During the night trees snapped and limbs crashed around my house, but Saturday was characterized by an uncommon quiet. Even the snowmobilers that regularly race the nearby road were nowhere to be heard. I suppose they too were home digging out from the overnight snowfall — 29 inches in some places, I’m told — and attending to basic survival.
Northern Michiganders, and residents of Leelanau and Benzie counties in particular, faced the worst snowstorm in decades this past weekend. Old Man Winter threw one of his last tantrums of the season Friday night, and by 8 p.m. much of the area had lost electricity. Here are a few perspectives from your northern Michigan neighbors on how they weathered the great winter storm of 2012.
Much of Leelanau County is still without electricity following Friday night’s massive late-winter snowstorm that snapped trees and left roads impassible all over northern Michigan. Expect a story later this week about how Leelanau County residents fared during this 2012 “Snowpocalypse” — one of the worst storms to hit the region in decades.
Are you nuts if you jump through frozen ice into a frigid lake in February? Perhaps. But if you jump, take a victory lap, and then jump again, you’re definitely nuts! Check out this video of Empire resident Gerry Shiffman (with Jack Gyr and others) taking part in the annual Polar Dip as part of Empire’s Winterfest this past weekend.
Art’s Tavern owner Tim Barr turned 60 years young on Feb. 16. Nearly 100 Glen Arbor locals came out to the tavern to celebrate him. Riverfront Deli owner Sue Nichols baked these cupcakes in Tim’s likeness (photo below), and Beach Bard Norm Wheeler recited the following poem for Tim (adapted from Stone Circle founder Max Ellison’s poem “50”):
Ninety-nine percent of sane humans wouldn’t consider jumping through a hole in the ice into freezing water. Yet every February, 50 or more people scream and laugh and jump into South Bar Lake in Empire.
The Glen Arbor Township Board held a special meeting today to respond to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) regarding an application for a marina expansion on Big Glen Lake. On the Narrows Marina owner Conor McCahill seeks to add an additional 39 boat slips on a new dock, bringing the total to 46, as well as increase the moorings to 16.
It was the time of Winterfest, mid-February, in the village of Empire, when temperatures dipped well below the freezing mark. Snow had been shoveled to clear an area for ice-skating on South Bar Lake. Earlier in the day a fire truck had been there to spray a fine mist of water making a smooth surface.
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?
U.S. Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin say that Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore has received a $1.3 million federal transportation grant to continue work on a 27-mile hike-and-bike trail.