10 p.m. on Tuesday, the storm is moving into northern Wisconsin.

Right now, the Birkie webcams are showing snow falling in Cable and OO, and rain in Hayward. And the PB on the International Bridge. This boundary is not forecast to move more than a few miles this evening, and any snow that does fall will be wet and slushy, but any snow that does fall is not rain. There are signals of a few inches of snow on Wednesday evening into Thursday at colder temperatures which would do the trail well.

The Birkie has moved the Open Track to Thursday, and Thursday events in Hayward during the day up to Telemark because of the weather. But with all of that said, the actual race should have pretty good conditions as the rain should mostly soak into the base and it should have time to freeze up. Saturday racers especially should see temperatures in the low 20s with overnight lows in the teens. Not a sloppy slushfest like 2016. Hopefully they can plow a ribbon on the lake so we don’t have to ice skate.

Then there’s the Friday storm. Most of the models have it staying far enough east that it would at most graze the Birkie trail, but at least one model showed a foot of snow for the east edge of Sawyer County and flurries for Hayward. Saywer county is about 40 miles wide, so a shift of about, say, 40 miles could make for significantly different conditions.