Happy Valentine’s Day! Here we are in the dead of winter. Nearly every year we have snow on the ground and riding conditions over a good part of if not all of Upstate NY.
Not this year. Even in the Tug Hill and Adirondacks, we are in “ultra die hard” mode. Any riding you can find, if any, is a few miles here and there. That’s it. No 75 mile runs on the Tug Hill. No 200+ mile runs across the Adirondacks and Northern NY. No cross state runs. When you look at the green grass out there, especially in the lower elevations, you are seeing the beginning of spring sprouts. Already. I don’t know about you but this exercise for me is getting so sad, I am not sure how much longer I want to go on. Seriously.
There is some good news out there and it comes into play tomorrow afternoon and tomorrow night. We have a clipper coming! Amazing! An actual clipper with actual snowfall about to actually fall on Upstate NY. Given annual snow totals in the 20-30 inch range, about 1/3 of normal, this amount of snow is almost a major event or a show stopper. Almost.
Once we get past this there are weaker clipper systems coming on through going into the holiday weekend. These could drop an extra few inches of snow. Maybe. If all of these things happen, we could squeeze out limited riding on this President’s Day Weekend! If we were to squeeze out any riding, it would be the higher elevations of the Tug Hill, Adirondacks and North Country only. I am not sure how much additional territory could be opened up this upcoming weekend, but some of it is definitely on the table.
Then there is next week. Remember all the cold air talk about a week ago? Well it is looking like just a few days of it and this is what we are going through now through President’s Day. After that, temperatures return to normal, which in the lower elevations start getting above freezing now. Even though we still have big snow potential for another 4-8 weeks, the patterns are just not lining up for it. 2012. 2016. 2024. Yikes. Let’s just get out of this! One of these years… we will get hit good. I just hope I am still here to cover it for you.
Rich Lupia
Upstate Snow
February 14, 2024
