Greetings and welcome!
We have a few things going on today. First up is the weather.
We did see a little light snow overnight, probably less than 1/2″‘. As far as snow on the ground I can still see grass poking through the snow.
It has been cold out lately, we expect that in January. Today it bounced up to 35, and tomorrow should be about the same. As with just about any nice day around here, it comes with a howling wind to ruin the warm day.
Saturday we are looking at a high of 18, and then the bottom drops out. Sunday we are looking at a high near 1. Monday the expected high is -2, and Tuesday a high near 2. After that it goes into the teens.
Naturally the cold snap will bring some serious overnight low temperatures of something like 14 and 17 below zero. Some of the wind chills could reach -35 or -40. Golly.
Personally I am wondering if they aren’t understating the low temps. A lot of times when it is a high of minus something, the lows go into the -20s or even -30s. The coldest that I have seen in my time here was -34. Golly indeed.
Looking ahead at the 16 day GFS there isn’t much hope. Yesterday there was a big storm right at the end of the forecast term. I said yee-haw if it happens, but it not believable being 16 days out*. Today’s GFS shows the storm there and much more powerful, but it doesn’t get north of the southern tip of Lake Michigan. OK now THAT is believable.
I have seen reports that Iron and Vilas Counties are opening trails this weekend. There is minimal snow depending on where the lake effect hit, but they are opening trails with early season conditions. Good luck with that.
I have seen reports of some great conditions up in the lake effect snow regions of the UP, but it is in specific areas.
With all of the cold weather and no snow the lakes have been firming up nicely. I have seen Facebook reports in the 12-14 and 12-16″ range, but those are just Facebook reports, do your own scouting/recon. Honestly I’d be surprised if it wasn’t a little more than that.
Today I am going to take advantage of the warm weather and pull the first snowmobile into the shop. I have cleared all of my generators and snowblowers and now it is snow pony time. They were freshly serviced end to end the last time that they were out, and we only put like 30 miles on them, but that was 2 years ago. I didn’t even start them last year. I’m not sure what I’m in for.
The * asterisk above was in reference to there being a storm at the end of the 16 day GFS forecast model. It seems that in an ElNino or LaNina (us) year there is just about always a big storm on day 14 or 16 and they never come to fruition. I don’t take them seriously unless they get a lot closer.
That is it for today. I am off to brave the hurricane and get some work done before the deep freeze. Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!
RJB