Thursday 2-27-2020

Greetings and welcome!

I am not a very cheerful snowmobiler today. Looking at my weather research I have a hunch that this might be our last weekend of the season around here. It is likely that there will be an extra weekend or two north and west.

Let’s start at the beginning.. Yesterday was 26 and cloudy. We didn’t have much in the way of melting. It is supposed to get up to 21 today and 25 Friday. Saturday we are looking at mid-30s with sun and Sunday looks like mid-40s and sun.

That is where the bottom drops out of the forecast. Most of next week is expected to be at least in the 40s. Two weekends out (3/8/2020) the European model is showing mid 40s Saturday and mid-50s Sunday. Green Bay can get close to 60.**(see below)

None of that sounds good for an extended season.

The trails now are in late season condition. There are a lot of places that are very rideable and even in good condition. Roads are either bare of icy depending on the shading. There are bare places in sunny spots, hilltops, and other expected places.  The freeze-thaw thing has some corners and some trails pretty icy.

Here are some pictures done between Fisher’s Camp and about the old Tommy’s Corner Pub (Steve-O’s).

This is along Parkway Rd just north of the bridge between Caldron & High Falls flowages. The trail in there is shaded and in good shape.

This is on Eagle Rd, with the two pictures taken 1/2 mile apart. The shaded road has plenty of ice and is easily passable. The sunny road out of the trees is bare.

These were taken on the roadside trail along Deer Lake Rd and is pretty typical of what I saw.

A lot of those trails were pretty tight, and if your sled runs hot scratchers might be your friend.

On the other side of this when I went down Thunder Mountain Valley Rd Tuesday night there was a stretch that was heavily shaded by pine trees. There was a couple of inches of ice on the road and even a little free snow. The conditions vary according to how much sun the trail sees, so find those sheltered forest roads. If I were riding today I would not have to trailer, but I’d head north and west for improved conditions.

Get it while you can.

Here are some weekend events..

** I was talking about high temperatures in Green Bay. Last weekend a friend asked why we were warmer than Green Bay. I said that it was actually common for that to happen in spring. How does that work when we are farther north? The short answer is albedo. Simplified, albedo is how much of the sun’s energy is absorbed vs how much is reflected. We have a lot of forest cover and that is darker in color than the open fields farther south, and as a result we often have warmer temperatures on a sunny day.

For more trail info you should check out Steve’s comment on yesterday’s update as well as the Dun-Good, Red Arrow, and Paul Bunyan sites.

That is it for me today. Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!

RJB

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