It’s official.
The trails are closed.
Yesterday was foggy and drizzly. The snow settled and melted a lot, and was as soft as marshmallows. Today continued the meltdown, and it is sunny and almost 40 at 11:30am.
In some places the base melted off completely, some places it consolidated into ice.
The warm day will continue for 5 more hours, but hopefully the sun retreats behind the clouds. There is rain coming again after dark, the NAM shows 0.1-0.25″. Watch for icing roads.
Sometime around or just after midnight the cold front is expected to come through and sharply drop temperatures. The NWS puts overnight lows in the 11-16 range. That should freeze up roads and make them really icy like they were last night.
The drizzle freezing up after dark last night glazed the roads and made them quite wicked. Even in 4wh drive it was nasty. Luckily I got behind a salt truck. Even he was going really slow and I saw where it was slippery for him too.
The good news is that there is some salt down now, the bad news is that it looses effectiveness as you go into the teens. If you go out tonight be alert for changing conditions.
Right now the models are not giving us much to like in the short term. They have the storm coming through as rain, and not much for snow behind it. The radar shows a glimmer of hope for at least a little snow. We could use a pleasant surprise about now. There are a couple of chances for light snow this week and a small storm next weekend.
In the meantime the weather behind the storm will have me hibernating if I can. New Year’s Day looks like it will be in the upper teens with 20-30mph winds. Saturday night looks colder with the same winds and zero to five above temps bringing -20 wind chills. Sunday and Sunday night look like more of the same but with a little less wind. It will probably be Tuesday or Wednesday before we see temps in the 20s again.
The trails closing puts me working at Rapids tomorrow in doubt. If there are no snowmobilers they really don’t need extra help. Hopefully the trails bounce back and we will be back out next weekend.
Well I am going to run off and take advantage of the warm sunny day.
Have a good new year and thank you for visiting!
RJB