NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

It was NOT supposed to be 41 & sunny today

But it is.

The roof of the wood house is dripping fast as the snow is melting off. I can’t imagine that marginal trails are doing any better, and it is no doubt going to eat some of the ice base off of the roads. This is going to change conditions a lot, especially on roads and high traffic and thin trails.

Right now my recommendation is to ride north of 8 and west of 32 starting at about Townsend or Carter.The warm sunny day can’t be good on the marginal or just good enough trails that I rode yesterday around Silver Cliff and toward Lakewood.

I am expecting a lot of people this weekend based on my stat counter. If it isn’t a record week for hits it is very close to it. Having a big melt on Friday afternoon is a disaster.

There is a chance of snow tonight, with the NWS looking for 2-3 out of a small system that will bring colder temps for the weekend. Can we believe it? Looking at the models 2-3 might be on the high side.

To be continued..

Greetings and welcome!

The word hot off of the trail is that Lakewood past Waubee Lake is getting rocky, the same goes for the RR grade south of about Valley Inn. Go north & west of Valley Inn or head for Goodman and do the same. You can ride south of there, but based on my stat counter a lot of people are planning rides this weekend. Those marginal trails will get beat fast.

More to follow later.

RJB

Greetings and welcome!

My ride this morning went ok. It started out with a dead battery, so I was on delay for an hour while I got some charge into it. I’m guessing that I have a slow current drain, I will have to look into it.

I started down Landing 11 Road headed toward Caldron Falls Rd. There was a good ice layer on it, and no skis dragging. The townies were going a little rabid with the sand and the wing plowing into the ditch, but you could still find a route. (Maybe they should put Snowmobile Route signs up on Parkway so the treat that with similar enthusiasm instead of leaving it a sheet of ice..)

Bucks Ranch Road had been plowed but not sanded, so that was a good ride for the most part, again with the ice base. The pipeline trail looked good going by.

Chickadee was unplowed from Buck’s Ranch up to North Fork Rd and plowed the rest of the way to C. The uplowed part was great. It hadn’t been groomed yet so there was nice powder, and it was the best trail yet this year. The plowed part was icy but it had adequate ice coverage to make it a good ride.

I continued toward Lakewood up to trail crossing 34 where I spun it around. The trail between there and Chickadee was mostly very good. There were a few spots that were a little rugged, but mostly it was a nice trail.

The trail between Chickadee and Landing 11 was fair. There was decent snow cover, and it was groomed, but it is a rugged trail. The groomer did a lot of good, but it is still a little rugged.

I rode the trail between Landing 11 over past Rapids Resort and down to Fisher’s Camp. The trail through the woods on the way to Rapids is usually a little thin, and it was, but it was passable. The trail down to Fisher’s Camp was pretty rugged and there was not enough snow for the groomers to fix it. That was a pretty bumpy ride.

I had intended to ride over toward Jungle Jims and the gas station as well as toward Athelstane and up toward Goodman. I ran out of time before I could cover that.

The trails from Chickadee over toward Lakewood were good or very good. I don’t have a problem sending my friends there to ride. The Iron Snowshoe Trails varied from good enough to poor and would definitely benefit from more snow and grooming. Riding those can be done, but they are marginal and not as nice as trails to the north or west.

As far as weather not much has changed. There is a chance of light snow Friday night that could turn into a 1-3. Beyond that we are looking at 20s for Saturday and upper teens for Sunday. With cloud cover Friday night should be in the upper teens and Saturday night about +10.

Check out yesterday’s comments for more info.

Have a good Thursday and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Part II

Greetings and welcome!

Sorry about the delay.

Anyway, most of the trails that I saw in the past two days were good enough to ride. They went from pretty marginal in spots to good right around the corner on Iron Snowshoe to looking nice up by Carter.  Again this is in the context of a low snow winter where there isn’t much to work with, but you can ride and find conditions if you look past some thin stuff. I do like that the roads have a little ice layer.

In the weather.. It looks like mid-30s tomorrow with a chance of a little light snow Thursday night, followed by low 30s for Friday. Saturday we are looking at mid-20s and a chance of a little light snow Saturday night. Sunday looks cold with highs in the upper teens.

A correction..

The NEW Low Buck Vintage Riders event up at T-Bob’s in Laona mentioned here last night was last weekend. I putzed the dates. Thankfully one of the Pats caught it.  Thanks !

Sorry Ray, but the NEWLBVR “pinch” in Laona was last week end on January 21st.
Thanks for mentioning us ‘tho. This Sat. there is a vintage ride and radar runs at
Caldron Falls. We sponsor the vinatge class trophies. Ride at 1 PM and anyone can
ride along. If anyone is interested we do have a ride from Florence, thru the Spread
Eagle Barrens to the Chcukwagon in Spread Eagle and then back to Florence via trail
#2, that’s going on this SUNDAY, Jan 29th. See our web site
www.newlowbuckvintageriders.com for more info, pics etc.

The last two days work related stuff kept me off of the trail, counter to the plan. Hopefully tomorrow I can got out before the phone rings or something comes up. The sled is ready with gas and oil. It is mostly a matter of topping both off and pulling the rope. That is going to bring pleasant dreams tonight, so I am off to go get started on them.

Have a good night and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Greetings and welcome!

I have spent a lot of time on the road the last two days and got a pretty good look around. I will have a  few pictures later.

For the most part the trails are rideable.

My trip to Lakewood/Townsend/Carter found mostly good or very good conditions. The trails along F and the RR grade along 32 all looked good. There were some thin spots on the golf course and in grassy or open fields, but it was mostly good to very good. North of about Townsend it looked very nice.

My trip to Twin Bridge and the flowages area found a mix of conditions. A lot of the trail looked good some was thin, some was pretty thin.

The same went for my trip over toward Crooked Lake and back up Caldron Falls Rd.

I did see the Red Arrow groomer out on the grade yesterday about sunset just south of Townsend, and the Iron Snowshoe groomer along Parkway near where the bridge crosses the Peshtigo River between Caldron and High Falls Flowage this afternoon. They are packing trails.

There is a good icy layer on a lot of the back and side roads.

A couple of buts here..

First this is looked at in the context of a crappy winter where we have not seen a 6″ or better snowfall, and have less than a foot on the ground. Standards have been lowered a little.

Along that same line, most grooming involves packing the snow down. Rough trails or trails with big ruts or washouts will still be pretty rugged. There is not enough snow for groomers to fill in those ruts.

Pictures..

As usual the best trails are north and west.

I am going to have to come back wih a part two of my update a little later. I have only been home a little while and I am not up to date on the weather and a few other things. Between that and distractions here, I am going to get this posted and return in a few hours.

RJB

Greetings and welcome!

I will come right out and admit it, I am not ready for this update this afternoon. I spent the morning getting my brain scrambled playing network guy and I am running a little late. This afternoon I am making a run to Lakewood and I will get a look around on the 32 corridor.

The back of the storm didn’t bring much for extra snow. It snowed a little like it was going to mean something and it faded out before it added up.

Behind that we have a mostly warm week. Today I have 27 so far as of 2pm. Wednesday and Friday we are looking at low 30s and Thursday could go into the upper 30s. Saturday we are looking at mid-20s and Sunday mid-teens. There are no storms obvious, but we could see some light snow on either side of Sunday’s cold day.

I got news yesterday that the Iron Snowshoe opened up today. They went out and panned the snow on Monday and opened today. In their words.. Very early season conditions apply to the entire trail system with minimal snow cover. It isn’t ideal, but the system is open. Most areas that I have seen had 1-2 before the storm and got 2-3 from it.

Here is the event list from Chris’ page. I will add any that I find in the papers or from posters hanging up when I go to town.

Event notes-

As far as the PBR Snow Fun Weekend they have a new fish-a-ree this year that you can fish on any area lake. Cool idea.

Their site said that their conditions ranged from poor in open fields to very good on sections of the RR grade, and that they had about 3.5″ of new snow. They also mentioned the Iron Snowshoe opening as well as saying that Chute Pond will open Thursday with conditions listed as “very very poor”.

I saw in Dan’s comment yesterday that his son Dillon had raised $5,600 so far and was riding inthe MS ride this weekend. Outstanding!

Well I am off to scout the 32 corridor as far as Lakewood to Carter. Have a good afternoon and thank you for visiting!

RJB

6pm

Greetings and welcome!

We did not see any notable additional accumulation over the course of the day. Right now the back wave of the storm is catching us and so far it was enough to dust the roads white a little, but that is about it.

The snow started as rain and I just talked to a neighbor that said that it was raining pretty good at about 3am. That would explain the 1/4″ or so of ice under the snow. My final count on the snow is 2-3″ with a very solid 2″ of wet heavy snow after it settled over our warm (~35º) day. Both the snow and the ice layer will help our cause, and especially the ice layer. If we have to ride thin trails or roads it is good to have a little ice under it. It is only 2-3″, not the foot that we need, so early season conditions will continue, but it is getting a little better.

The roads were hit and miss. The county roads where they salted were mostly wet with some leftovers frozen onto the road. Salt is very effective at 30+ degrees so the main roads got cleared fairly well. Side roads like Parkway are pretty icy, though the towns did hit them with a salt/sand mix here and there to keep them at least a little sane.

Tonight we could go into the mid-teens for low temperatures. That would go a long way toward freezing in the icy layer on roads and help the wet packing snow freeze hard too.

I mentioned yesterday that we had a CME, coronal mass ejection, and that as the energized particles hit earth we could see some northern lights. Well the storm clouded us over for that one.

HOWEVER>>>

We had a pretty big one Sunday night, and it should start hitting tomorrow about 10am and continue into Wednesday. Tomorrow night could well bring northern lights to a lot of the upper Midwest.

Solar flares are classified as C1-9, small ones, M1-9 medium sized ones, and X class that are the really huge ones that can cause planet wide radio blackouts. The scale is also logarithmic, meaning that an M8 is 10x stronger than an M7. Our latest was an M 8.7. That is pretty significant. It also brought the biggest radiation storm in 7 years.

For most of us that just means some bumpy rides on telecommunications here and there, and some northern lights. Ham and CB radio operators get to look forward to some skip, where a signal can take an obtuse bounce off of the ionosphere and really travel a long way. Back in my days I could skip talk to people in the southern US pretty often, and once I actually caught the Virgin Islands. CQDX CQDX The ‘ol Mad Hatter barkin’ it out in the far reaches of Northern WI, come on back watcha got?

Some homework on this topic, google up the 1859 Carrington Event. That one was so strong that they could see northern lights as far south as the Caribbean, and it was starting fires in telegraph offices and shocking operators because so much energy was being gathered by the lines. People in the NE US could read a newspaper at night by the light of the aurora, and some reportedly showed up for work in the middle of the night because the sky was so bright that they thought it was morning. Something like that today would wipe out all telecom and a lot of the power grid and be a national or global disaster. Thankfully it is only a twice in a millennium class event.

A late addition, Dan G commented a little while ago saying that Chute Pond was reporting 4″, and the 100 Miler was reporting 6. Very nice, thanks Dan!

Have a good night and thank you for visitng!

RJB

Noon-

Not much additional snow has fallen.

10am

Greetings and welcome!

It is great to have a storm to talk about.  So far I have about 2″ of pretty wet snow down in the front yard. Chris reported about  an inch and some messy roads in Crivitz as of  8am. The snow has continued to gather on tree branches and it is very pretty outside. I haven’t had the chance to wander too far from the house, but that will come later.

Right now the snow has let up and is mostly light and occasional. We are in a dry slot between arms of the storm. Hopefully we catch a piece of the back arm that is hitting eastern MN hard right now before it moves too far north. The back of the storm is always hard to predict, so it is a coin toss if we see a couple of more inches or if this is it.

As usual it turned to snow a little faster west of 32 and north of about the northern Oconto Co line. It looks like northern Langlade Co and over toward Antgio and up into Forest and Oneida Co saw a good taste, and my wild guess is that they have an inch or two more than we do.

RJB

8am

The snow is sticking to the trees and everything else. Here was the scene outside of the back window this morning at about 7:45am.

7am

School is closed!

Many of the area schools have closed for today. Crivitz, Coleman, Florence, Wausaukee, Beecher-Dunbar-Pembine, Goodman, Marinette, Menominee, Suring,  Lena, Niagara, Peshtigo, and others are on the news as closing.

The rain and drizzle overnight glazed everything in a thin layer of ice. As of 7am right here in Silver Cliff it has changed over to snow and there is about a half inch down.

Greetings and welcome!

Well it looks like the big storm is finally here. There were a few snow specks falling earlier, but now it is more of a mist.

The storm is not looking like a winner for us. The models have the low tracking up the west side of Lake Michigan, putting us in the rain side of the storm for a lot of it. Hopefully it brings a snowy finish.

In the meantime the 30ish temps and the mist are expected to cause some travel problems. The warm moist air overrunning the cold ground and snow is expected to make a nice thick fog. Additionally the cold roads that aren’t salted could pick up an ice glaze. When I was out about 1pm it wasn’t a problem, the county road still had salt on it from the light snow the other night. Between the salt and the 31 degree temp the road was just wet. Unsalted side roads could pick up that glaze later as more precip comes.

Saturday morning started out on the cold side. Green Bay had -6, Rhinelander had -16. I’d guess us for about -10. The day warmed quickly and by afternoon we were into the mid and upper teens.

I made it to the High Falls Radar Run by early afternoon. They were running an 800′ track and had a lot of trophies for the different classes. The Iron Snowshoe Club was out on the ice with a brat and burger stand. They are early starters, but there were still a lot of people there and a few sleds still running.

I noticed this week that the gates on the Iron Snowshoe system have been getting opened. There is still only 1-3″ on the ground, and I have not gotten word that the system officially opened,  but at least the gates are open.  I just saw on their Facebook Page that they decided to move forward with the bunny hunt treasure hunt and were out hanging posters in the bars this week with the first clues on them.

If it weren’t for the storm we would probably be able to see some northern lights tonight. There was a pretty good solar flare and coronal mass ejection that headed right for earth, and it should be here Sunday-Monday. According to this page, they could possibly be visible as far south as southern IL.

That is the Sunday update. Have a good night and thank you for visiting!

RJB

Greetings and welcome!

The snow today stayed all south of Green Bay, and none fell here. We have a little overcast and a cold day with a high of 9 so far.

Last night got good and cold. We didn’t quite make the -17 that I predicted, but we saw -12. I was at Curve Inn last night cooking pizzas for their AYCE pizza night, and stayed for a few after. By the time that I got home the woodburner was pretty far down and it was 52 in here. Burr. It looks like we are in for about -5 tonight, and a high of almost 20 tomorrow.

A lot of people want to come to the area riding this weekend and the conditions just aren’t there. As I have been saying all week, conditions are a little better north of 8 and west of 32 where they had more snow. Even then you are looking at early season conditions and not much to groom.

Normally I would be working at Rapids Resort Saturday where I get to meet a lot of you and take your pictures for the web. With the Iron Snowshoe closed and poor conditions locally that isn’t going to happen (again). That is another bruise on my wallet, but it also frees me up to go and catch some of the events this weekend. Here is a copy n paste of the events list from Tuesday and Wednesday’s updates.

Events

All of these events are accessible by car if the trails aren’t up to it.

The Bear Point Sno-Cruisers is having a monthly meeting at Bear Point Saturday morning. Following the meeting there will be a Club ride to Wausaukee Bowl. We leave Bear Point at 10:30. Pizza and pop will be supplied by the club, adult beverages are at your own expense. The public is welcome. See if this kind of club fits you. Oh you don’t need to own a snowmobile to belong, just a love of having fun and safety.

Dockside’s annual snowmobile, ATV, car Poker Run will be on Saturday, January 21st. Starts at Dockside at 10:30 to get your cards. Participating are Curve Inn, Parkway, Fisher Camp, Jungle Jim’s and Dockside. You must be back to Dockside by 5:00 to draw your hand. Winner takes all. Cost is $10/card.

Crandon Lions are having their Fish-O-Ree at the Community Building this Saturday starting at noon.

There is a LMT Trails snowmobile Rally at T-Bob’s in Laona Saturday from 11-6. They will have food & refreshments as well as raffles and the paddle wheel. Proceeds go to trail maintainence.

There is a storm possible for Sunday and Monday. The one thing that looks fairly certain is that warm air in front of the storm will take us out of single digit and teens for high temps and give us a high temp around 30. Beyond that the models have been struggling with the storm a little. The best guess is that we will see light snow or a couple of inches out of it. It is one of those cases where I look at the guidance and think that it doesn’t seem likely to unfold that way, but I am not clear on what the alternative is.

It would be great if it wrapped into a major storm and just pounded us with snow, but that isn’t being shown at the moment. About the best chance for heavy snow according to current guidance is that the UP will see some good lake effect snows from the north wind from the storm.

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

RJB