Thursday January 14th, 2010

Greetings and welcome!

Yesterday turned out ok. Athelstane weather had a high of 30.4, and I don’t recall seeing it over 28 here. The little bit of light snow from early week did not even get bruised, at least not at my house. The sun did come out and it got a little drippy on roofs and my black truck, but the big thaw was not yesterday. We dodged a bullet, the TV said that the 850mb tep (at about 3,000 feet up) was up to 53F yesterday. It just didn’t mix down.

One down.

The TV weather guy brought up some nifty trivia last  night.. A year ago it was a high of 7 and a low of -20 today. Here we are sweating a thaw.

It is a little early to say that we are off of the hook. I do like what the models are showing me in their latest few runs. Both the GFS and NAM show the 0C line north of us for the weekend. That is the bad news. The good news is that it isn’t far. It does not pass north of the north shore of Lake Superior all weekend. In theory that would mean no big 45 or 50 degree days are emminent, and we should stay in the low to mid-30s or probably cooler.

According to the NWS forecast, we will be lucky to get up to 32 today and Friday, and they don’t mention anything over mid-30s for the weekend either.

At that point we are looking at pretty comfortable temps and hopefully no big dramas in the thaw department. The GFS extends the good news a little with a chance of light snow on Saturday night or Sunday, but the NWS and NAM are not on board with that yet.

The GFS keeps the hits coming with a lot prettier outlook for the next 16 days than it presented a few days ago. We are no longer looking at a protracted thaw, but rather a pretty comfortable, slightly above normal second half of the month. There are storms possible about 1-25 and 1-29 that could start with a little rain and end with some nice snows. It is also showing some pretty strange scenarios, so don’t buy this as a done deal either. It is just a better outlook.

One thing that I am not sold on is the idea that El Nino has broken winter’s back and it is just going to be 35 or 40 until March. No way Jose. We might not be -20 this weekend, but I don’t think that winter has waived the white flag yet.

One thing that stands out about the weekend forecast is that it is Eagle River Derby weekend. Derby weekend is always sub-zero, with a brisk wind. Almost without fail it is a brutal cold weekend. Here they are looking at 30-35? That is different.

I am going to try and get a little shop time and some trail time too today. If I can escape before sunset, I will bring the Nikon.

Have a good morning and thank you for visiting!

RJB