Never fall in love with a model run. That said, I love the 12Z GFS model run. It prints out a high temperature in the next two weeks of 33 in Hayward. And it prints out 1.5 inches of liquid equivalent precipitation, which would equate to, oh, a foot and a half of snow. And, 384 hours out, it shows a race-time weather in the single digits, mostly sunny and light winds. As someone whose fastest skis are best on soft, cold snow, this would be fantastic.

Now, let’s not get carried away. Major caveats. First, temperatures early next week are forecast to be near freezing (1000-500 heights near 540; see the Weather Speculation Resources for more information about this), with some sun, so that could be warmer. Which the ECMWF suggests. Which could be, uh, bad. And all of the snow comes in the second half of the model run, which is the wildly variable half. So the next run of the model could show zero precipitation. The weather features it’s prognosticating are the figurative flaps of a butterfly’s wings right now. There’s no way of telling what my come. So the next model run could show the same thing, or it could show no snow at all.

A case in point: in Boston there has been a hint of a coastal storm for the last few days, but it’s been pushing all the snow out to sea. Now the models shifted, and one is showing 8-10 inches, less than 60 hours before the “event.” So things will change. Sometimes for the better. In any case, it’s never a bad thing to see favorable model runs pop up. It’s even better to see continuity. We’ll keep an eye on it and hope for the best.

We’re within 384 hours! We now get a model run that goes out to Birkie every six hours (at least) until race time. It’s not worth losing sleep over, but it’s a little too much fun.

This will be the first of many features speculating about the weather upcoming and how it will affect the Birkie. It is all wild speculation, so take it with a grain of salt. Thanks.

What’s the weather? For those of us who get a little too worked up about the Birkie (raise your hands), and especially those of us who are paying a lot of money for plane tickets, this will be a frequent question over the next three weeks. The race is twenty-two days away, and the models only go out sixteen, so there’s no idea of what might be coming down the pike. But, we’re here to speculate wildly! So we will.

Model print out for Hayward. More information on where to find this model data can be found below.

I mentioned recently that the last week before the race was, in low snow years, make-or-break. This year that may be the case, but the next few days will be pretty important, too. This is because it’s warm in Hayward. Not 50-degrees sweltering hot (which is rare, but not out of the question) but peaking in to the low 40s every day. In late December, that would be a nuisance. But in February, with the sun higher in the sky and getting higher every day, it’s more of a problem. Reports are coming in that some hills are getting thin, as would be expected. I’d assume the Birkie will have a large team out to shovel the hills. So if it hits 42 the next three days (and keeps freezing hard each night) we’re probably safe.

The issue would be losing the base completely. If that were to happen, and for that we’d need several days above freezing, or some rain, or something similarly awful, there would be major issues. The Birkie Trail is grassy and smooth enough that with any base, a couple of inches of new snow can take you from a 2007 rockskivaganza to a picture-perfect race. If you lose that base, however, three inches is not enough to groom and have 8000 skiers glide across it, V1 up and it snowplow it off the hills. If we lose the base, the bar to have a race goes a lot—several inches—higher.

For now we can’t speculate on the last week. Beyond this week, where the base should hold (mostly) we’re probably going to be okay. The long range appears that it will stay cooler, but there is not any big snow on the horizon. Six or eight inches would be great. But it hasn’t been that sort of winter. Yet.

A couple of resources:

The Bufkit Warehouse Meteogram for HYR. A great resource (and the source of the image above) showing, graphically, temperature, snowfall and other such fun things for all the NOAA models. Updated pretty continuously. New NAM (84 hour) models come out at 3 and 9 central, new GFS at 5 and 11. Or a few minutes after. This site was built by a grad student at Iowa State. Who said nothing good comes from Iowa?!

The sixteen day GFS model printout. Also updated at 5 and 11. This shows temperatures and precipitation (but not snow) for 384 hours, or sixteen days. This will hit race day in about a week, but the second week out is really volatile, so take everything with a shaker of salt.

So, it’s a month to the Birkie. And the weather is … well, not good. Yes, there’s snow up north. But there’s not that much. There’s no base. And one bout of warm weather could wreak havoc on the Birkie.

We’ve seen this before. In 2000—before I had ever heard of the Birkie (horrors!)—the race succumbed to a warm winter and a warm spell the week before the race. In 2007, the same thing happened, only the race was shortened and run on rock ski conditions to Highway OO (today they might run it back on the classic trail). What will happen this year?

There’s room here for some optimism. First of all, there are good conditions in the Wisconsin north woods. According to Skinnyski, there’s enough snow that the trail has a firm skate deck and classic tracks. It sounds like the race could be run today without much of a hitch, but we’re still four weeks away from race day. Temperatures tomorrow should reach in to the 30s, but then a cool-if-not-cold weather regime should set in, with the possibility of some snow this weekend. But the models this year have been finicky, and there’s not necessarily a good sign that a frigid, snowy weather pattern will set up for February.

And lest we get ahead of ourselves, February 2007 (the last canceled or significantly shortened race) started off nice and cold; temperatures didn’t hit 20 until a week before race day, but peaked at 52 the next week—and no snow fell until the evening after the race. 2000’s data is partially missing, but that year it was also the case that the race was only doomed by warm weather the week preceding. Once we get to within two weeks of the race, this page will speculate on the weather. However, let’s not count any chickens until we have deep snow and cold temperatures the week before the race.