Chatting with folks back home we’ve heard more than one comment about the (relative) lack of snow so far this year.

The past couple of winters have brought heavy, lingering snowpacks that changed the fly fishing dynamic throughout much of the northern Rockies and with another La Nina in place this winter, the forecast has been for more of the same.

A friend from Bozeman has been banging around in the hills after mountain lion this past week and told Jake there’s been very little low and mid-level snow around for weeks now. Southwest Montana ski resorts are partially open with skimpy bases (Bridger is reporting 25” of settled base this morning with an opening temp of 34 – impressive).

We hadn’t taken a look at any of the more detailed weather / climate predications in a while, so I did of bit of digging today.

First question – is La Nina still in place? From the NWS’s Climate Prediction Center, yep, it is, though this season’s La Nina ain’t as robust as last year’s. From their 8 December 11 (the most current) update:

A majority of the models predict a weak or moderate strength La Niña to continue through the Northern Hemisphere winter (Fig. 6) and then gradually weaken after peaking during the December – January period.  The models are roughly split between those that predict La Niña to remain weak (3-month average in the Niño-3.4 region between -0.5 and -0.9oC) and those that predict a stronger episode. Over the last half-century, La Niña events that were preceded by ENSO-neutral conditions during the Northern Hemisphere summer (May-August) were less likely to attain strong amplitude (stronger than –1.5oC) the following winter. This observation, in combination with the model forecasts, favors a weak-to-moderate strength La Niña during the Northern Hemisphere winter, likely weakening with the onset of northern spring.

As to current snowpack / snowcover, here’s the snapshot for today….

Here’s the precipitation and temperature forecast for January / February / March…..

And the precipitation and temperature forecast for March / April / May…..

There’s still a lot of snowpack build yet to come…..

Tags: Weather

I haven’t fished at all since before Thanksgiving. I enjoy fishing in the winter and I wish I had gotten out on one of the bluebird weather days we’ve been lucky enough to have in my corner of the world recently, but other responsibilities conspired to keep me away from the river.

Winter fishing is a tricky business when you factor in all the variables. Foremost for me, the weather must cooperate. I prefer to fish on a day when the mercury at least threatens the freezing mark. I also don’t mind if the sun is out, because it somehow has the power to make me feel warmer than I really am. Unfortunately, such days are not terribly common. Finally, my favorite winter waters require a bit of a drive over some roads that can be hostile in winter. Combine these variables with the fact that my day job limits the days I have to choose from and I am left trying to decide if I should use a valuable vacation day to hit the water.

On the one hand, picking the right day is often paramount for winter fishing. A good weather day might bring midges and the first or last rising trout of the year. Using a vacation day allows me to cherry pick the best weather day of an entire month. On the other hand, using a vacation day—the one area of my life in which time is a transferrable currency—on a day of winter fishing feels like a bit of a waste. Sure I could spend those valuable hours to go fishing tomorrow, but even in the best circumstances its likely I will spend my “vacation” breaking ice out of guides and staring at a bobber for only four or five hours limited by daylight and temperature. Used in the midst of summer, that same day might translate into 12 hours of off-and-on dry fly action and a beautiful sunset that doesn’t signal an increased likelihood of hypothermia. Vacation days are as valuable to me as that golden ticket that let Charlie into the Chocolate Factory. Using one requires a certain return on investment that winter fishing doesn’t always fulfill.

Still, at some point in this season of cold and grey, one reaches a point at which a day spent on the water—no matter how frozen and short—becomes an outright must. To put it another way, in the dead of winter, when summer seems like an eon past, a day spent fishing becomes a necessity rather than a diversion. I haven’t quite reached that point yet, but I can see it out there on the horizon, waiting in silence.

Until then I’ll tell myself I need to start tying flies and work on that rod blank that stares at me each time I sit down at the computer desk. I’ll wait for my camera to return from the repair shop and research camera insurance for the next time I manage to drop it in the river. I’ll think wistfully about the best and worst of the year gone past. And I’ll dream longingly of trips yet to come, including my first trip to the Missouri this coming April—my second guided trip ever—which I booked with Headhunters Fly Shop a few weeks back. All that will keep my alive through the winter, until the stars align or the pull of water is too strong and I venture out to meet the river again.

Tags: Weather

Back in the office after an early morning strategy meeting with some of our real world business team and lo and behold, there’s some weather moving in.

There’s even a little lightning starting to pop and thunder rolling…..a longer post about fishing (and other) news from Yellowstone will have to wait….our power tends to fail when it’s too hot, too windy or raining.

Jake’s headed out on Thursday with some of the Orvis crew to fish the Guadalupe; it would be ironic as hell to have the biggest rain event we’ve seen in months put fishing off for a few days…..

Tags: Weather

So I’m checking the weather back home this morning and lo and behold there’s snow in the forecast.

Ok, so it’s only in a tiny little pocket up near Glacier, only above 6500 feet, only 1 to 3 inches possible and it will be gone in a heartbeat.

There’s something about that first hint of snow in the forecast that makes one think fall really is coming and lots of good stuff is right around the corner.  Big browns, bowhunting and birds to name a few.  A friend’s even tagged his first antelope bowhunting.

There’s still lots of fishing to be done and given a choice I’d probably be on the Missouri the next few days.  Craig’s forecast looks nifty….

Hell, the weather’s even forecast to cool here in hell / Austin / central Texas.

(As of yesterday we’ve had a record 75 days above 100 in Austin bestowing the quite dubious honor of breaking the all time record for summer heat.  The Fat Guys may love that kind of weather over in Tucson, but generally we think it sucks.  We picked a hell of weather year to spend down here in exile.)

Had to run a couple of errands on Saturday and started my truck and found this reading on the temperature gauge.  Thankfully it cooled down to 115 after driving around a bit.  Frickin’ inhuman.  I’ll take snow in late August and long, cold winters any day.

Tags: Weather

Trying to hold to a reasonable standard of optimism, given that July is a couple of days away and that river flow trends had been looking a tiche better over the past few days, yesterday we planned to post this morning a few area river flows that had been improving.

That post was to have been titled The Trend IS Your Friend.

A hot sunny day in southwest Montana (93 in Bozeman yesterday, 90 in Missoula) changed that reality pretty quickly.

Tailwaters are still your friend these days – SOL has the skinny on the Missouri here.

Tags: Weather

A few days ago I mentioned how impressed we were to see the amount of snow still down in the southern part of Yellowstone over the past few days.  South of Old Faithful bison were still choosing the road to mosey.

Looking at today’s snowpack maps from NOHRSC there’s still a hell of a lot of snow down in the western half of Montana, the Yellowstone area (bottom right hand corner of the maps) and northern Idaho.  Wow.

Flows are gonna be humming along for some time.  Deep sigh.

Tags: Weather

Two days of the season’s warmest temps followed by rain. Kiss your non-tailwater river goodbye for a spell. Even the tailwater fisheries in the neighborhood will probably be a challenge once this snowpack gets moving….

Tags: Weather

Rain and snowpack melt are starting to make things interesting……

Tags: Weather

The runoff season begins in earnest….

Tags: Weather

Gina Loss, a National Weather Service hydrologist in Great Falls, projects that this year’s runoff in Montana, at least Western Montana, will be “sensational”.

A potent weather system has pounded southwestern and southern Montana this weekend with rain and snow. The pic to the right from this morning’s NWS forecast site out of Missoula confirms that a winter storm is pounding the high country in southwestern Montana today.

Summer can be a long time coming.

Digging a little deeper into the snowpack data, here’s an interesting graphic below from the NRCS site detailing snowpack around the state – updates from this weekend’s storm may not be included as of this morning. (SWE is snow water equivalent.)

Weather over the next few weeks will be key; a rapid ‘warm-up’ or lots of rain will be messy; a cooler late spring will ease the flood risk but prolong runoff high water for weeks.

Tags: Weather

It snowed in Austin (above) and San Antonio (Jake’s place below).

You’d think the world has come to an end.  Schools closed, businesses closed, death and destruction on the roadways.  We had to rush out for pics this morning before it all melted.

Tags: Weather

With snow falling in 25 states and most of the nation under cloud cover this morning – it’s a prime day for the winter blues.  Even the damn cat has the blues today.

Tags: Weather

The Greater Yellowstone area has been a magnet for the world’s fly fisher folk for decades.

We’d probably go as far to agree wholeheartedly with our friend John Juracek that the area serves as a mecca of sorts in the fly fishing world – at some point in their life most fly fishermen are moved to visit the place and fish its waters.

(If John’s name doesn’t ring a bell, he co-founded Blue Ribbon Flies with Craig Matthews in West Yellowstone, is a master at the vise and even more so behind the camera.)

Over the past few years we’ve had the pleasure of interacting with folks from every continent about fishing in the area.  Damn, who knew that posting random thoughts about fly fishing on a blog would bring the world knocking?

Most folks fire a casual email with a question or two and we never hear from them again; now and again we’ll find someone with whom the conversation stretches out a bit longer.

One such newfound friend has been Peter T. from Brisbane;  he’s a photographer we interacted with on a project a couple of years ago.  We’ve continued to correspond over the ensuing months  and still chat about fishing together ‘some day’.

Peter bristled a couple of years back when I posted a somewhat lighthearted post poking fun at anthropogenic global warming (AGW) ‘believers’.   (Posted on our old site – no link!)

Peter was much more polite than the scores of other critics that crawled out of the woodwork to bash my opinion – he said I was another typical American dumbass, blah, blah, blah – and regurgitated fairly typical and unscientific blatherings about the theory of AGW.

Peter pointed out that several ‘sophisticated’ blog readers had commented that the debate over AGW was done and settled as the New York Times had posted the definitive opinion on the matter – no further consideration required.

Turns out Peter has a bit of a science background and appears to have been using it to sift through some of the factual data available.

His climate perceptions have changed 180 degrees – he sent a link to this article from yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald.  He went on to relate he’d been following the scientist referenced in the article, Piers Corbyn, for some time and suggested I give his website a look.

Here’s how Corbyn was introduced in the article -

Actually, they did. Allow me to introduce readers to Piers Corbyn, meteorologist and brother of my old chum, bearded leftie MP Jeremy. Piers Corbyn works in an undistinguished office in Borough High Street. He has no telescope or supercomputer. Armed only with a laptop, huge quantities of publicly available data and a first-class degree in astrophysics, he gets it right again and again.

Back in November, when the Met Office was still doing its “mild winter” schtick, Corbyn said it would be the coldest for 100 years. Indeed, it was back in May that he first predicted a snowy December, and he put his own money on a white Christmas about a month before the Met Office made any such forecast. He said that the Met Office would be wrong about last year’s mythical “barbecue summer”, and he was vindicated. He was closer to the truth about last winter, too.

He seems to get it right about 85 per cent of the time and serious business people – notably in farming – are starting to invest in his forecasts. In the eyes of many punters, he puts the taxpayer-funded Met Office to shame. How on earth does he do it? He studies the Sun.

Corbyn’s site – WeatherAction – is an interesting read.   He’s been astoundingly accurate in his predictions.

To this fly fishing yank it seems most ironic that the most objective discussions of the issue take place in the foreign press – the UK and Australian press particularly of late.

At least in their minds – despite what the NYT and Al Gore have decreed, the science – the hard, observational data – detailing AGW is far, far from settled.   This fly fishing yank would have to agree.

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas.  Might just happen this year.

Tags: Weather

Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse from William Castleman on Vimeo.

From the steady hand of University of Florida Professor of Veterinary Pathology William Castleman.

Tags: Weather

Short winter days probably don’t impact the routine of most scurrying urbanites, at least from what I can observe ensconced temporarily here in Austin.   (That isn’t meant to be quite as disdainful as it might sound.)

On the other hand, for those whose work or play pivots around hours of available sunlight and the vagaries of weather, the shortened days of winter can manhandle one’s psyche in ways that are far from pretty.

Several years ago while living in the Flathead north of Kalispell, work days found me in a largely windowless office from roughly 630 to 6.  No complaint intended, eighteen plus hours of usable summer daylight was bliss.

The family was running an equestrian barn / facility at the time – they handled morning chores without me but evening chores found me in the barn with the gang and then off to play before dark.

Antithetically, sunless winter days were at times brutal.  Sunlight became a figment of my demented imagination.

Doing barn chores and handling large, cold, often irritated animals in the dark was always a bit more work, and we always had more bangs, boo-boos, crashes and tears during the winter.   She Who Must Be Obeyed even ran the four wheeler into a closed overhead door one somber, dark winter morning.  She and the wheeler were fine though the door was never the same.

One of my special responsibilities was the oil burning barn heater.  It (Bob) was an aging,  conniving, temperamental and tortured beast.  Rebuilt in its entirety over a couple of years, the heater underwent the equivalent of a cardiac bypass, two facelifts, a hemorrhoidectomy and breast augmentation at the hands of our taciturn ‘heater guy’.  Paying the medical bills out of pocket would have been cheaper and Bob was never any sexier after a procedure.  Bob was a bastard.

At least Bob kept our wooden drift boat from freezing up during the winter, and Kelly the barn cat and I became life long soul mates given the amount of time spent cursing and kicking Bob as we started him every night.

Winter solstice, dark day (literally) that it was, always marked a critical turning point.  Thereafter, minute by minute days began to lengthen.  The mere possibility of another summer to come always breathed new life into the crew.

The inevitable snow cover (and storms to come) started to look like next years trout water.

Damn the darkness, there were flies to tie and rods to build, fly fishing books to read (and write), gardens to plan and even time to rest a bit.

Spring always arrived several centuries later and by March we’d by dodging ice flows and nymphing (poorly) out of the drift boat on the Flathead.  We might be dressed like Arctic explorers to stay warm, but dammit we were out.

Here’s one fly fisher who says, while leaning on his figurative manure fork in the barn today, amen to the winter solstice.  I can feel the days getting longer already.

Tags: Weather