Tuesday March 11th, 2014

Greetings and welcome!

Yesterday’s 62 degree day was not good, and it only got a little better overnight. According to Athelstane Weather we had a low of 34.7 overnight and it is 38 now at 5:30am.The day today looks like more of the same except cloudy. I am expecting upper 30s or low 40s.

It will cool off again tonight, and by tomorrow we are looking at a hi/lo of 15/-10. That should freeze everything into a brick hard base.

There is still a lot of snow out there, though yesterday turned it into cake frosting. I went out and plowed the driveway because between the base that turned into 6″ deep slush and the ice under it the driveway was almost impassable. The truck took a good beating trying to move it around. The places that didn’t get disrupted will freeze in hard.

I am still not sure what to think of the weekend. This thaw will consolidate the base and make it an icy cement-like layer, but I don’t see a lot of prospects for snow to top it off. From what I saw the trails survived the thaw mostly intact. Roads and really sunny spots blew out, but most of the trails are still there.

Right now my take on it is that we have another weekend ahead, though the perfect conditions system-wide are gone. Once Spring starts winning, there is always north. North of about Benson Lake Rd and up toward Hwy 8 almost always has an extra weekend or two after our trails start getting into the fair/poor zone. Don’t get out the fogging oil and Stabil just yet.

Have a good Tuesday and thank you for visiting!

RJB