This is cross posted from The Big Snow Page..
Greetings and welcome!
The storm didn’t go as expected but it sure is a mess. As of 11:30pm last night when the snow stopped I had 4.5” of absolutely cement snow. Your two stage snowblower is totally useless, and my little Honda paddle blowers will struggle for sure.
My white pine in the back yard is so loaded down with snow that it looks like a weeping willow.
Once the storm got rolling it was dropping very wet heavy snow really fast. I had to go and clean off my Starlink dish no less than 4 times. It has a heater that melts snow, but it couldn’t keep up. Each time that I went out there I cleared at least an inch of near slush snow.
The snow stopped around midnight as dry air mixed into the storm and created a dry slot. When I see that dry slot I know that the storm is weakening and don’t expect a lot more snow. Since then we have had an inch or two of much finer snow.
The wind has been a huge factor. It has been howling all night, and still is. I don’t know if we got to 55mph but I’m sure that it was 40+ many times. I heard it hit the house hard quite a few times overnight. It is still blowing around snow in huge clouds.
The wind and heavy snow conspired to take down a lot of trees and tree branches. Here at the house (near Caldron Falls Flowage and Fisher’s Camp) we had the power go off for a few seconds and come back on at least ten times. We were some of the lucky ones.
There were transformer or power line fires in Crivitz across the bridge from Riverside and on Moonshine Hill Rd and Camp 5 Rd.
This storm has been a huge disaster for the power company (WPS). At one point they had over 62,000 customers out of power. When I checked a few minutes ago they were down to 56K.
Those guys are heros. They are out there in 40+mph winds with driving snow sandblasting them cutting trees and restoring power lines. The ugly part is that thousands of those power outages are only a handful of people. If it is only ¼ of the outages that would still be 15,000 individual restoration jobs. Golly.
Here are some power outage numbers..
County-
marinette 13,273
oconto 5,853
forest 410
Town-
crivitz 485
middle inlet 507
silver cliff 149
stephenson 1,502
wausaukee 757
Total: (As of 8am) 56,914
There were also some road closures due to downed power lines and trees. They shut down W in Crivitz for the fire across the river from Riverside Bar. Hwy 180 got shut down in Porterfield, and Hwy 41 got shut down in Peshtigo. You know if they are shutting down state highways there are some ugly conditions.
The good news is that once they get the roads plowed any salt that they use will be very effective.
A couple of things bug me about storms like this. First, if this would have come in January the wet sloppy cement snow would have made a base that we could have ridden for weeks or months.
The one that really gets me is the fleeting nature of it. I think of all of those people that struggled to get home, stayed in dark cold houses, fixed power lines in brutal conditions, crashed their car, struggled to shovel, or otherwise had a hellish time of it. In a few days the only evidence of those struggles will be some downed trees or tree branches. In two days it will be 50 and sunny and in four days, 60 and sunny.
My official snow total is estimated at 6-7”, with 4-5 of that wet heavy cement snow. With 40mph+ winds blowing it around I never will have a solid number.
RJB Over & Out.