Jay Richards

It was too wet to mow today on the trails with all the leaves down now as they ball up in the roller on the brushcutter when its wet so I went up to Roy's Run, trail to the north that hasn't been cleared yet, to cut some deadfall. When stuff gets hung up like this its scary because there is no textbook on how its going to react when it gets cut from the bottom.

So I bring two saws as one always seems to get pinched.


And if you can't get it with the second saw, the stick and ax man can help finish the job.
Theres a pond deep in the woods that always seems to keep steady with the water level even if the tables drop like they did this summer. One year in high school a buddy and I went to the edge before school one day with one decoy. At the crack of light, the mallards were dropping in by the tens and 20's. It was crazy fun. We were so excited. We let about 30 ducks land, the dog was going crazy, whining, then we opened up on the next flocks. We got our limit and were late for school. I hit a skunk on the way in and when the wind picked up, the weight lifting coach, who is now the head football coach, called the office and they made an announcement over the intercom to move the vehicle. So I did.

We missed out on the snow action places nw of us saw today. We had some spits of frozen material mid morning and it looked like it was snowing across the lake but just mist and this evening there seemed to be a few flakes but Jonell said I'm just forcing it to hard. Like they say below, early snow doesn't always mean big winter, might be less of a winter but gets people talking.
Public Statement from WE:
... First measurable snowfall for the Red River valley region...

With light snow having fallen overnight across parts of northwestern
Minnesota... the question about early season snowfalls always come
up. Based on the climatological record available measurable snow is
not at all uncommon in early October. Typically snow that falls this
early in the season melts off and may even be followed by a period
of much milder weather.

A few notable early season snows include the October 2 1950
snowstorm and the October 7 and 8 snowstorm of 1985. In the Grand
Forks area 10.8 inches of snow fell on October 24th 2001.

Below is a table of climatologically average first one inch snow fall
based on the 1940 to 2006 period of record. While this is not a
comprehensive list it is designed to give an idea as to when the
earliest 1 inch of snow has fallen. Due to the variability of
weather at any given location... the first inch of snow can be more
than two months later.

Earliest earliest
North Dakota snow/yr avg 1in Minnesota snow/yr avg 1in

Cavalier 7nw Sep 26/1972 Nov 10 Agassiz wlr Oct 14/1959 Nov 11
Edmore 1nw Sep 26/1972 Nov 10 Baudette Sep 26/1941 Nov 5
Fargo Hector fld Oct 2/1950 Nov 15 Crookston Oct 5/1974 Nov 13
Forman 5sw Oct 2/1950 Nov 24 Detroit Lakes Sep 26/1942 Nov 17
Grand Forks NWS Oct 2/1950 Nov 12 Fergus Falls Oct 9/1970 Nov 17
Hansboro 4nne Sep 11/1989 Nov 3 Ottertail Oct 2/1950 Nov 7
Leeds Sep 22/1995 Nov 11 Red Lake Oct 1/1974 Nov 17
Lisbon Sep 22/1942 Nov 20 Thorhult Oct 2/1950 Nov 2
Petersburg Oct 2/1950 Nov 3 Wadena 3s Sep 25/1942 Nov 10
Valley City 3nnw Oct 2/1950 Nov 11 Itasca St pk Oct 7/1970 Nov 5

please note that some stations had a few missing years data.

Looking at the above table it is apparent that the first inch of snow
in the northern plains can occur quite early. Trace snow amounts have
been noted earlier than the dates listed above. Also... there is no
correlation between early season snowfalls and overall winter
precipitation. In fact... several of the winter seasons with early
accumulating snows ended up with below normal seasonal snowfall
totals.