Can you have too much of a good thing?
Apparently if the good thing is lake-effect snow, which on Saturday blanketed the Empire area to the point that it buried the cross-country trail groomer for the Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail.
“It was a blizzard around Empire, and it stayed there all day,” reports Kerry Kelly, chair of the Friends of Sleeping Bear Dunes organization. “The people who were out there skiing were glad to see us coming.”
Measurable snow fell for 15 straight days ending Sunday at the volunteer Maple City weather station run through the National Weather Service. Through Monday some 46 inches had been reported this month at the station, about 16 inches above the average.
Lake-effect snow being its fickle self, Maple City was a few miles east of the heaviest band of snow to embrace the county. Empire was the bullseye.
Kelly had only his own observations to go by, but he figured that one to two feet of snow was on the ground in Glen Arbor after the storm. “In Empire, we had even more, maybe three feet in places. It was drifting, but not a lot. And that makes it easier for skiing,” he said.
It was all about the skiing for Kelly, who’s paid the same salary as hundreds of other Friends of Sleeping Bear volunteers.
Kelly piloted the John Deere Gator that was pulling a ski track groomer until he ran out of trail somewhere between the Dune Climb and Empire. He stepped off the machine and up to his waist in the white stuff.
Hard to blame him, though, as no one knew where the pavement was under that mountain of snow.
“You couldn’t see where the trail was,” he said.
Back on Jan. 13 a winter storm signaled a change of season in northern Michigan, dumping 10 inches of snow at Maple City with more snow following every day for the next week. It was a late but impressive arrival, whitening what had been bare ground for weeks.
But will all the outdoor fun end as quick as it came with showers forecast for today followed by daily highs in the 30s? What will that do for cross country skiing?
“We’ll have a compacted base of six to eight inches that will last through the warmup, for sure. It won’t be great for skate skiing, but really nice for snow shoeing or classic. For snow shoeing, it’s ideal. But you end up with slippery conditions. I recommend that people take along their Yak Tracks, because you never know how slippery it will be,” Kerry said.
Temperatures changed with the Jan. 13 storm, much to the delight of ice fishers. John Popa, who resides on Lake Leelanau in Bingham Township, declared south Lake Leelanau frozen on Jan. 16.
Popa has been tracking Lake Leelanau since 1981, when ice arrived ‘by x-mas.” It’s been since 2012 that the south lake froze at a later date — Jan. 21. That year also brought along a “very cold March and April” that kept the lake frozen until April 25 and evolved months later into the snowiest and coldest winter since records were kept in the 1950s.
From Jan. 16-20 overnight lows dipped to 5, 8, 13, 9 and 10 degrees, finally giving ice fishers something to work with. North Lake Leelanau is also frozen tight.
“Ice fishermen were out Saturday. I think there were four shanties. They are out for walleye, probably jigging and setting tip-ups,” Popa said. He estimated near-shore areas had four to five inches of ice.
Little Glen Lake, known for its perch fishery, is also covered. However, big Glen Lake remains open.
