motor. It says 15Hp but the same 420cc motor in a Predator is sold as 13Hp. Chinese horsepowers I guess. There was a lot of re-engineering involved with motor mounts and custom belt lengths and it is almost done. I love that it starts in one pull every time, and between the extra power and an overdriven auger it should really whip the snow. That has been named my Chonda-beast.
Once those two clear the shop it is time to see how the snowmobiles fared not being touched last winter.
I really wish that I had snowmobile trails to talk about instead of my shop adventures.
Time to go get cold.. I will update again if something significant happens or there is a glimmer of hope for snow.
Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!
RJB