Friday December 23, 2011

Greetings and welcome!

According to radar it should be snowing here right now. So far it hasn’t started, but it looks and feels like it wants to.

We have a little clipper system coming our way today that could bring an inch of snow or so. It is not the foot of snow that snowmobilers want, but it is snow.

At the moment the main roads are bare and dry and even side roads like Parkway are pretty much clear.

Untreated roads and driveways that have a sheet of ice might be a different story. An inch of snow will hide the slippery spots and make them worse until the snow bonds to the ice and makes it a little rougher.

The weekend looks pretty decent for weather. Saturday looks like low to mid-30s, and Sunday again looks like mid-30s. Overnight lows tonight could go into the low teens, but Saturday night is only expected to bottom out in the mid-20s. It could be a lot worse.

As far as getting a ride in, most of the area trails are closed for a lack of snow. About the only option is to try to find some sheltered forest roads and get a little riding in there. Locally most sheltered forest roads are a sheet of ice. Today might add an inch of snow for lube on slides and for the heat exchangers.

Yesterday Slug added a few places that looked like possibilities for such a ride. Long distance riding probably isn’t going to happen as our glorious 22,000 mile trail system waits idle for a lack of snow almost statewide.

Definitely avoid the lakes and rivers. We had a good start on the ice in late November and early December, but the past few weeks have been warmer, and the ice has not been getting much better. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but the highest ice thickness that I have heard was 4-5″, and that was just in spots.

With the holiday landing on the weekend a lot of places are open or open in the late afternoon. Several trailstops that I have seen open at about 4 Saturday and 6 Sunday. In the case of the Silver Cliff BP, they are open until 5 Saturday and not at all Sunday. Plan ahead for gas and supplies.

As of about 1pm it has started snowing. It is a very fine snow, and it is falling at a moderate rate. The roads are starting to get a white dusting. They aren’t bad, but where it is covering icy patches is definitely slippery.

That is it from here today. Have a good weekend and a merry Christmas.

RJB