… Home of the World’s Slowest Internet. That’s not entirely fair. It’s just that where we’re staying and at the race venue, the Internet runs at pre-dialup speeds. Loading the text from a weather model comes in line-by-line, if it comes in at all. We’re in a town, and nothing happens. Folks with international data plans don’t fare much better. But, it’s enough to obsess over weather, and post updates here.
What’s happening in the weather? Well, it’s warm-but-not-too-warm in Norway. 30s during the day, 20s at night. The ski orienteering trails are fast and icy, and I broke a ski today (an all-too-common occurrence in Ski-O). First race is tomorrow! And home in Boston, they’ve had 70 inches of snow in two weeks. That’s the most snow a major city in the US has ever received in that short a time. It’s more than all but 11 of the past 122 years’ total snowfalls. It sounds like great skiing, but a total cluster in the city.
Oh, but you want to know about weather at the Birkie? Well. Some snow in the next couple of days. Woohoo! Should freshen things up and get it in good shape for the race. The main concern now is a meltdown, and it doesn’t seem to be in the cards. As we get closer to race day, there really haven’t been any warm temperatures showing up in the forecast, so barring something unprecedented (say, 70-inches-of-snow-in-two-weeks-unprecedented) the course should be in good shape.
The issue could be the cold. Several recent model runs have shown some chilly weather down in to Birkieland around the start of the race, the most recent with temperatures around -20. Farenheit. This is not likely, but not out of the cards. It would be nice to have a good 2009-style race—10 at the start, 30 at the finish—again, but it seems like we can’t get lucky with good snow and decent conditions. Either too cold (2011) or too much snow (2014). But things can change, and the long-term trends are good. Hopefully we’ll hit the peak of a rise in temperatures and can eke out something without a minus sign in front of it (in ˚F, we certainly want a minus-something ˚C).