IN MORE THAN FIVE DECADES here in the 906, I had never seen snow piled up like this. Yes, we’d had more total snowfall, but it would usually melt a little and what was left was manageable.
The winter of ’26 has offered no such relief. Nothing but snow, and more snow.
Total Impact
There was so much snow, residential streets were reduced to one lane. They turned into literal obstacle courses with cars playing a cordial game of chicken just to get to the next street… which was also one lane.
Snow was piled so high, corners became tests of courage as you’d gingerly nose into the street to see if cars were coming. By the time you’re out that far, you might as well go, and hope for the best.
Parking lots were one-dimensional fields of white with indiscernible lanes for traffic and parking.
Roofs collapsed under the weight of the snow, thankfully, with no one underneath.
Plow drivers were tasked with extended shifts, while the snow coming off their blades was rejected by the banks for which it was intended.
Schools and businesses closed, travel of all kinds was discouraged.
Mail carriers, with the streets as their workplace, faced unusually harsh conditions and still got the job done.
With waist high snow, dogs were no longer imprisoned by their fenced-in yards, and were able to simply step over and out. Likely searching for a place to go that wasn’t waist high for them.
Sidewalk salt was being sold on the black market.
Ski hills were closed, and snowmobile trails succumbed to the unrelenting onslaught.
Many of us were either stuck, or helping someone else who was stuck.
We were sequestered in our homes, like the first days of the pandemic. There was no place to go, anyway. Not much open in town. And the Mackinac Bridge? Closed. The U.P. was snowed in.
Then What?
Then we got three more feet. THREE MORE FEET OF SNOW!
You’ve to be kidding. We just went through two of the most severe winter months we’d had in years, and then… March checked in, with a St. Patrick’s day storm for the ages.
A winter storm with a delicate name, Elsa cranked up the clouds and turned into our own Epic Fury in a New Swanzy minute. Social media lit up, with each story more dire than the last. If your door opened out… it didn’t open. If it opened in, it merely exposed a wall of white.
March Madness took on a whole new meaning.
Saw it Coming
As impressive as our winter weather has been, I’m equally impressed with our meteorologists ability to predict the what, where, and when, with uncanny accuracy.
While we used to believe our weather was unpredictable, advances in forecasting have rendered that untrue. They were warning us about this storm days in advance, and we responded. Store shelves were emptied in anticipation, and it wasn’t just toilet paper. (Side note… did we ever figure out why TP was the one item required to survive Covid 19?)
Acknowledgments
While we’re thanking plow drivers for an effort above and beyond the call of duty, and praising mail carriers for their perseverance, and acknowledging the foresight of the forecasters, we also need to mention our Marquette Board of Light and Power.
Did they restore my power within minutes of the lights going out? No, they didn’t. Because my lights never went out!
In the midst of arguably the greatest storm of this century, with winds threatening to replace my roof for free… my lights stayed on. They never even flickered. Somebody over there on Wright Street knows what they’re doing, and we’re all better off for it.
One to Remember
Were there other stories to cover this week? Probably. But this was a singular, historic event. The stories of Elsa will be shared for years to come.
And as long as we’re going to have severe weather, we might as well set some records. And we did. (Seen above.) It wasn’t just a passing storm, Elsa was a two-day extreme weather event, which, when she finally moved on, gave way to a few more hours of lake effect snow. Why not?
Are we done? I doubt it. It’s only March 20th. I recall getting 20 inches of the stuff back in 1990… on the 12th of May! Don’t put the shovels away quite yet.
Finally… somewhere in the spirit of adding insult to injury, today is the first day of spring. It looks like Mother Superior missed the memo.