NorthernDestinations.com

Easter Sunday 4-1-18

Greetings and hoppy Easter!

This is one of my all time favorite Easter cartoons. It is just silly.

It is also April 1st, aka April Fools Day. I didn’t do any April Fools pranks this year so you guys are safe for now.

I spent the day with my head in the computer working on another web site. When I finally looked around about dinner time I checked the forecast. I wish that was an April Fools prank, but I doubt it.

We are under a winter storm watch for tomorrow night and Tuesday with a general 6-10″ of snow  expected, and higher amounts some places, like here. The TV weather channel alerted me to this when I saw their storm watch covering our region. Watching their predictor animation we could see over 11″ by Tuesday night.

Where the heck was this when the snowmobile trails were open and we had such a nice base?

Here is a total precipitation estimate from the North American model. The green is 0.6-1.0″ of RFE, and the blue is 1.0-2.0″. RFE is short for rainfall equivalent.

Usually I estimate snowfall using a 10-12″ of snow to 1″ of rain multiplier. If it is really wet and heavy snow it could go 6 or 8 inches per inch of water. The really puffy snow can go as high as 20+” of snow per inch of rainfall. For now let’s stick to a 10 or 12 of snow per inch of water ratio.

Virtually all of my guidance show us in for at least 6″ of snow, and likely more. In the winter when we are snowmobiling I would be very skeptical of such a perfect snow forecast. There is an old saying.. The probability of an outcome is the inverse of its desirability. At this time of year the snow is just a nuisance, so I believe this forecast.

Here is what I found among the various sources..

TV- Snow from 6pm Monday to midnight Wed morning- 6-10″, 11+” in Lakewood

NWS- 3″ Monday night, 6″ Tuesday, ? Tuesday night,

NAM Model- Similar timing,  6-12, possibly 12+

GFS model- Similar timing, 6-12″

ECMWF- (European model)- Similar numbers, similar timing

Usually when the models agree that closely 24 hours out it is a likely outcome.

We had a cold night last night (+5ºF) and while it was sunny today I don’t think that it got much above 30. The sun was out enough to clear plowed roads bare but it only knocked our 7-9″ down to about 5-6″. It won’t be sunny or warm tomorrow, so most of that should still be there when the next snow comes.

Part two of this is that the snow won’t be going anywhere for a while. Low temperatures for the next week are in the 9-15 degree range, with the warmest day next Sunday at +38. The sun will knock the snow down a little, but with highs around 30 and a lows of 12 or 15 there won’t be a lot of fast melting other than on the roads. Our average high & low temps for today are 45 and 28F.

That snow and cold will put me in a very busy place tomorrow after work. I did a just good enough plow and snowblowing job yesterday, assuming the the April sun would clean the rest up pretty fast. Now I need to push back snow piles in the driveway to make room for the new stuff, and dig out some firewood before it is under 16+ inches of snow. Not happy.

So will they re-open the snowmobile trails? I doubt it, but I guess that they could if we ended up with 12-15+ inches on the ground. I have seen them open as late as April 15th weekend. For now people lucky enough to have off-trail spots to ride are already in the green north of about Benson Lake Rd just with the snow from yesterday.

It is getting late so I am going to get this posted and go hope that this storm goes around us like so many did during the snowmobiling season.

Have a good night and thank you for visiting!
RJB

Saturday 3-31-18

Greetings and welcome!

11:30am

Since some dummy left his boots out in the car I have a few minutes while they warm up. It is quite a mess out there. I don’t want to snow plow with a mud base, but the snow is half way up the tires on the car, so I don’t have much choice. Here are a few pix from when I went out for my boots. Click the picture to show it bigger and in a slideshow.

11am

I think our spring broke. I just measured 8″ of snow on my back step and 9″ around the yard. That was quite a clipper system. I will have some pictures once I finish digging out.

RJB

Thursday 3-29-18

March Mud-ness

Greetings and welcome!

We are having a gradual spring thaw this year. The sun is warm and the days have gotten into the 40s and 50s, but cold nights in the teens and twenties have kept a lid on things thawing out to some extent.

Just how thawed out any given spot is depends on its sun exposure. The sunny spot at the end of my driveway is a little soft still, but the deep mud has come and gone. A few feet away where a stand of spruce trees shade the driveway there is still a 2-3” ice base and up to a foot of snow remaining. The partially shaded area from the bare branches of maple trees has plentiful snow in some spots and deep mud in the driveway.

One of my favorite things to do is to go and explore forest roads. That is out for at least a couple of weeks, and most likely for most of April.

Spring thaw also means that the snowmobile and ATV trails are closed for a while to let the ground to firm up. No one knows when they will reopen, that all depends on how fast that it all thaws out. Usually they reopen the first weekend in May, but it could go a couple of weeks either way.

We had a cold and snowless start to winter so we will have a pretty deep frost this year. There was also plenty of moisture in the ground when it froze. Between that and the gradual thaw don’t be surprised if spring breakup takes an extra weekend.

While that is not great news for the ATV trails, it is great news for whitewater rafting. One of the reasons that the water gets high in the spring is the snow melt. The real magic comes with the frozen ground. Any snow melt or rain runs off to the river quickly instead of being absorbed into the ground or being used by trees and plants. The river’s rise from an inch of rain is much bigger in April than it is in July.

The Peshtigo River started to break up some of its ice by the bridge at Kosir’s. There is an open area upstream, and the ice actually broke up for 100 yards downstream. Like the driveway, that has been a gradual thaw.

That is ok, the river isn’t quite ready yet. There is some ice to break up still, but that isn’t the big issue. The watershed 20-40 miles north and west is still quite frozen. When I was in the upper reaches last week there are places that still have knee deep snow in the woods. The wetlands are still frozen tight, and were very full when it froze up. Again we had a cold start to winter and a deep frost.

It is great that it will all still be there for us when the season opens, and I think that we have a lot to look forward to.

We are in the same cold pattern that we started winter with. The Canadian high pressure has been shielding us from big storms, but it has also brought us colder than normal nights. It has been common in the recent past to see 12 or 15 for a low temperatures. The sun still warms us up into the upper 30s and sometimes mid or upper 40s, but the nights remain cold.

So far that has kept the spring bug population in check. So far I have seen exactly one gnat. It is typical to have a lot of them when the days first start to warm up. So far so good.

Looking for a seasonal RV campsite? Silver Cliff Camp has a couple available as do Hilltop Resort and Curve Inn Resort. Compared to other resort areas the rent is very cheap. In the case of Curve Inn and Hilltop Resort the rental is annual and the road stays plowed, so you could use the RV for snowmobiling too.

That is it for tonight. I will be back more as spring progresses.
Have a good week and thank you for visiting!
RJB

Thursday 11-30-17

Greetings and welcome!

The past few weeks have found me insanely busy trying to make a living. I am acutely aware that things slow down a lot once the snow and cold comes, so I am getting what I can.

Looking at the DNR numbers it looks like the 2017 deer hunt was up a little in Forest and Marinette Co, and down slightly in Oconto Co. In my travels I though that I heard more shooting than the past few years.

The lakes are slowly freezing up. They make ice overnight and loose some when the sun comes up and it goes over 40. When I drove by Waubee Lake yesterday it had thin ice over about 80% of the lake with the shoreline open between the Beech Club and Waubee Lake Lodge. I could see the different areas where it froze at different times. Going over the Hwy X bridge yesterday I saw very thin ice trying to make it out of the bays, but the sun probably ate it later in the day.

I did see on Facebook where a couple of guys walked a short way out on one of the bays and did a little fishing. Sheltered bays should have an inch or two of ice, but danger Will Robinson. It hasn’t been all that cold lately.

I have an event for this weekend, an antique snowmobile show. This one is always the first Saturday in December, and it used to be held at the Gateway Bar in Crivitz. This year they moved it a few miles north to the Middle Inlet Fire Department at Hwy 141 & Hwy X.

They have some awesome old sleds there. I have been to this show many times and hope to make it again Saturday.

Just a few miles west on Hwy X Koch’s Performance will be having an open house. They have an amazing collection of vintage Yamaha snowmobiles there, including quite a few classic racers. According to their facebook post they will be having some of the old time great Yamaha racers there along with the sleds that they raced. It is a vintage snowmobile double header, and a real treat for old Yamaha fans.

Looking ahead at the weather snowmobilers don’t have a lot to get excited about in the next 9 days. We will mostly be in the upper 30s through the weekend. There is a storm for early next week, but I’d expect that to be mostly rain. It does show it cooling down next week so at least we will advance the ice on lakes and the frost in the ground.

The TV showed a quick snow coming Friday night a little after midnight. It looked like it could be an inch of accumulation. The NWS does not mention it, and my forecast models only show a little snow up by Lake Superior.

This is being cross posted between the NorthernDestinations blog and the Big Snow Page. After December 1 I will put the NorthernDestinations blog into hibernation for the winter and start updating on the Big Snow Page. Eventually that will turn into just about daily updates once we get close to the season. With no snow likely for over a week I need to focus on other things like finishing my cars, plow truck, and firewood. When it gets close to being time to snowmobile or if any snow storms come I will be right there.

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

RJB