Battle Creek

Day one of the meltdown, thanks to a wicked inversion, wasn't too bad. Battle Creek was powdery with a good classic track, and would have been perfect save three very minor defects:

a) the corner at the bottom of the first hill off the lighted loop has some dirt. Stay left to avoid it.
2) the pole plants on the outside of the classic track are soft and break through in places.
d) the classic track is obliterated in a couple sections, most notably up the big hill off the prairie.

Other than asking skaters to please stay in the skate lanes, Battle Creek is great. Hopefully it will survive the melt.

As for the meltdown—the latest model runs give a slight bit of hope on a few fronts. First, the sun is still rather low in the sky, so even temperatures of 35—especially if they don't hit until 3 in the afternoon or so—won't do too much damage to the snow. Second, next weeks temperatures don't look to get much above freezing, so there could be a lot of 35˚ afternoons with 20˚ nights. Also, the storm which may be headed our way next week is all over the map, so it could wind up throwing down some snow. So there's something to do the snow dance for, anyway.