Greetings and welcome!
My apologies to you guys for a lack of updates last week and for not answering e-mails. It was one of those weeks. I had a very intense work schedule, car problems, frozen plumbing, a broken smartphone, double shifts, on and on. At any rate I am working hard to get on top of it and get back into a more normal crazy schedule and you guys are at the top of the list.
Current conditions..
When I walked out back Saturday there was 3-4” of fairly powdery snow. The packed down areas were firm and icy. The ground and lakes continued to freeze especially late week. The end of the week brought cold days and a -1º night Friday night. Saturday and Sunday brought more moderate temperatures, but still below freezing in the daytime and in the single digits overnight.
Trail opening possibilities for Saturday..
Near zero. Not only is there only 3-6” of snow, there is little chance of adding to the total, and we have a warmer week ahead. The forecast is for mid-30s most of the week. My guidance suggests that we could go into the 40s for the weekend. None of that sounds promising for opening trails Saturday, at least not for snowmobiles.
While the weather ahead has some sunny or partly cloudy days, the sun is about as weak as it gets. The winter solstice is 11 or 12 days away. I looked up today’s stats and sunrise is 7:24am, sunset is at 4:14pm, and our length of day is 8 hours and 50 Minutes. We lose another 5 minutes of daylight by the 18th, and our length of day stays at 8:45 until the 27th when we start adding a minute a day or so. As far as the sun eroding the snow it doesn’t get any better than this.
There are chances of light snow Wednesday and Friday, and a couple of chances farther out in the forecast. There are no big storms showing up on the 16 day GFS model this morning.
I looked at that same GFS model yesterday and there were a couple of bigger storms snowing up way out in the forecast. It is typical in an ElNino year to have storms that never happen way out in the forecast. I laughed out loud, channeling Charlie Brown.. go ahead and believe the storm is coming in 2 weeks. She won’t pull the football away this time.… and this morning they are gone. Curses, foiled again.
ElNino Outlook..
The El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is very likely to go into positive territory. The ENSO outlook http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf
Says that..
Neutral conditions are present. Equatorial sea surface temperatures (SSTs) are above average across most of the Pacific Ocean. El Niño is expected to form and continue through the Northern Hemisphere winter 2018-19 (~80% chance) and into spring (55-60% chance).
The good news is that the bulk of the models show it to be about a 1ºC temperature anomaly or less, meaning a mild to moderate El Nino is expected.
Right now my hope is that we can get over this warm stuff early season while people are distracted with Christmas, and get the season rolling for the holidays and beyond.
At any rate, I have to keep moving. Have a good Monday and thank you for visiting!
RJB