Greetings and welcome!
3:30pm
As I mentioned earlier I don’t think I will ever have a solid total for snowfall thanks to the wind. The heavy slop I cleaned up last night was 4″. When I went to follow it up today there was 1-4″ of new stuff. I’d call it 7″. It is hard to say. One place will have 4-5″ and ten feet away it is halfway up my shin.
Either way this will be a good start on trails.
7am
I haven’t been outside yet this morning to measure the snow. A look out of the window finds clouds of snow violently blowing off of the roof and what I would call at least 6″ on the deck. I don’t know if we will ever have an honest total with the winds.
According to the NWS the current winds are 23 gusting to 46. It looks like we are getting the high end of it for sure.
The first 4″ were insanely heavy wet heavy packing snow. Normally on a storm like this we get rain and then it changes over. On this one it changed over very quickly and the first snow was very high moisture content.
I did go out and snow blow the first 4″ last night. I’m glad I did. It was so wet and heavy that the snowblower would ride up over the snow and it would take a second pass. It took over an hour to do a single lane of the driveway maybe 100′ long. Once I was done the snow blower was so packed with cement snow that I had to thaw it out with a bullet heater or it would turn to a block of ice rendering the snow blower inoperative.
I am also happy that I spent that hour while it was 30 degrees out, not today at 18 degrees with a 45mph wind and blowing snow. I will go out later after sunrise to get a better look.
This will be an excellent start on trails. The snow was so heavy that when I walked my boot only went down about 2″ out of the 4. It will make some darned fine base.
I am not expecting trails to open right away. There are gates to unlock, trails to pack, and after the wet snow sticking to the trees followed by high winds there will be a good bit of trail clean up to do. Check your club’s web site to see how you can help.
I will follow up later today once I get outside.
RJB
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