Groomers are swirling around Indian Lake, NY in places. C8 to Cedar River Headquarters and C8A/Old S84 toward Blue Mountain Lake have been groomed. I’m assuming that Moose River Plains and C8A/Old 538 Newcomb trail have been groomed as well.
C8/Sabael trail hadn’t been groomed as of Thursday afternoon. That trail will remain a rough ride until there’s enough snow to enable grooming.
Grooming has formed a hard-packed trail base. But local trails are thin and bony.
Weekend Outlook
Your best riding will happen on seasonal road networks such as Moose River Plains, Perkins Clearing (from Mason Lake parking area), Speculator Tree Farm, C8A/Old 538 Newcomb trail and Powley Road.
Narrow woods trails will be groomed on a case-by-case basis. They will be thin, bony and rocky in places. Some of the riding will become awful, especially after trails get worn down by traffic. Nothing can be done about that until we get a dump of snow.
Sizing up the rest of winter
We’re at the point we can peek into late meteorological winter (February) and early meteorological spring (March).
Check out the 30-day Mean Sea Surface Temperature (SST) Anomaly and resultant Top 5 Analogues:
When 3 out of the top 5 analogues are from the 1970s, we’re swimming with good company.
February composites
We’re looking at modest bias toward cold for Upstate New York and STRONG bias toward greater than normal precipitation in February.
March composites
March composite shows moderate cold bias and moderate bias toward greater than normal precipitation for Upstate New York.
Bottom line
This is NOT to say February into March will be cold and snowy without interruption. With atmospheric oscillations and decades trend toward warmer winters, I’d be surprised if we escaped without at least one ugly rain/thaw cycle.
But it’s appearing that February may yield widespread significant snow opportunities that we’ve lacked so far, with a chance of that continuing into the Back-9 of winter.
For the ilsnow nation,
Darrin
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