11:25am
Greetings and welcome!
Rain rain go away..
We had quite a bit of rain yesterday and last night. The storm was a very powerful one that spawned tornadoes and severe weather in the deep south where the moisture was coming off of the Gulf of Mexico. Here is a screen cap of the radar yesterday afternoon showing how much moisture was on the way here.
Because it is winter the local rain gauges are off line. The NWS radar returns show that we had about 3/4″ of rain n the past day. It is not unusual for the radar estimates to be half or 2/3 of what local tube rain gauges measure.
At the moment I am sitting tight due to the rain on top of ice road conditions. Here are a couple of pictures of the road out front. I am not going anywhere until there is some sand, melting, or snow to give me some traction.
The little bit of trail that I can see from here survived the rain well and also had an icy layer on it. Compacted snow froze the rain and accumulated ice instead of melting or getting washed away. While it stinks that we lost this week and weekend to the warm weather the rain will end up being a net positive for the remaining trail base durability.
Now we are getting to the good part.
We are under a winter storm watch at the moment. The NWS forecast is for a little more rain late tonight. Monday morning it is expected to become all snow. Did I mention that this is the good part? Monday we could see 6″ of snow and a couple of more inches Monday night. The various special weather statements and watches talk about 5-8 or 6-10″ for our area.
Let’s talk about the lakes for a minute. I haven’t been out on the lakes yet this year but they can’t be in good shape. We started the year cold and they just started freezing up good and we got heavy snow. I remember seeing slushy spots where the snow pushed the ice down. Then we had more heavy snow followed by a week long warm stretch. Now we have a bunch of rain on them. None of that sounds like safe ice to me, and with the rain they are probably a sloppy slushy mess. About the highest ice thickness that my FaceBook friends reported was 4-5″ in bays. Maybe some of our ice fishing friends will weigh in with better news, but for now I am avoiding lakes completely.
I am not very happy about that. From the new house near Fisher’s Camp and Thorntons running the snowmobile across Caldron Falls flowage would be a great shortcut up to Rapids Resort and the old house. I don’t see that being a good option unless we get some very cold weather.
I will update again when the snow comes. Have a good Sunday and thank you for visiting!
RJB