:: Walleye Opener Forecast, Issue 1
MN Anglers (myself included) are looking forward to a special day tomorrow...the opening of fishing season. It's a pretty big deal in the "Land of 10,000 Lakes". Even the Governor makes a special trip to some MN locale to drop a line. One thing has been pretty much all-too-common for openers...the weather sucks! We Minnesotans don't really know why or how we have come to deserve such a curse...but there you have it.
So what happened? My forecasts have been pretty much on par, but yesterday I had a reprive from sitting down and scouring the models. This weather system has gone from a series of short waves into a monster of a long wave. The same "Gitchigummi Low" that plagued us early this week has now become a "Wolverine Low", and has parked yet again over lake Michigan, just to the northwest of Muskegeon. If you have seen the national radar or satellite loops, you have witnessed the intense wrap-up the low has done - the cyclonic flow is evident, and it looks much like a giant land-based hurricane. Of course (and thankfully) it is not anything else like a hurricane, though...no thunderstorms or tornados to speak of. Winds have been clocked over 70 mph on the immediate backside of the low in parts of WI yesterday, but these too are not hurricane like.
This is (as described many times) just a really deep pool of cold air that has concentrated in the atmosphere. The axis of the low is now "tilting" or "retrograding" now as forward (eastward progress) remains blocked. Instead of a neat sphereical mass, the pool becomes egg shaped, and is tilting back towards MN. The models all pinpoint this in agreement. So the next question becomes precipitation chances. The ETA wants it to rain pretty nicely through Saturday evening, giving us about a 50/50 chance of precip throughout. Other models (AVN and GFS included) have smaller chances, but they do not guarantee dryness.
I really hesitated to write this forecast entry this AM. It is really too depressing, but hopefully the models are proven wrong and the low breaks free and pushes off. Once can always hope, right?
TODAY... Rain Rain Rain. High 47. Low tonight 40. Wind NNW 10-20 mph
SAT ... Cloudy. 40% chance of rain in AM, then some breaks in clds by 3pm, high 52. Low 45. Wind N 5-10 mph.
SUN ... Partly Cloudy, dry. High 63. Good day to go for a walk with your mom! Wind N 5-10 mph.
Will update if needed. By the way...tomorrow is full moon. Solunar tables will point to around noon for best fishing.