A weird winter is ripe in the Land of the Sleeping Bear

By Norm Wheeler
Sun editor

Coach Tim Sutherland rounded the corner by the tennis courts in Glen Arbor with the top down on his new red convertible. Three of his friends, Charlie Crouch, Kim Guilbeau and Jennifer Moore waited on the courts, swinging their rackets and loosening up. Jason Homa jogged over from Cherry Republic to join them. Full sun shone down all over town. The trees were bare, the ground was brown, and it looked like any especially nice day in early spring or late fall. But it was Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2012, another weird day in a winter that, so far, wasn’t winter. The temperature was 55 degrees at 2 p.m. (meanwhile, it was 53 in San Francisco, 50 in St. Louis, and 68 in Tampa).

Sharon Scanlon drove past Art’s with all of her windows down and stopped to chat. She was headed for Florida the next day after spending $150 on a Homestead ski pass that had only translated into spending part of Dec. 26 with kids on the bunny hill.

“There’d better be some snow when I get back in February!” she warned.

We barely had a white Christmas, and now the white was gone. What was happening? The jet stream was still parked up over Canada, blocking the cold air and extending our mild autumn into what is usually deep winter. How was it affecting the town’s businesses?

Three students from the Leelanau School (Peter Myers, Alex Johnson, Tyler Johnson) canvassed the village of Glen Arbor to find out. Dana at LVR said that Leelanau Vacation Rentals has especially felt the pinch.

“When people can’t ski, they don’t rent condos at The Homestead, so it hurts businesses all over town,” she said.

Doug at Glen Arbor Outdoor (the guys who plow and shovel snow) reported that New Year’s Day was the only time they made any money all winter. The big New Year’s blizzard promising 10-20 inches of snow only delivered about 4-6 inches. Tim Nichols at Riverfront theorized that the dire blizzard forecast had actually chased people out of town on a weekend that is usually busier. Georgia at Northwood Home Center allowed that more skiers would mean more business, but one customer had been in to buy stuff to wash his windows since it wasn’t cold. At the Post Office, Drew admitted that it was making delivery of mail easier, and the weather wasn’t stopping the locals who always come in. Always a slow time of year at the Cottage Bookshop and Cherry Republic, it has even been slow at The Sportsman Shop because no one has been ice fishing — there was only thin skim ice on Little Glen, and not one shanty. That’s unheard of.

The non-winter had a couple of other odd twists. Anderson’s Market has taken a loss on its fresh produce because the nice weather allows people “to drive to the bigger stores in Traverse City.” And Deb at Bear Paw said, “I don’t think that it has really affected business what with all of the construction workers coming in for lunch.” With no snow to layoff the builders, the parade of pick-up trucks to and from job sites around Glen Lake has continued apace. One person’s loss is thus another one’s gain.

Meanwhile, Crystal River Outfitters owner Matt Wiesen and Peter Fisher kayaked the river and planned to do so every month if the weather held. Carol Hilton kept finding Petoskey stones while walking the beaches along Lake Michigan. Chris Sack propped the doors wide open at Great Lakes Tea & Spice as he pretended to dodge “snow-squitos”. Over in Empire, Friendly Tavern and Village Inn owner Frank Lerchen took his excited kids to the park for tennis, baseball and basketball, where they also rode their scooters and skateboards, and returned home for a bonfire with s’mores. Daredevil Keenan May surfed Lake Michigan, and didn’t have to dodge icebergs in the process, while his dad Paul kept running on the dunes trails.

Further downstream, Pat Stinson in Cedar raked her yard, washed her windows and actually swatted flies (bees and crickets were seen in Benzie County). In Traverse City, Laura Herd played outside with her remote-controlled car, and this year she actually cleaned up the backyard before it was inundated by snow. In Frankfort, Randi Lyn used the balmy weather to continue training for her Run Across Palestine next month, and in Benzonia, Timothy McKay didn’t have to put the chains on his unicycle, though the owner of Fernand Footwear did have to worry about his maple trees, which were running sap three months too soon.

Everyone shook their heads about the cause of the mild weather: “Just a pattern — it’s happened before — it’ll change — just repeats itself — haven’t got a clue — strange patterns have been occurring all over — it’s just a cycle.”

So after one of the best summers ever for businesses in the Land of the Sleeping Bear, many were lamenting the lack of the other big season. Two days later, on Friday the 13th, the temperature had dipped into the teens, and we awoke to see that several inches of snow had fallen during the night.

All of the schools were closed, creating a four-day Martin Luther King holiday weekend. A posse of college students arrived to play pool at Art’s. Three tour buses rolled up Western Ave. to deliver over 70 fraternity brothers and alums from Ann Arbor to The Homestead. Knit caps, scarves and heavy coats were everywhere. It was bitterly cold and snowy, and everybody was happy again.

This GlenArbor.com story is sponsored by the Glen Lake Artists Gallery, showcasing the fine art and craft of some of the finest artists in northwest Michigan.