snow,rain,ice and more ice.

snow sticking to the jack pines, upper michigan

Wierd day yesterday. It snowed a couple of wet heavy inches. Then it rained. I went out and shoveled what I could outa the driveway(amounted to not much more than pushing slush around) and felt something like a shaved ice vendor at a state fair trying to scrape up layers of ice below the slush. Probably should have left the messy slush there, because everything froze with the temps near zero last night. All of that freshly shaved ice that proceeded to get rained on turned to skating rink smooth ice this morning, needed ice cleats to make it out to the mailbox and back today!
With this last storm, Grand Marais Mi got wind gusts up to 70 mph, Houghton, 54 mph. We were largely spared of any snow with the west winds, just real windy and cold.

Here's a crazy story downstate. Looks like a few people down there have it worse than us with the weather or weather phenomenon gone mad. The strong winds off Lake Michigan pushed huge ice piles into beachfront homes on Saginaw Bay downstate,story here. Ice actually piled into homes, up to 12 feet, and did a lot of damage. Happened in a matter of minutes. Guess this isn't the first time something like this has happened in that location. Take a look at all the pics. Some are incredible.