It’s winter, but the first half of January didn’t look or feel like it. “It’s milder than normal. It may turn colder toward the end of the month,” said Jeff Zoltowski, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. Leelanau resident and retired meteorologist Dave Barrons, a familiar face on local television for many years, says climate change is making expectations based on past years less reliable. “We’ve added more carbon dioxide to the air. Carbon dioxide holds more heat,” he said.
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Folks around town can’t exactly remember the last time the surface of Big Glen Lake froze by early January. Some say 15 years, some say 50. Captain Bob Smith at the Sportsman Shop says Big Glen doesn’t typically freeze until Martin Luther King, Jr., weekend in late January. Regardless, by Jan. 2, there were ice shanties on Big Glen (Little Glen had them by mid-December). A week later, the hum of snowmobiles could be heard from Glen Craft Marina.