Snows have returned to the Keweenaw, but the clock is ticking. February arrives Wednesday. We still can get a fair share of snow in February, the record is 89.8″, March is no slouch with a record of 63.5. Looking at the averages, they are 33.7 and 22.8 respectively. The least amount of snow for those two months is 5.5 and a trace, which is a little scary to think about! The odds of breaking the all time high or all time low in both months is quite low, but running close to average for both months is not that far fetched. So 56.5 inches might be a fairly decent estimate of what we have left for the season.
Conditions are not junk up here and it would take probably less than 6-8″ to make them great for trail riding. Off trail would probably take a foot or more. There actually is a halfway decent chance of at least 8-10″ through the middle of this week and at least a foot and a half in the next 10 days. Plus it does not look like we will go back to the pattern we had for most of January. At least at this point!
The snows this week were not much to write home about. A few inches here and there and a total here in Jake of around 3-4″ for the week. The official measurements in Keweenaw County were 5″ new as of Wednesday. That puts the Keweenaw at 12.5″ for the entire month up to the 25th. It will be interesting to see what they got for Thursday through today, because we are still on the road to setting a new record low for the month of January. Not the kind of thing I wish would happen, but as long as we are going to deal with the stink of this January, may as well get a trophy for it!
Not a whole lot I can talk about on the un-personal side, so I may as well jump to the personal. The construction crew showed up on Monday with a big crew and a big old boom truck to get trusses set. They worked hard all day, even with a brisk southerly wind blowing off the lake and managed to get over half of the trusses up. On Tuesday they finished up with the remainder of the big ones and it was really cool to see the roof come to life!
They did get some of the sheathing up on Tuesday and then spent all day Wednesday getting the sheathing done on the north side of the house. This is the side that would take most of the weather and winds this time of the year. Thursday was spent putting the smaller trusses left to do up and a bit more sheathing. By the end of the day on Friday, they had the entire roof, or shall I day “roofs” sheathed.
My guess is tomorrow they will get on sheathing the gables as well as the tops of the first floor walls. Some of the windows are supposed to be arriving by the end of the week, so I’m guessing they would like to be ready for that. Perhaps even get some salamanders going once the walls are completely sheathed and the windows are in.
The interior walls still need to be done and Nora and I met with the electrician yesterday and went over the details of that and he is planning to be here in around 2 1/2 weeks. Once the electric is done and any remaining plumbing is done, then the spray foam guys can arrive and get the place insulated so that it can really be kept warm in there for the workers.
Tomorrow I plan to get the materials needed for the cabinets in my office and then plan to spend the week building them. They will be painted so that will be as big a project as building them will be, but it will be nice to finally be getting my fingers dirty in the shop and even better to have the cabinets done and giving me the storage space I really need in my office.
My office cabinets are the warm up for the cabinets in the house and it looks like the timing will work out very well for me to be finishing up the office cabinets and then be able to go over to the house and take measurements for the kitchen and pantry cabinets for their design.
Lots to do, snow or no snow!
Have a great week!
Good Night From the Keweenaw..
–JD
