{"id":3799,"date":"2026-04-01T00:11:32","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T00:11:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=3799"},"modified":"2026-04-01T00:19:03","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T00:19:03","slug":"ftv-winter-wanderings-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=3799","title":{"rendered":"FTV: Winter Wanderings Revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When I saw the posting from the Calumet area on Friday, March 13, 2026, it reminded me that we were, indeed, having an old fashioned winter.\u00a0 The sign being held by a man next to a very large snowbank noted the Keweenaw Peninsula had been averaging 7.2 inches of snow per day.\u00a0 As of that Friday, the year\u2019s accumulation was up to 313 inches\u2026and the snow was still falling as a later updated report had pushed it to over 320 inches.\u00a0 The historic blizzard predicted for the March 13th weekend seemed to slide south and east of Ontonagon (try to hide your disappointment), but we still got a fair amount of snow and wind.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The central and eastern Upper Peninsula were not so lucky as two to three feet of snow fell in a band stretching from Green Bay to Marquette and all points east of that line.\u00a0 Any storm that closes schools and businesses for three week days ranks up there as a historically brutal storm.\u00a0 The odds are we won\u2019t get to the record of 390.4 inches that came down in the Keweenaw in the\u00a0 winter of 1978-79, but perhaps I shouldn\u2019t tempt the weather gods.\u00a0 With all things snow in mind, I dug back into the FTV archives to revisit some previous observations about winter in the Upper Peninsula:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A <\/span>Born Loser<\/span><\/i> cartoon from some time ago showed Brutus Thornapple (aka: The Born Loser) walking waist deep along a snowlined sidewalk.\u00a0 He was recounting how the snow had been deeper and the snow banks higher when he was a kid.\u00a0 Trailing behind is his son Wilberforce, but of course, all you can see of him is the top of his stocking cap.\u00a0 Okay, I get it:\u00a0 when we were younger and shorter, everything seemed bigger, but this cartoon reminded me of the couple of brutal winters that we experienced in the Marquette area in the first half of the 1960s.\u00a0 The snow was deeper and the banks higher than any other time I can remember, but of course, that was long before I moved west to the Big Snow Country and experienced some of the brutal winters that followed.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When we first lived on the corner of Norway and Center, Northern Michigan University was planning a major westward expansion.\u00a0 In the early 1960s, plans for the area now occupied by the West Science building, the library, and the dorm complexes on that side of campus were still on the drawing board.\u00a0 The landscape across the street from our house was a rolling grass field punctuated by a few big Maple and Oak trees plus a Norway and Jack Pine forest that covered the block between our house and Whitman Elementary school.\u00a0 The valley near the center of the field was occupied by a small creek (which swelled to a good size creek in the spring) that was also lined by patches of pine trees.\u00a0 When we purchased our first Ski-Doo, we had at least 100 acres of unoccupied space to our north, east, and west that gave us plenty of room to roam as soon as snow covered the stalks of field grass.\u00a0 This wide open space also meant that the northerly winds had nothing to slow them down.\u00a0 When blizzard force winds encountered the snow banks lining Center Street and Norway Avenue, the drifts formed in the lee of these banks were both deep and hard packed.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Norway Avenue was a primary school bus route and as such, we could count on having our street plowed early in the morning.\u00a0 I first noticed how severe the drifting could be when a big double-wing plow came down Norway after one storm, turned the corner on to Center and promptly got stuck in front of our driveway.\u00a0 No matter how much he rocked and jockeyed the big rig, it was stuck in the solid snow that had drifted six feet deep from one side of Center to the other.\u00a0 The city sent out a second double-wing plow along the short block of Center from Lincoln.\u00a0 In short order, we had two huge snow plows facing each other, stuck tight in the hard packed snow.\u00a0 Eventually, it took an equally large endloader to dig out the stuck plows, hook a chain to them, and pull them out one at a time.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When the snowplow spectacle was over, we still had to shovel out the snow that had not only drifted completely over Center Street, but had continued up our driveway to a depth of three to four feet.\u00a0 We got a car wide section of the driveway done only to find the banks on either side were so high, we couldn\u2019t toss the snow over them.\u00a0 My dad started using his old coal shovel to cut blocks of snow that we piled into our wood hauling trailer so we could unload the snow over the bank on the other side of the street.\u00a0 I normally used a good old U.P. snow scoop, but it was useless with this hard packed stuff.\u00a0 I can not remember ever working this hard and long on one snow drop.\u00a0 As the blocks of snow came off the trailer, it looked like we were about to build a very large igloo.\u00a0 When I see photos of men clearing streets and roads by hand after the great U.P. blizzard of 1938, I can relate to how much work was involved.\u00a0 The \u2018stuck plow\u2019 storm spurred both the city and my father to come up with a better snow removal plan.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0By the next winter, my dad had purchased a large Ariens snowblower and it didn\u2019t take much convincing for me to become the plow king of the family.\u00a0 In the morning, dad would usually just punch enough of a hole in the snowbank so he could get his car out for work.\u00a0 The three of us would bundle up and head to school leaving mom more or less snowbound until after we got home.\u00a0 I would hustle home, don my snowmobile suit, scarf and ski goggles and rush out to crank up the snowblower before my brother got home.\u00a0 As fired up as I was to get to the snowblower first, it never dawned on me that this was a race that Ron wasn\u2019t trying to win.\u00a0 It took awhile to chew through the bank.\u00a0 The plow dropped a wall of hard packed snow in our driveway on Center and at the entrance to our front door on Norway.\u00a0 Once the heavy stuff was out of the way, the drifts caused by the wind crossing the open fields were no match for Mr. Snowblower.\u00a0 Even after the dormitory buildings were completed across the field, the wind continued to play havoc with the streets and our driveway.\u00a0 I was presented with plenty of opportunities to throw snow around each and every time it snowed.\u00a0 By the end of each winter, there was a solid bank of snow next to our driveway that reached the bottom of the eight foot tall \u2018No Parking Here to Corner\u2019 sign. \u00a0 These layers of snow were tightly packed so this pile was always the last snow to disappear from our yard during the spring melt.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The City of Marquette did us one better by bringing in their own large snowblower.\u00a0 At least once or twice a year, they would cut back the banks on both sides of Norway and Center to give the wing plows more area to deposit snow.\u00a0 Unlike more typical residential areas (that had houses on both sides of the streets), they were able to just blast the snow in a high arc across the street as there were no homes on the east side.\u00a0 We had thought it might be fun to hide out in the woods and let this massive shower of snow rain down on us, at least until we noticed that there were also chunks of ice larger than footballs flying across the street.\u00a0 We had second thoughts after watching how the trees shook when these ice bombs hit.\u00a0 The craters they created in the areas of open snow were all the warning flags we needed to steer clear.\u00a0 Then, of course, we also had dad\u2019s ironclad rule:\u00a0 \u201cWhen they are snowblowing the streets, you stay in the house!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When the city crew was done, the neighborhood kids were left with a snow fort builder\u2019s paradise.\u00a0 The streets were now lined with six to eight foot high walls that just begged us to carve out a set of passages.\u00a0 Michigan Tech\u2019s snow statue builders had nothing on us as we hacked through, piled, and panked snow.\u00a0 We were also given further fatherly advice reminding us to not build anything that we couldn\u2019t get out of if it happened to cave in.\u00a0 Almost all of our creations had one tunnel leading to the street, but most of our construction was done from the top down with block walls piled along the top of the banks.\u00a0 We held many a raid on the string of snow forts up and down the street, but never would we think about destroying someone else\u2019s creation.\u00a0 Snowballs and compacted snow \u2018bombs\u2019 created by the plows were fine to lob at each other (no ice chunks, please).\u00a0 Had we taken any pictures of our creations, they too would have resembled photos of the Blizzard of 1938 when businesses downtown had to cut tunnels through the drifts to open their stores.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In his book <\/span>So Cold A Sky<\/span><\/i> (2006 – Cold Sky Publishing), former WLUC-TV meteorologist Karl Bohnak points out that the average snowfall for Marquette from 1885 to 1979 is 110 inches.\u00a0 He reports that the record snowfall for that area was recorded in 1890-91 (189.1 inches) even though Dr. G.H.Blaker, an early weather observer in Marquette, reported an astonishing 332 inches (or 27\u20198\u201d) of snow during the winter of 1856-57.\u00a0 Bohnak noted that weather records (for 1856-57) from Green Bay north indicate that it was a very long winter with an early onset, frequent snowfall, and some late season storms.\u00a0 He does not, however, address the discrepancy in these \u2018records\u2019.\u00a0 In 1978-79, my wife and I were dating when the Keweenaw Peninsula set the all-time snowfall record of 390.4 inches (some 32.5 feet).\u00a0 We spent a good deal of that winter shoveling her mother\u2019s driveway in Mass City.\u00a0 Even the amount of snow I had to move back in the big snow winters of the early 1960s pales in comparison to what 1978-79 brought to the Copper Country.\u00a0 Soon after we were married, we resolved to buy her mother a snowblower as soon as we were able so we could clear her driveway and still have time to spend more time visiting than shoveling.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There were other notable snow events that occurred over the years.\u00a0 Another story related by Bohnak in <\/span>So Cold A Sky <\/span><\/i>was a blizzard that struck just as people were traveling home after Thanksgiving of 1966.\u00a0 I remember this specific storm because our neighbors, the Bowers family, had taken a trip to Dixon, Illinois to visit Mr. Bowers\u2019 father.\u00a0 On the return trip, they ended up stranded at the Idletime Tavern between Marquette and Escanaba when US 41 was closed by the fierce storm.\u00a0 Mr. Bowers told my father that spending the night in a tavern wasn\u2019t all that comfortable but it sure beat spending it in their car stuck in a snowbank.\u00a0 Bohnak reminds readers that Escanaba is located in the \u2018banana belt\u2019* of the southern Upper Peninsula where the average snowfall registers a little below 60 inches per year.\u00a0 Nonetheless, a storm that only drops seven or eight inches of snow can build drifts ten to twenty feet high when the unrelenting north wind blows.\u00a0 Such was the case of the Thanksgiving 1966 blizzard when the Copper Country received only a couple of inches of snow while the central U.P. got a foot of the white stuff that the wind piled into high drifts.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0December 21 – 23, 1968 was another memorable storm that some tag as \u201cthe worst since \u201838\u201d.\u00a0 The 35 inches of snow that fell across the western U.P. (Marquette and areas in the eastern U.P. received a foot of snow) clogged roads and cancelled school.\u00a0 We were elated that our school Christmas vacation started early, but the raging storm pretty well kept us indoors.\u00a0 According to Bohnak, Ironwood business refused to close up in the middle of the Christmas shopping season and as a result, they did a brisk business in spite of the howling snow storm.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Since arriving in Ontonagon in 1975, we have seen our share of snow.\u00a0 The mother of all snowstorms, however, happened over a two day period in the mid-1980s.\u00a0 The storm dumped a whopping 55 inches of snow in the Ontonagon area.\u00a0 Our neighbor Bruce offered to pick up my brother (who was living next door to us at the time) and I to make a run to the grocery store.\u00a0 When he drove down the street, the snow was flying over the hood of his pickup truck to the point where we decided maybe it wasn\u2019t the greatest idea.\u00a0 The evening before we realized exactly how much snow had come down, I had cleared the driveway so I could drive my wife to her midnight shift at the hospital.\u00a0 We got stuck at the end of the street and I ended up snowblowing all the way to the car and back just to get it back into the garage.\u00a0 The hospital sent an ambulance to pick her up and between digging by hand and towing the ambulance with another neighbor\u2019s Dodge Power Wagon, it took two hours for them to navigate the mile between our house and the hospital.\u00a0 My wife often says she should have donned her cross country skis and saved everyone all of the digging.\u00a0 Should we have another snow drop like this in the future, one hopes the village will be able to keep at least one lane open per street for emergency vehicles.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The next morning, the village crews were slowly making progress on opening the snow clogged streets.\u00a0 The police offered to drive the hospital night shift home.\u00a0 The scene that greeted them\u00a0 downtown looked just like the historical photos in the aftermath of the 1938 storm that most consider the U.P. ‘s winter storm of the century.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I like to tell people new to the area that the earliest and latest snow days we have experienced at school were October 16th and May12th.\u00a0 I had to cancel field trips planned for both days, the later date because the freak Mother\u2019s Day storm had dumped three feet of snow on our destination at the Porkies (and a hefty amount in the lowlands).\u00a0 When we finally took the hike in early June, there were still snowdrifts on the north facing slope of the Escarpment west of Lake of the Clouds.\u00a0 What I usually keep to myself is the fact that these two snow days did not take place in the same year.\u00a0 I don\u2019t mind winter, but I would not like it to consume eight months of the year, either!<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0*Speaking of the Escanaba \u2018banana belt\u2019, (our son-in-law) Todd\u2019s folks live in Powers just outside of Esky.\u00a0 They sent us pictures of their car completely buried in snow by the latest St. Patrick\u2019s (or St. Urho\u2019s) Day storm.\u00a0 Our observation that some of our worst winter storms seem to be tracking south and east of Ontonagon can be backed up with photographic evidence.<\/span><\/p>\n

Top Piece Video:\u00a0 Nothing like having a band of California women singing an ode to winter . . .live from the House of Blues<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When I saw the posting from the Calumet area on Friday, March 13, 2026, it reminded me that we were, indeed, having an old fashioned winter.\u00a0 The sign being held by a man next to a very large snowbank noted the Keweenaw Peninsula had been averaging 7.2 inches of snow per day.\u00a0 As of that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3799"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3804,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3799\/revisions\/3804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}