Well, I can only look upon this week as a tremendous waste of opportunity. The deep trough did carve its way through the eastern United States, but the smaller scale features were far too disjointed and disorganized to produce the major snowstorm we desperately needed.
At any rate, Indian Lake picked up about 2-3 inches of air-fluff snow the past few days. Moose River Plains into the western Adirondacks did a bit better, in the 3-6 inch range.
Weekend Outlook:
The best description I can offer is deeply-frozen early April die-hard conditions with a fresh coat of white paint. Not very appetizing, but that’s what it is.
Perkins Clearing, Moose River Plains and Powley Road will be the places to hit this weekend. 538/Newcomb trail could offer a dark horse decent ride, if you park at the Northville/Lake Placid trail head near Lake Durant and worm your way back to 538 via S84.
Can you bop around the Indian Lake village trails? Yes, if you’re really careful.
Would you want to ride from Indian Lake village out to Cedar River Headquarters along the 18 miles of hell known as C8? You can…if you like medieval torture chambers. I certainly wouldn’t suggest it.
Lakes are glare ice with a thin coating of powder. Studded tracks would be a great asset with the slippery conditions.
If you decide to ride this weekend, dress for survival! This panel shows morbidly cold air over ilsnow land on Saturday. These are the forecasted temperatures for mid-day Saturday, which are actually lower than what they will be at sunrise:
This kind of cold, combined with stiff winds is dangerous and potentially life threatening. I guess if there isn’t enough snow for good riding, it might as well be cold enough to make you want to stay inside anyway.
I give you the info, you can decide what you want to do with it. As for me, I’m staying inside this weekend…
Next Week:
Lots of chatter about next week’s “potential event” for Tuesday. I’ll start with the mechanics of this weekends Polar Outbreak then work it forward.
Here is the Polar Vortex (PV) crashing into the northeastern United States on Saturday:
But, as we’re in the deep freeze, the massive PNA+ ridging pattern is already breaking down! Essentially, this massive cold snap has set its own self-destruct sequence. As a consequence, once the Polar Vortex lifts away, the cold air will be in very quick retreat early next week. Which leads us to…
…Tuesday! The ensembles are in good agreement that a storm system will be on the way for Tuesday:
But, with the really cold air shoved out of its way by the retreating Polar Vortex, storm track becomes really critical. If this storm center tracks inland over the Appalachians, we would have snow changing to rain and break into the mild sector. A coastal track would leave us in much better shape for a snow event here.
This morning’s ECMWF – PARA shows the inland track:
And this morning’s ECMWF shows a weak coastal track:
The models have also been flirting with the “just right” scenario with a strong coastal storm dumping a significant snowfall on us. In my opinion, we have a pretty narrow window for “just right” and our history this winter has been to find some way for it not to happen for us.
At any rate, we’ll have to wait for the models to congeal on a common track as we get closer to Tuesday.
Even if something good happens for us on Tuesday, we might have a short time to enjoy it with a big warm-up possible for the following weekend. Just the way this tomato can of a winter is working out for us.
Another tease?
But wait, there’s more! Another cold pattern may load up during the final week of February with more “opportunity”:
If we don’t get some crazy snow for the second half of February, we’ll could be playing out the short string by March. By then, most people will have lost interest in this snowmobiling season anyway. In a winter of what-coulda-been, El Niño has been the ultimate trump card…
For the ilsnow nation,
Darrin
