At Leech Lake -- October 26, 2010 (The Storm!)

The early parts of the storm gathering on Sucker Bay

At 8:00 a.m. this morning there was a light rain falling, the sky was very overcast and gray, there was virtually no wind, the temperature was 50 degrees and the forecast was for a major storm to be moving toward Leech Lake and Northern Minnesota.

At 9:15 a.m. the locksmith arrived and changed the locks on the front doors on both the house and cabin; a task long over due. He left about an hour later and from 10:30 a.m. till noon I was on a work call. Just after noon, I checked the barometer in the hallway of the house and saw it had dropped to a record low of 28.4 inches of mercury -- way, way past the storm setting. The temperature has also dropped to 44 degrees.

It's now 12:50 p.m. and I have another work call in 10 minutes and the wind has picked up considerably. I'd say it's probably 20 mph out of the WNW, creating white caps on the lake. The updated forecast calls for winds to exceed 40 mph by 3:00 p.m. this afternoon. I am planning to visit Noel Hancock, one of our neighbors (who is personally battling cancer), later this afternoon, but I'll have to keep an eye on this storm. I don't want to be out if the storm gets really bad.

The wind has really picked up. At 2:05 p.m. the temperature has dropped to 40 degrees and the wind is up over 25 mph now out of the WNW, with big white caps rolling toward our shoreline. The barometric pressure, believe it or not, has dropped even further to 28.35 inches of mercury. The lowest I've ever seen.

At 3:00 p.m. I drove down to Noel Hancock's for a visit and to share a pot of coffee. After an hour or so of trying to solve the world's problems, to no avail, I bid Noel goodbye and drove down to Malay's house.

The purpose of my visit to Tom and Elaine's was to drop off a set of the new front door keys, but I stuck around to share a beer and chat about the weather. According to Tom's rain gauge, more than 2 inches of rain has fallen today, and it was still coming down hard went I left their house at just after 5:00p.m.

When I drove into our driveway I noticed several standing puddles around the yard. This is the wettest I've seen the properties since we bought it in 2001. The wind continues to howl at close to 30 mph out of the WNW, the temperature has dropped to 38 degrees (snow is predicted tonight) and the barometric pressure hovers near 28.4 inches of mercury. Crazy midwestern storm.

I just checked the National Weather Service web site (5:45 p.m. CT) and here's the Winter Storm Warning that they issued for Northern Minnesota:

A WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 10 AM CDT WEDNESDAY.

* RAIN WILL MIX WITH THEN CHANGE TO WET SNOW THIS EVENING AND OVERNIGHT... THEN CONTINUE INTO EARLY WEDNESDAY.

* SNOW WILL ACCUMULATE 3 TO 6 INCHES BY WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON.

* SNOW WILL BE ACCOMPANIED BY WINDS OF 30 MPH WITH STRONGER GUSTS.

* WET SNOW WILL STICK TO SOME ROADS AND MAKE THEM SLIPPERY. THICK FALLING AND BLOWING SNOW WILL REDUCE VISIBILITY TO LESS THAN A QUARTER OF A MILE AT TIMES.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...
A WINTER STORM WARNING FOR HEAVY SNOW AND BLOWING SNOW MEANS THE COMBINATION OF STRONG WINDS AND FALLING AND BLOWING SNOW WILL CAUSE DANGEROUSLY LOW VISIBILITY AND DRIFTING SNOW. IF YOU MUST TRAVEL... USE CAUTION AND ALLOW EXTRA TIME TO REACH YOUR DESTINATION.

This could get crazy!! I love Northern Minnesota!

Well, it's 10:30 p.m. and I'm going to call it a night. It's still very windy out, but it's stopped raining. According to the latest weather, it's supposed to start snowing sometime around 3:00 a.m. tomorrow morning. It'll be interesting to see if the ground is covered in snow when I wake up tomorrow.

Good night from Leech Lake.