Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) for the western US is running close to average across the northernmost tier (as predicted) and thus far most of WY, UT, and CO haven’t seen much snow laid down compared to longterm averages. It’s obviously very early in the snowpack building season with a boatload of winter yet to come.
Climate forecasts for Q1.21 are out, with precipitation the first graphic below and temperature projections the second; the projections certainly look encouraging for WA, OR, northern ID, and MT at least, providing that the La Nina event that is currently in place holds, as it should from the ENSO forecast (final image below) through April or May.
Abel will be releasing the Van Winkle fly reel sometime in Q1 of 2021; read all about here in Garden and Gun, and you may want to let your own Santa know about this one early next year.
Image from the linked article in G&G.
For those residing in the Northern Hemisphere, today marks for most the shortest day of the year – the winter solstice.
It wasn’t until spending years in Kalispell up in the corner of Northwest Montana that we as a family really began to appreciate the winter solstice. While cranking away 65-70 hours per week in my practice, as a family we purchased and operated a small horse operation, replete with close to twenty stalls for the boarding operation, a large indoor arena, several smaller barns and out-buildings, and a fair amount of fenced pasture to maintain.
We of course had no fricken’ idea what we were getting into when we dove into this project, and while we worked our asses off for several years, it was a real-time, real-life learning lab for not only my wife and I, but our kids as well – both of whom have gone on to run their own business quite successfully.
One of the things we almost understood from the get go was that there would be an endless array of chores to manage every damn day of the year, something would always be broken and need to be fixed, and that our lives would be inextricably tied to the sun and weather for those years.
Given that I was tethered to an office schedule roughly from 6 to 6 everyday, during the long northern Montana winters I went to work and came home in the dark, and chipped in with the evening chores of course in the dark after I was home.
The shortest days in Kalispell bring with them just over 8 hours of sunlight (sunrise today will be at 0825, with sunset at 445), with many a winter day spent shrouded in clouds with snow and a cold wind blowing.
Despite the inevitable busyness of the holiday season (winter was of course peak horse boarding season as well) we always looked forward to the winter solstice, as minutes of daylight began creeping back into our lives thereafter, up to those glorious days of summer that seemed to last forever, and we could be chasing the evening caddis hatch on the Flathead in the waning light almost ‘till 11.
Here’s to another turn of the solar season, and to longer (and better) sunlit days in 2021.
Image: An almost solstice sunset between Mammoth and Cooke City, YNP.
A hearty attaboy to the Wild Steelhead Coalition for their ongoing, and very tangible, support of WDFW law enforcement officers on the OP. Given the state of steelhead and salmon stocks in the Pacific Northwest, the willingness of poachers to overtly steal endangered stocks and some fishers and guides to thumb their noses at the regs is stunning.
In a season when, at least in certain circles in Washington and Oregon, it’s not at fashionable to support law enforcement, the WSC’s contributions detailed here are making a real difference.
Attaboy.
Today over on the Older Bolder Life I’ve posted a damned nifty recipe for A Tex Mex Take on Grilled Tacos al Pastor, which by the way is taken to a whole new taco level by finishing things off with the Grilled Pineapple Habanero Salsa from last week.
We’ve been chasing the perfect taco al pastor for a few months now, and have fiddled with the chile profile to suit what we think fits best, but by all means you should play around with it yourself as well.
Cheers.
A very nice piece dropped a few weeks ago in the NW Sportsman Magazine covering the arduous journey of a steelhead returning home to Idaho; Idaho has taken a beating over the past few years about management of their anadromous stocks – at least they’re tracking returning fish in pretty damn stunning detail.
Image via the linked article.
