The Joys of Spring

Despite our recent blast from old man winter, spring is officially here. I am sure the U.P. has made the national news the past few days because of the late-season winter storm that dumped up to 20 inches of snow in some locations; particularly on the west end. I am pretty pleased that in the location I am blogging from, we only picked up a few inches of snow yesterday and already it is mostly gone. And with how wet and heavy the consistency of the snow is, it should melt pretty quickly once the temperatures warm up. It doesn't sound like we will get too warm today, with high temperatures only getting up into the middle 40's. But after today and a few days beyond, we'll get into the 50's and 60's. What a wild roller coaster of extreme weather up here. And prior to this winter storm, we had temperatures up into the 70's last Friday! Hopefully no more snow until next winter now.

The spring season is probably my second favorite of the four seasons. Spring officially starts for me once the snow begins to melt. The warm late-winter sun can really have an effect on the lingering snow pack, even if temperatures aren't that warm. Once you hear the water flowing down the side of the streets into catch basins - spring can't be that far away. Another sure sign of spring is when the birds start arriving from the south. The American Robin is the state bird of Michigan, and they are typically one of the first birds to arrive from the south. I've heard a few instances where some Robins have stayed around all winter as long as they have a sufficient supply of food, such as berries or fruit from trees. But that's pretty extreme as Robins are not that fond of the cold weather. I guess on average, once the snow begins to leave, then it's pretty easy to spot that first Robin of the season. However, I'm usually not surprised to see one even when we still have a pretty healthy snowpack on the ground. They get pretty anxious to move north and many times, the weather in Upper Michigan can be quite deceiving. Soon afterwards, the birds of the blackbird family start arriving like the Brown-headed Cowbirds, Grackles, and Red-Winged Blackbirds. The calls of birds quickly start to awaken a landscape that had been in a cold, lazy sleep from the deep of winter.

Soon or shortly before all the snow leaves, there is a definite hint of spring smells in the air. The major one is the smell of living "things" starting to grow up from the ground. For example, the grass. One way to conjure up the smell of growing grass is to use a garden rake to rake the dead blades of grass and other assorted debris that have landed on the lawn during the winter time. It usually helps for the temperatures to be warmer than the 40's and the sun to be brightly shining. This helps to awaken the grass and other plants even more. Then you have the spring bulbs starting to burst from the ground. Once the bulbs are fully grown, they can be an assortment of perennial plants like tulips, daffodils, hyacinths and many others. Most of them do not have a distinct spring smell but some do. As we move even further into the spring season, the sights, sounds, and smells of spring grow and grow. Not only do we have the young frogs or peepers begin to make their evening calls in the swamps and rivers of the country side, but the buds on trees begin to open up. It's not much longer before the wonderful summer season is officially upon us.

I am sure each and every person has their own sights and sounds that make it feel like spring is with us. The ones that I mentioned are probably the most obvious to me. That's not to say spring can be an ugly time of the year, too, because as we've seen the past few days around here - it definitely has its ugly side! Especially when the temperatures stay really chilly and it takes forever to melt the snow. Nothing can properly grow when it's that cold. Luckily for us, we've had some warm days dispersed in between the cold. I just hope this is the last that we've seen of the snow because after all, it's almost May! I thought April showers brought May flowers? But for us in the U.P., we always seem to end up with April snow showers than actual liquid precipitation more often than not. Here's to warmer spring days ahead!

It Keeps Snowing...and Snowing...and Snowing

Mother nature must have it out for us this spring. I thought our last snow event on the first day of the month would be it for this year. Sure, I could see a few snow showers and flurries in the air, but nothing accumulating; not until the new winter season at the end of this year. Boy, was I ever wrong. Our local National Weather Service is predicting anywhere from four to 12 inches of new snow from the latest storm churning to our south. The least amount of snow will fall along areas near the lakeshore to the most falling within the highlands.

I thought I would take some pictures "before" the storm arrives. As you can see in these photos, most of the snow is gone here in the city except for the piles. This particular photo is looking northeast and shows the last of the snow in the parking lot.

Here's a street view and shows the snow pile at a different angle of that in the previous shot. As you can see, there's really not a lot of snow in the neighborhood anymore!

A northbound shot of the same street. If you look closely, particularly around the edges, you can see a few snowbanks remaining.

Last but not least, a shot from the other end of the lot with a few remaining snowbanks.

There's actually quite a bit of grass visible around town. All it would take is one more "warm" week and all the rest of the snow would be totally gone. This latest storm will probably set us back a week and the weather gods are forecasting another impending snow storm of doom by the end of this week that could be quite similar to the storm of March 31 - April 1! So needless to say, winter isn't quite over yet here in Michigan's Upper Peninsula; not by a long shot. I'll wager a guess and say the snow might possibly be completely gone by May 1, but that might be overly optimistic. All we can do is cross our fingers and hope that spring will finally stay after this week's snow events. Although, we are due for a May snow storm!

Enough is Enough

Okay, enough with the snow already!! It's April 12th and last night into this morning, we picked up another six to eight inches of snow. I thought this was supposed to be spring. You know spring RAIN showers bring May flowers? Well, except for the first couple days of this month, it hasn't been very spring-like at all. And I am getting pretty sick of it. I guess we really are paying for our late winter, which didn't begin until the middle of January. Even though it feels like the middle of winter, it's warm enough to produce heavy wet snow, which is exactly what fell during this latest storm. There's nothing worse to drive in than slush (except maybe for ice), and I know from experience after my adventure today.

I was driving along M-35, which had already been plowed and was just mainly wet. I had to make a decision, whether to continue on this road, or travel a county road that is paved but usually poorly plowed after a significant snowfall. Since there were two other cars ahead of me that continued on M-35, I decided to take my chances on the county road. As I started on the county road, I could tell it had not been taken care of at all. It was very slushy and shortly thereafter, I began losing control of the car. I was not traveling all that fast, roughly 35 MPH when the car began swerving. I tried maintaining control of the vehicle and attempted to drive into the swerves. That did not seem to help at all and at one point my car was sliding perpendicular to the surface of the road. A truck was traveling in the opposite lane and had slowed to a stop once he saw how much trouble I was experiencing. I managed to straighten the car out somewhat but I was in the other lane of traffic. I just couldn't get back into my lane as I was getting very close to the truck ahead. So I went and slammmed on my brakes. I stopped comfortably ahead of the truck but I was close to the snowbank of the road. I tried backing up, but my tires were just spinning. So I drove forward a bit but went too far and my front bumper ended up ontop of the snowbank. I truly was stuck now.

The driver of the truck ahead came out and gave me some assistance. He had a shovel in the back of his truck and started shoveling some of the snow from under the front bumper. Another vehicle that was coming from the opposite direction stopped just behind where my car was. A gentleman came out to help. I got a shovel out from the trunk of my car and did some shoveling around the front left tire. We had it pretty well shoveled out and decided to give it a try. The two guys were pushing on the front of the car as I backed out. After a strong push from the guys, I was out of the snowbank and back onto the road. Realizing that the county road was just too trecherous to make it the remainder of the way, I decided to turn around (in a well plowed driveway) and drive back onto the well-plowed state highway. The rest of the drive back home was much better and the roads treated properly. But, I couldn't help second guessing myself in how I handled getting stuck. I don't know if there was much I could've done differently. I wasn't really going that fast and I probably would've spun out regardless. One thing I am thankful for is that I regained enough control of the vehicle in that I didn't end up going in the ditch. And with a little shoveling and a push from some very helpful people, I was back on the road.

So you can understand why I am getting sick of winter. I am sick and tired of driving in sloppy conditions and on poorly treated roads, I am sick of brushing off my car, I am sick of bundling up for the cold, and I am sick of shoveling. Please mother nature, once and for all, bring us spring back!!