SNOW!!!!!

It has been a bit since I last posted...there has not been much time to talk or anything truly interesting really. We warmed up into the high 40s on Monday...mid-40s on Tuesday...and today? 9 degrees. With windchill...negative 18. That is cold. Monday and Tuesday had plentiful rains for us. Today? We got somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 inches of new snow. It is hard to tell...because winds are gusting up into the 20-25 mph range. See the neighbors house? Nope. I will have pictures of everything before I get the snow blower out later this afternoon.

Why am I writing at 9:07 AM? Easy answer...work is closed today! It was a half day anyway...we close at noon on Wednesday...but still. I have never had a "work snow day"!!! The only problem is...in order to find out that we have a snow day...someone must call and wake me up BEFORE I would normally wake up. It is worth it though!

So what is new...not much. With the thaw the past couple days I have been trying to clean up some stuff outdoors. I moved our grills into the garage so I can actually USE them during the winter (I am very late doing that...)...I blew all the slush and snow ruts out of the driveway last night...and I picked up the pieces of our dying snowman. :( Before the wind came I went out and took all of his clothes off. Good thing it was just a snowman. :P Poor little guy....he stood almost 6 feet tall...and now he is about knee high. If it had not gotten so warm...we would still have him to welcome us when we get home.

So I took a 109 mile snowmobile trip on Saturday. I met up with some guys from work and we rode from Alanson, to Mackinaw, to Cheboygan, to Indian River, and back home. It was an awesome trip...perfect trails (for the most part)...perfect clear day...could not have been much better. Unless I had my own sled! I had to use my dad's because mine is still in the shop. (Today is over a week...) His sled is almost identical to mine...but is a 500 instead of a 600...and the track is not studded. I will NEVER ride an unstudded sled again. Good times anyway. I have pictures of the mackinaw bridge...and some of the trail. I will post those when I get pictures from today. I think I am going to go back to posting them to picasa. I cannot get blogger to work with me on the pictures positions and such. Plus I upload most of them to picasa anyway...so I am uploading them twice. Waste of time!

We are under a winter storm warning for the remainder of the day...a civil emergency message was sent out by the state police this morning to stay off the roads unless it is any emergency...so I am hunkered down. Temps are not supposed to get any warmer...but tomorrow looks to break the weather for a bit...and then BAM. Another winter storm could possibly bash it's way through the area. I think that is it for now!

Good morning from Northern Michigan!

-Derek

Lake Effect Snow Warning!

Blogger does NOT like this post...so beware of the format.

It is about darn time that we were given what was promised to us! Thus far...each time it has snowed big most weather stations have indicated that it would not. Each time it was SUPPOSED to snow big...the snows never came. So finally...we are under a lake effect snow warning and it is happening! I did a bit more reading on LES and what flows dictate who gets the snow. A great article on LES can be found here: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/apx/?n=les. It describes what it is...how it occurs...and what flows affect what areas. SO...being in the area that is prone to LES during a West/South West flow...and currently being in a West/South West flow...we are getting LES. It is falling at a pretty good clip too!

I do not have many pictures to share this time...my sled has been sick and I have been avoiding much riding until it is finished being looked at. I drove it down to Alanson tonight in the middle of this LES storm...on a trailer...which I had never done before. Getting used to small trailers is TOUGH. I can handle the boat...but when I cannot see it behind the truck...I am absolutely horrible at it. BUT I made it to Alanson and dropped it off. Hopefully it will be a cheap and quick fix. A few more years on it and it will be time for a newer sled...but it works great for everything I use it for!

The pictures I will share are from Saturday. If I had been smart I would have been taking pictures the entire trip...but I did not. I only got a few snapshots at the destination. This was the area we stopped at. My buddy and his wife were camping there so we snowmobiled back to visit. (Keep in mine it did not make it out of the single digits on Saturday!) We arrived right around 2 PM...as they were snowshoeing up the two track to their site. The sleds made it through the decent amount of powder in the woods just fine. In the background you can see my friend working on getting a fire up and running. It took a few minutes...but between the two of us it started burning great.

Blogger is having fits right now and is not letting me work with pictures. So for now I am going to give up. We are supposed to see possibly up to 10 inches of new snow tonight! So keep your fingers crossed...that A. We get the snow. and B. That my sled gets fixed soon. :P I have an offer to ride possibly Saturday or Sunday...so if anyone is in the area and wants to ride...the more the merrier.

As far as a forecast goes...it looks like snow for the remainder of the week. Chances start to wind down a bit toward the end of the week...but the good news is WINTER IS HERE...and it does not appear to be going anywhere. Temperatures are going to stay well below freezing and all looks good for a great entry into February. I honestly cannot believe that winter is in the final stages already! At most we have February and a good portion of March. Hopefully we will get enough snow to help fill up our lakes (stop draining them Jennifer Granholm!!!! I have a new theory on Haliburton too...but that is for another time.) and bring us back up to an average winter. Enough rambling for now!

Goodnight from Northern Michigan!

-Derek

Sorry for the delay...

I will post tomorrow...I guarantee. I have plenty of pictures from the weekend...along with the latest on all of our snows that have been falling! For now...I need to put wood in the furnace and call it a day. More to come soon.

Goodnight from Northern Michigan!

-Derek

Ahhh the weekend...AND SNOW!

I said last time that I was going to try to keep images small...I think instead of doing it that way...I am just going to upload them my picasa site. So from here on you will see LINKS instead of pictures on the blog...as space is limited to 1 GB...and it will be easier to post since I will not have to wait for individual pictures to upload. I just noticed that picasaweb is 1 GB as well...maybe I will see about upgrading my storage as I near my 1 GB.

Well, the storm that was supposed to go NW of us? HIT us! We saw about 7" of new snow at the house last night. That is surely enough to ride on! Good thing too...I was starting to go through a battle with "mid-winter no snow depression." I do not have pictures of it yet since I was at work all day...but I will share some additional pictures about our ride at the end of December.

First, it looks like snow is supposed to continue for a good portion of the weekend and next week. There may be a break Monday night through Wednesday night but heading into Thursday...there looks to be a decent amount of snowfall. No approximates yet obviously...but any snow is good snow with as little as we have had this year. I wish I had more time during the day so that I could keep better track of snowfall amounts up here. I know we have had more than most areas...but unrealized.

Now to the pictures from the last big ride. I am going to go a bit back in time since I was rushing to finish the other night. Before we made it to Harbor Springs we stopped at a few spots to get some picture taking done. It was absolutely beautiful! We played around here for a bit and drank a pop while a couple other sleds drove past. There was very little traffic for how incredible the trails were that day. Everyone that did not ride missed out. So after that stop we headed out toward Harbor Springs. There is one spot out there that I remember going to when I was little...my dad took me on a ride that ended up at my Grandma and Grandpa's house in Harbor. (I think that is nearly the first apostrophe I have ever used on my blog.) It overlooks a power line but has an incredible view of the woods North of Harbor Springs. There were some guys running their sleds up the hill we were on when taking that picture. One advantage of having a mountain sled is the ability to climb power line trails! ;) Next time I will get a bit longer track on my sled. Anyway, shortly after that we were in Harbor Springs overlooking downtown. That is about where I left off last time. We turned around and made our way home. It was a very enjoyable trip...especially because we nearly had the trails to ourselves.

So outside of those pictures I do not have anything really exciting to discuss other than the snow we got last night. I will have some more riding pictures hopefully after tomorrow. I know I need to get my sled worked on...the clutch is acting up which, according to a local Yamaha guy, may be the cause of my overheating. The belt is not sitting correctly or something to that effect. So he said something about adding a shim to the clutch. No idea what that means yet. Hopefully after I get it fixed it will make more sense.

That is it for now...we are baking a turkey breast for dinner tonight...so I had better get to the kitchen!

Goodnight from Northern Michigan!

P.S. Remember to post your comments! If you do not care for the links in the blog and would rather see the pictures themselves please let me know...I will suck it up and give the people what they want. ;)

Derek

29th and 30th Riding Pictures

Well, finally I am posting some more pictures. Sorry it has taken so long! I am going to start posting them as smaller pictures to preserve space on the blog...but if you want the full size pictures please let me know. I must also note while I am at it...that all pictures on this blog are copyright protected. If you want to use them please ask for permission. Most likely I will not deny you use...I just want to know where they are being used. If you are making money off of them...I will likely not be happy. That said...I may start embedding copyright information into and onto the pictures...so if anyone knows of software that can stamp batches of pictures with copyright information I am all ears!


So the picture above shows what I woke up to on the December 29th, 2007. We had received just about a foot of new snow. I had already soiled the powder by this point and did not snap a shot prior to riding through it. Doh! The picture to the right shows what we had to scrape off the sleds. That is my dad's sled...luckily they were up for the weekend and he was able to get out and about with me. There was all sorts of snow! We started around the house and wound our way to Alanson to gas up. We stopped by Spanky's (http://www.spankysparts.com/) to pick up some oil and took off toward Pellston.

When we got to Pellston we stopped next to the highway and were investigated by some of our local law officials. I know one of them...though I have never had to use that to my advantage. :P Great guys out there making sure our trails are safe and keeping the low life scum with no trail permits off the trails. The guys in this picture were a bit lucky...I think they had registration issues. So we moved on from Pellston and took the trail toward Harbor Springs. That was in beautiful shape. We stopped a couple times along the way just to take pictures. The trail was perfect and the scenery just could not be beat. We wandered our way through the trails and found some additional photo taking opportunities. They were all in GREAT shape. Hats off to the HSSC grooming team again. The ride could not have been much smoother. We found ourselves heading into downtown Harbor Springs before we turned around to back into the woods. I must admit...the "trail" that they expect you to ride to get INTO Harbor Springs is absolutely miserable. They salt and sand the road you ride along...and everyone has signs up to keep you off of their driveway. I understand they do not want to have the ruts and cleanup from sleds in their driveways...but I do not understand why there is not an alternate route yet because of this. It sure does seem like some of the side roads coming into Harbor might be a better solution? I am not 100% familiar with downtown Harbor and the surrounding roads...so I could be very wrong.

I am going to end for now so that I can have some more pictures to post in the next few days. We lost about 95% of our snow so far...with 3-5" remaining on the ground around the house. Everywhere else there is bare ground or snow/mud mix. Tonight is supposed to cool back down and bring some snows by the AM and possibly through the rest of the week. It does not look like anything too impressive yet. There are hints of a fairly sizable storm but it looks primarily to hit NW of us. We shall see!


Goodnight from Northern Michigan!


-Derek

Sorry it has been so long...

I feel bad I have not been able to write for a week now. On Thursday last week I got a nasty cold that has not yet let go. I am still kicking and alive though. When I get sick (which really is rare) I do not function well at all...so in my spare time I have been simply taking it easy.

I do not want to post pictures right now...but I will later. I have some riding pictures that I took over the 29th and 30th. Those pictures will hopefully bring back better memories...memories of snow and cold. After I wrote last time we received about an additional 4-6" of LES and various system snows that followed up with the ending of the storm. That left us with a grand total, at my house anyway, just shy of 20" of snow.

The sled has not moved since my last ride on the 29th and 30th. On Friday last week the temps began warming toward the end of the day...and by Saturday it was nearing 40 degrees. Since then the average day time high has been (I am guessing right now...I have not been keeping very good track of temperatures since I have been sick.) in the low 40s...and at times quite a bit higher nearing 50 degrees. The snow in town is nearly completely gone. The snow at the house is not in much better shape. The nearly 20" we had...now sits at probably 4". Luckily the temps got a big cooler last night, in the low 30s, and by tonight looks to possibly end this crappy rain storm with a bit of snow. If you have snow in your yard right now...you probably will not be losing it. If you do not...you should have 1-2 inches by tomorrow morning. Welcome back to winter? The long range forecast speaks of highs in the teens and lows in the single digits or less. Any snow? No big system snows...but the long range forecasts are too far out to have much faith in them. With temperatures possibly dropping we could see some decent LES if we the makings are correct. I guess we will see!

Anyway...enough for now. Pictures and more interesting stuff (hopefully) to come.

-Derek