2/16/05 – The Hansens are off for some skiing and snow boarding in British Columbia this week. Former Sawbill crew member Jeff Green will be taking care of business while we are gone. Jeff will be manning the office for the week, in between feeding the dogs and shoveling snow. I’m sure he’ll find time to fire up the sauna from time to time too.

Winter has returned to Sawbill after a couple of warm spells. We received a nice, fresh snow fall to make the trees beautiful again. The temperatures are dipping down near zero at night and staying well below freezing during the day. The local cross country and downhill ski areas are in prime condition. You can see trail updates for the Sugarbush Trails (accessed from the Sawbill Trail two miles north of downtown Tofte) and snow reports from Lutsen Mountains, our fine local downhill area.

Speaking of weather, we have been invited to submit little weather comments to Cathy Wurzer, host of "Morning Edition" on the Minnesota Public Radio network. Sawbill often has interesting weather and she will occasionally use that fact as part of her daily weather reports.

There is a bit of radio history connected to our weather here at Sawbill. Back in the ’30s through the early ’60s, Sawbill Lodge (our neighbor, now out of business) was owned by an interesting woman named Jean Raiken. Jean was an amateur radio operator who had a regular morning schedule (via morse code) with a fellow operator in Minneapolis. She would often report unusual weather to her friend, who in turn would call it in to the famous Boone and Erickson morning hosts at WCCO Radio. WCCO’s reports of the weather at Sawbill Lodge became a bit of a regional cult hit and were pretty famous at the time. – Bill