Gov. Rick Snyder today directed the Michigan State Police to amend a recent disaster declaration for Grand Traverse County to include Leelanau County after severe thunderstorms caused widespread damage in both counties on Aug. 2.
The Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail within Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is now open from Glen Haven to Glen Arbor, the National Park reports. The DH Day Campground will reopen on Sunday, Aug. 16. Both areas have been closed since a severe storm on Sunday, Aug. 2 caused downed power lines and extensive tree damage.
After the shock of entering the dense-leaved maple canopy sheared to the ground and shouldered aside like the dead dropped in their tracks, after all that what I finally see are breaking points. The storm’s catastrophe bars comprehension except in stages, but every moment our eyes are open it becomes more real: massive trunks stacked like proverbial pick up sticks — all cliché but what else do I have in the first moments of first seeing? But this is no game. Still, I am so stunned I have no fresh language to describe this — it’s all too dense, thick with damage. The heart aches and the mind can’t find the way to the words, or even the real. When do I see the breaking points? The crack and twist, wood’s open wounds, the new right angle that is all wrong for the verticality of a tree. Not until the end.
“Where were you when . . .?” None of us will ever forget, and so now we will always trade our stories of this shared local tragedy. Waiting for Kelly McAllister to make me a malted, I gazed through the windows of McCahill’s Crossing Dairy Bar at the Glen Lake Narrows to see the eerie white cloud front race at terrific speed eastward across Little Glen Lake. Instantly the air was a greenish blue-black chaos of horizontal hail, thick rain, and leaves. Heedless of the danger, we gawked out the big windows at plunging power lines, frantic trees, and the growing line of cars refusing to cross the narrows and the bridge they couldn’t see because the lake was airborne. When the lights went out for good Kelly calmly called Consumers on her cell. We only had to inch around one tree as we drove homeward on Benzonia Trail minutes later. Countless others were not so lucky, and their stories have been our daily bread for a frantically memorable, strange, and communal cleanup of a week.
During one extraordinary week in August 2015, the sounds that dominated our town were the whirr of winds and the ugly crack of trees, followed by the buzz of chainsaws, the hum of generators, and the cheering and car honking as Consumers Power trucks and linemen rolled into town like a liberating army.
Townspeople are ebullient as they embark on an unfathomable cleanup task. Landowners with five, 10, 20 or more trees to remove are looking at a cost of thousands of dollars; in many cases, tens of thousands. Most insurance companies cover only a small portion — if any — of tree and brush removal that is not threatening insured structures or blocking roads.
What will the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore do with the Alligator Hill trail west of downtown Glen Arbor, which was decimated in the Aug. 2 megastorm. Hundreds of trees fell during the windstorm, punching enormous holes in the canopy and rendering the popular hiking trail unrecognizable.
From staff reports Glen Arbor web guru Molly Connolly has updated a website and Facebook page for the Glen Arbor Township that offers answers to frequently asked questions by local homeowners following the Aug. 2 megastorm, including a PayPal account for donations. The page does — or soon hopes to — include information about: getting rid […]
A mother of an infant was sitting in her tent at DH Day Campground, holding her baby, when the storm arrived Sunday afternoon. She suddenly realized that the tent wasn’t a safe place to be. So she and the baby moved into their vehicle. Within minutes a tree fell onto their tent. Had they still been there, it might have killed them. This story was told to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore chief interpreter Merrith Baughmann when National Park officials evacuated, and closed, the campground on Monday.
Glen Arbor was hit by a tornado on Sunday afternoon, Aug. 2. Winds of 93 miles per hour reported pummeled the town next to the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore at the height of the summer tourism season. As of Sunday night, the Glen Lake Fire Department was reporting that all roads into Glen Arbor, and around the Glen Lakes, are impassible. The Fire Department says clearing the trees and debris from the storm may take all night.