I’m writing to you this week from Florida on a trip I planned as a mid-winter break. How was I to know that winter in Michigan has already broken?
I left for vacation just days after two tornadoes struck Michigan towns – in February. That had only happened once before in Michigan since records started being kept in 1950. And tornadoes were just a byproduct of a larger trend – the warmest winter on record for much of the state.
According to MLive chief meteorologist Mark Torregrossa, Grand Rapids, Lansing, Muskegon, Kalamazoo, Battle Creek, Flint, Saginaw, Traverse City, Houghton Lake and Alpena all set new records for the warmest February. Many other cities had their second- or third-warmest February ever.
And, he wrote in another post, the outlook for the beginning of March is “unreal,” with temperatures over 70 degrees in lower Michigan and the 60s elsewhere.
All of this may be cause for celebration for those who loathe winter driving, shoveling or shivering. But I happen to love outdoor activities, all four seasons.
As a boy, my family moved from Dearborn to Cheboygan, at the tip of northern lower Michigan. We moved into a house on Mullett Lake and I learned to ice fish from my Mom, snowmobile with my friends, and ski at Nubs Nob with a school club.
My Boy Scout troop would go on winter campouts, digging into multiple feet of snow to build shelter and snowshoeing through the dense forests to forage for firewood.
Back then, winter started in November and the first snow you saw then was the last snow that melted in the spring. The lake ice the western wind piled onto our lawn sometimes wouldn’t melt off until May.
No one complained – if you lived there or farther north, snow was a part of the culture and lifestyle and you simply dressed well and embraced it.
That meteorological era is apparently gone, but the culture rooted in snowy weather remains. An excellent piece this week by MLive reporter Rose White spelled out the consequences of a “lost winter” on a region with an economy rooted in winter activities.
One snowmobile rental operator told White that he had just seven days of quality snow this winter and lost 99 percent of his business. “You can definitely hear the skeleton of the economy,” he said.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signaled some relief this week when she announced that Economic Injury Disaster Loans are available to businesses in 42 counties currently under a federal drought declaration.
But that doesn’t change a long-term trend that has seen average temperatures rise 2 degrees in the Midwest and more erratic patterns in reliable snowfall in Michigan.
Typically, I’d return from a winter break in Florida and still get in three or four more days on the ski slopes. This year, I’ve skied just once. I’m now sitting by the Gulf of Mexico and seeing the exact same weather occurring in Michigan, so I’m guessing that will be that for this ski season – or perhaps even beyond.
“We need to start with a reality check of what is an ‘average’ afternoon temperature in Michigan in early March,” Torregrossa wrote. “Even I have lost touch with weather reality this ‘winter.’”
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