Wednesday Storm Watch

Greetings and welcome!

2:45pm

It did not snow much more at all. I would guess that I peaked at about 4″. It is a fairly warm day so with settling we are down to about 3.

That beautiful snow sticking to the trees brought a ton of trees and branches down when the wind started blowing. FaceBook friends reported outages all over the area and many are still out of power. As of 2:30pm there are 989 outages affecting  32,716 customers. (Link) I have power near C & F in Silver Cliff. The GF’s house near Thornton’s is still out and WPS said that it might take until tomorrow before it is restored.

There is no bigger fan of the line crews that deal with this than me. Today they have a huge job in front of them in not very nice weather.

Time to go out and work on cleaning up my little Ponderosa. I probably will not plow the driveway but will do the steps and maybe the wood yard. The snowblower will not be happy at all..

10am- light snow, very little accumulation since the soda can picture.

7:45

It switched back to rain once the sun came up. The local news said that Oneida Co (Rhinelander) had 9″ so far. That was some extremely heavy packing snow when I cleared a spot for the soda can. It is not going to be easy to move.

5:45am

Big goose down flakes are coming hard. About 3″ down. The radar is showing lines of rain with yellow and orange feeding the snow line. We are right on that razor’s edge for the rain/snow line. At least for the moment it is coming as snow. I very much expect that places even a few miles to the north and west will have much higher snow totals. Likewise heading east and south they probably have little or no snow. The forecasters were right about a sharp drop off in snow totals, and they pretty well nailed where the line would be.

I just checked again at 6am and it is really snowing hard. Won’t be long till we hit the 4″ mark. The Hughes Net satellite internet is down. Not sure if it is from the heavy snow or if the dish is snowed over. Probably both. Using the mobile hotspot on my phone to post.

Between the heavy snow falling and strong winds driving it and swirling it, travel on the roads has to be nearly impossible for visibility. Then there is the wet heavy snow on the road. I am happy that I am not driving right now. Even on a snowmobile it would be a tough ride.

2:30am

It must have turned to rain for at least some of the  last 3 hours. Big goose down flakes are falling but there is less than an inch on the truck.

11:35

It is not rain.. It is snowing medium flakes fast and hard. It is being driven at a 45º angle on strong winds. 1/4″ down and coming fast..

11:15pm

In spite of what the radar says, it just started snowing here a few minutes ago. We have big goose down flakes falling at a medium pace and being blown back and forth by the gusty winds. There is only a dusting on the porch rail and truck but that will change fast if the big flakes continue. According to radar the rain/snow line is near Hwy 64 and moving north. Another radar zoom showing higher levels of the atmosphere says that we are right on the edge of that line.

Looking at the radar on the rain side of the line there is a big blob of moisture heading this way, and several more behind it. Will it turn to rain or a mix? Will it snow the big flakes at 2″ an hour?  Things will get interesting over the next few hours.