USPHC Friends and Family,

Writing to speak directly to you all. I’ve appreciated all the phone calls, texts, and in-person questions, so I thought a quick note might be helpful. 

First, we have not made any decisions to change our schedule of events. As we shared earlier, our current plan is to make any announcement on Sunday the 14th. There’s a chance that our announcement includes a “we need another day” to decide our direction. More on that in a second, but that would imply that things are trending positive but we need to confirm.

Second, decisions on Opening Weekend and Golden Weekend are independent of each other. Given the forecast, a week is a long time, and a lot can change.

Now, what are we actually looking at, and what’s going into our decisions? I’m about to tell you all of the secrets to my genius planning. This is high-security level stuff. (My kids are old enough to read these, so trying to keep them thinking I’m smart for as long as possible.)

1/8 - Yesterday, there was no ice on Nokomis. None. Yesterday was a cool day, but not cold. Today, there’s 1-2”, which is the base we need. 

I watch weather.com and a few other weather sources and models. We want to see positive trends. Forecasts beyond 4-5 days can drastically change. We don’t trust the numbers as gospel, but trends are good. Over the past 5 days, the longer term (through Opening Weekend) forecasts have been trending to very cold temps. That’s good. 

A few years back, I googled “how fast does ice form on lakes,” and this math equation showed up, so I went with it. “Ice will increase at a rate of 1 inch/15 freezing degree days. For example, if the average temperature over the last 24 hours was 25 degrees, subtract that from 32 degrees which will give you 7. Put 7 over 15 like a fraction, 7/15 equals about a 1/2 inch of ice over a 24-hour period.”

It seems to have been at least directionally close. Which means, if the current weather.com forecast through the weekend doesn’t change much (or changes down), we believe we will have ice to be in great shape by the beginning to middle of next week. Note, the ice is currently not safe, so don’t go on it. Needs the sustained cold planned for this week and weekend. 

So, we’re cautiously optimistic. 

Know this. We understand and appreciate everything each and every one of you do to get here. We know it’s expensive. We know you have to take vacation days. Please know that we will do everything possible to ensure these two weekends happen. 

To that end, we’ll need you to be flexible and patient. Our goal is to have the schedule published by the evening of the 15th. It may be the 16th. It most likely will change leading up to Friday.

With all of the love in my heart,

Commish