Part 2-
Greetings and welcome again!
No updates for 11 days, and now two in one day?
After the Packer game I ran down to the gas station and tossed in some firewood and got a look around outside. The snow has frozen into a sturdy 1/4″ crust, and it didn’t do any melting here today.
The back steps were frozen solid, but the ice was moderated by the rough snow layer on top. The gravel driveway was fairly slippery, a tap of the brakes or gas broke the tires loose pretty easily. The county road where they used a little salt was dry and bare. The side roads like Parkway that had some traffic but no salt were really slick, pretty much glare ice.
An icy layer on side roads is usually good along snowmobile routes. I am not sure that this one will last, the forecast has us for days in the upper 40s and maybe 50 later this week.
Item two- Unprotected water systems..
Last week I finally plugged in the light bulb and electric heater that keeps the well house from freezing. Usually you can wait until after deer camp. This year I did it the day before it opened.
Today and tonight look like the closest that we have had to weather dangerous to pipes. The NWS forecast has skies clearing out tonight and temps going down to the 13-18 range. It only got up to 35 today for a high, and most of the day was in the upper 20s.
I can get away with some sub-32 nights if the days are warm and the well house has some latent heat stored up. Between that stored heat and the 55º water being pumped, it has been good into the low 20s.
Tonight we are going into the night with very little daytime heat, and lows into the teens. Between the two factors unprotected water systems are vulnerable. It is time to keep a little heat on the plumbing.
Part 1-
Greetings and welcome!
We had some snow yesterday, but not a lot here. Farther to the northwest and farther away from the rain/snow line more added up. I heard an unofficial report of as much as 14″ by Hurley, and it looked like NW WI and the UP did pretty well too. For areas closer to here I’d guess at 2-4 or 3-6.
Looking outside after the storm has passed I’d be generous to call it 1/2″. While it was enough to get the roads white and slippery, the mix kept snow totals down.
When the last storm came the ground wasn’t frozen, so it didn’t add up as much as it should have, and it was melting from the ground up. It managed to stay for a few days, but eventually it disappeared in all but the most sheltered spots.
We don’t have that problem any more. The ground is firming up and does hold snow. When we do get some, it might stay a while.
The last few days I have been watching the Caldron Falls Flowage and a little lake about a mile behind the house starting to get a little shell ice on top after cold nights. Friday Caldron was frozen most of the way across upstream of Landing 11, and a lot of the bay downstream of the landing had a good start too.
Now this is just the first shell ice, I doubt that a mouse could walk across it. It is the beginning though. The bay by the landing is ice all of the way across, and a couple of good cold nights will bring the first inch.
Looking ahead I do not see an early start for trails on the GFS model. There is a storm this week that will miss us to the south. There is one about the turn of the month that could bring snow, and then the model looks a little chaotic. There are a couple of warm spells thrown in there too. It just isn’t time yet, but it is getting close.
As December comes you will be seeing a lot more of me. Last summer was pretty rough, so in Fall I pounced on every bit of outside work that I could get. The expression bit off more than I can chew comes to mind, but it was what I had to do.
Last week my juggling act came to a halt when I caught a flu bug that put me down for a few days. I am coming back swinging and I am going to be catching up on a lot of projects this week.
After deer hunting a lot of my outside work will dry up, and I will be back here a lot more often.
Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!
RJB