It’s still 18 days until race day, and the Birkie isn’t blanketed with feet upon feet of snow (although a few inches last night helped) but barring any major forecast “busts“, the Birkie should go off as planned.

The snow last night helped a lot; the thinner southern half of the trail needed some more cover and every inch helps, especially since this storm was slightly focused towards the south. Another, bigger storm hits tonight, and current predictions range from 4 to 10 inches by Friday morning. Even the low end of this range would be great, putting down a sum of nearly half a foot this week. Ten inches would be a godsend, adding a foot. (I think the lower end is more likely, but we’ll see).

More importantly, especially now that we’ve taken care of the snowfall, the longer range forecasts look very good. The next four weeks are all showing below average temperatures for Birkieland, and it’s a wide swath of cold, so we’re not really on the edge of it. The 8 to 14 day forecast is just as good: cold and moist; exactly what we’d want. There is a chance that the weekend before the race a storm will sneak a bit of sleet, freezing rain or even rain up to the race, but if we can get six more inches of snow it might be a benefit, adding to the base (it would not likely be all rain) and adding some moisture to make the trail faster. Some of the most fun Birkies of recent years, in 2009 and 2010, were skied on fast snow with some added moisture, “superhero” conditions with great glide and fast times.

Are we out of the woods completely? Of course not. This is weather forecasting, or in this case, speculation. Things can change. But all told, this is a very good place to be. In 2017, I had a “percent chance of cancelation” metric based on current conditions and future forecasts. (This starts around 10%, given that in the past 20 years, two Birkies have been canceled completely.) A week ago, I would have had it at 15%. Today, it’s probably below 5%.