November 7, 2023 • 11 mins
Dealing with heavy snowfall during the winter months is a way of life for the residents of Northern Michigan. With an average snowfall that can exceed 100 inches in some areas, the communities have adapted in unique and effective ways.
Preparation for the snow season begins early. Residents ensure their homes are well-insulated, with sufficient heating systems to withstand the biting cold. Snow tires and chains become standard for vehicles as locals aim to maintain mobility in slippery conditions. Additionally, there's a significant investment in snowblowers and plows for personal use.
The local governments also play a crucial role. Budgets for winter are carefully planned to ensure that snowplows are in good condition and ready to clear the streets. There's a remarkable efficiency in the deployment of these services, often working throughout the night during heavy snowfall to minimize disruption to daily life.
Community spirit shines through during the winter months. Neighbors often help each other, especially in assisting those who are elderly or disabled with snow removal. This camaraderie extends to sharing resources like food and water during particularly severe storms that may lead to temporary isolation.
Education on dealing with winter conditions is also a key factor. Schools teach children about frostbite and hypothermia prevention, while local organizations provide winter survival tips. There are also community-led initiatives to ensure everyone has adequate clothing, such as coat drives.
Despite the challenges, the residents of Northern Michigan embrace the winter season with a sense of pride and enjoyment. Winter sports like skiing, snowboarding, and ice fishing are not just recreational activities but also a part of the cultural identity of the region.
In summary, Northern Michigan's approach to managing snowfall is a blend of preparation, community support, and embracing the harsh yet beautiful winter environment. This resilience allows the region to not only endure but also thrive during the snowy months.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Mike Dell's world number 394 for November 7th, 2023.
Hit it again. What a dummy. I.
(00:36):
Ah, there it is.
And here I am. How's it going? Let's see.
Well,
today being the 7th ofNovember for a lot of
the northern parts of the world,
it is getting close to wintertime and winter time. You know,
I like to think of winter time as atime that all the events slow down,
(01:01):
you know, other than the holiday stuff,
but it's not as busy as summer.
Summer always seems that there's alwayssomething every week, every weekend,
every day after work, blah, blah,blah, blah, blah. Well, you know,
now it gets dark at five 30 here, uh,
in Northern Michigananyway, and, you know,
everything kind of hunsdown and, you know,
(01:25):
I tend to get a lot of reading doneand, and stuff like that, you know,
stuff that normally I wouldn'tget to do. But on the other hand,
I gotta deal with snow. Notthat it's terrible. And,
you know, back a few yearsago, or well, many years ago,
snow used to be a lot,you know, a lot more than up here.
(01:50):
And now it's, uh, you know,going, getting warmer and, uh,
less snowy. Last year, I only had toblow the driveway out maybe three times,
and I don't ever remember thesnow sticking around completely.
Like you, you know, it used to be likemid-November, it would snow and that, oh,
that's the one that's gonna stick.
(02:12):
And we wouldn't see the lawnuntil sometime in March.
But now it always seemsonce a month we get a thaw.
We may get a bunch of snow, but we'llget a, a day or two or three that'll, uh,
we'll thaw. And that's, eh,I don't know. I, I guess,
I guess maybe it's aclimate change, but I,
(02:33):
I believe that climate changeclimate's change all the time.
We used to be in an ice age,
so obviously since the iceage it's warmed up a bit.
And I think it may continue to do thatfor a while and then a little cycle back
and, and all that. And, uh,you know, like I said, I,
I'm not denying thatthe change is happening,
(02:54):
but I kinda wonder about the cause.
I don't think the factthat, uh, you know, I,
I drive around in an old car thatdoesn't have a catalytic converter is
contributing to anything other than, yeah,it kind of stinks. But I don't think,
uh, we're gonna hurtourselves with it. I mean,
one volcano puts out more crap than,uh, than all the cars in the world,
(03:20):
you know, as we've talked aboutbefore, I don't think the, uh,
electric cars are gonna be the answer,answer completely. Maybe, you know,
hybrids, I'm cool withthat. But, uh, you know,
as far as fully electric vehicles and,you know, until there's a charger, uh,
or multiple chargers in, uh,
in quantities similar to gas stations,I don't think it's gonna work.
(03:44):
And of course, our griddoesn't really handle it well,
but let's get back out on thesubject at hand. Snow, uh, you know,
up here we deal with it in,in, in a lot of different ways.
Our County Road commission hasthese great big dump trucks with big
plows on 'em, and they fill'em full of sand and salt,
(04:05):
and they spread sand and salt all overthe roads, and that makes the cars rust.
And, uh, that kind of sucks, but, uh,
at least you don't slide offinto the ditch. You know,
all the big stores with the big parkinglots, they have their snow crew,
and usually they got a couple of bigtractors with, or loaders with, uh,
(04:26):
snow buckets. If you've ever seena snow bucket, it looks like a,
a flat horseshoe, uh, aboutfour feet high and, uh,
you know, two or three times the,the length of a normal loader bucket.
And then it still has kind of the sameloader bucket towards the back of it.
But that way they can push a wholebunch of snow and then kinda lift it up.
(04:49):
Big piles. You know, in theWalmart, uh, area, you know,
in Traverse City here, there's a wholesection of the parking lot by, you know,
the end of winter there's, you'rejust a giant mountain of snow,
and that's always the lastsnow to, uh, melt.
And of course there's a lot of, uh,
pickup trucks and whatnot runningaround with plows on the front. And,
(05:12):
uh,
they do people's driveways andsmaller parking lots and businesses
and whatnot. And the city,they, you know, in the,
in the main part ofdowntown Traverse City,
they plow it all into a bigfurrow in the middle of the road.
And then they have a giant snowblowerthat blows it into semi trailers,
um, you know, open top dump trailers,
(05:33):
and then they take it out to a lotthat they have just outside of town,
and they got a giant mountain of snowover there. So that's kind of cool.
Uh, as far as, you know, people athome, you know, there's the snowblowers,
there's shovels of course, and,uh, some people have tractors with,
with plows or snowblowers on 'em,or sometimes both, or loaders. Um,
(05:56):
you know, I've got a tractorwith a plow blade and I got, uh,
a couple of walk-behind snowblowers, andI even have a blower for the tractor,
but the walk-behind ones are easierto deal with, so I never use it.
But you know, we, we, wedeal with it, we deal with,
my dad always jokes he says, he says,yeah, I'm getting tired of winter.
(06:16):
I'm just gonna drive south with asnowblower in my back, back of my truck.
And then, uh, the firststop place I stop where, uh,
I ask somebody what that is andthey say, oh, never saw one before.
That's where I wanna be.I, I still don't mind the winter.
Of course, you know,
my wife is retired and I amstill working, but commuting,
(06:39):
you know, 30 feet out my backdoor, so it's not a hardship,
even if it does snow a foot. Okay.
I just have to kick my boots a little bitat the door when I come in the office.
And it's nice and toasty warm in here.It's nice and toasty warm in the house.
If I've gotta go somewhere, I can go out,
start the truck and come back in thehouse and wait for it to warm up,
(07:02):
you know? So I, I'm never in thatbig a hurry to go anywhere, you know,
I don't have to commute to a jobwith that involves a vehicle.
So I don't have to scrape windowsor anything like that unless,
unless I've got time. And thisyear with my shoulder, uh, surgery,
I, I'm not gonna be able to operatea snowblower probably all winter, uh,
because it's, you know, ittakes a few months before, uh,
(07:24):
that's all back up to fight and strength.
So we'll likely hire someoneto take care of the snow
blowing slash shoveling chores. You know,
between the house and the office I use,
I got a small snowblower and that'swhat I usually do is, you know,
do the walks with that.
And they do a trail around the backyardfor the beagles so they don't have to
(07:45):
get in the deep snow if they don'twant to. But it, uh, you know,
that's how we deal withsnow up here. You know,
just like people that live in Phoenixor some other hot desert area,
Vegas, whatever,
deal with the heat in the summer,you know, I don't care who you are,
(08:07):
120 degrees is hot. 105 degreesis hot, even if it's a dry heat.
'cause as you know, a snowblower,uh, snowblower,
a blowtorch and a campfireare both dry heat.
So at some point it justgets too damned hot.
So they deal with it withair conditioning. Well, we do it the other way around.
(08:28):
We deal with the heat. You know,most, most places have, you know,
most houses have at least two ways ofheating our house. 'cause you never know,
the furnace might crap out orwhatever. I've got, uh, you know,
just electric heat in thisoffice, a little Eden.
P you might hear it runningin the background, although it's pretty darn quiet.
(08:49):
And if that crap, well if, if theheater craps out, I got another one.
But if the electric crap's out,
well I wouldn't really be out in theoffice if the electric crapped out.
But I do have a generator so I canrun electric heat in the house.
We have a fireplace and gasheat, you know, furnace.
(09:10):
So if the power goes out or thegas furnace goes bad, you know,
we can minimally heat with the fireplace.
And we always keep enough wood onhand to last a few days anyway.
I think we got like half acord or something, you know,
'cause we've really never experiencedtoo many power outages here.
That's because there's not a lotof electric cars up here. If,
(09:32):
I guess if there was more electriccars, we'd have power outages,,
you think? But, uh, yeah,
so it's not like the end ofthe world to deal with snow.
We just happen to be in a reallysnowy part of the country. Uh,
it's not the worst snowy partof the country. You know, the,
the buffalo, New York tends toreally get hammered and you know,
(09:55):
there's places in Minnesotathat get hammered pretty bad.
And of course Alaska and outin the mountains and the west,
but a lot of people don't live up there.Or if they do live up there, they,
they're prepared for it. You know,the up of Michigan, you know,
gets a lot of snow and Northernlower gets a lot of snow.
And you know, we're just used to it. Weget the thing called lake effect snow,
(10:17):
where the cold air blows over the, uh,
warm water of Lake Michiganor relatively warm water,
or Lake Michigan. And it dumpsall the snow on us.,
uh, we're a little close to the lakehere, so it blows over us mostly,
but a little bit inland.It gets real deep at times.
(10:37):
It could be a sunny day and we'llget a six inches of snow. So
that's, uh, that's just the way it is.And, you know, most people adapt well,
uh, where to wherever they're living.
I lived in Iceland for a year and upthere they didn't get a lot of snow.
They got some, didn't get a lot of snow,
but they get a lot of wind andyou just get used to it, you know,
(11:00):
a 40 mile an hour wind,
you just dress for it and youknow you're prepared for it.
And it just wasn't that bad, you know,
it was actually milderwinters than here. Just,
they lasted for six monthsinstead of four or three,
you know, whatever. So anywho, that's gonna be my, uh,
(11:22):
episode for today. We'llcatch you tomorrow.
Mike Dell's world number 394 for November 7th, 2023.
Hit it again. What a dummy. I.
(00:36):
Ah, there it is.
And here I am. How's it going? Let's see.
Well,
today being the 7th ofNovember for a lot of
the northern parts of the world,
it is getting close to wintertime and winter time. You know,
I like to think of winter time as atime that all the events slow down,
(01:01):
you know, other than the holiday stuff,
but it's not as busy as summer.
Summer always seems that there's alwayssomething every week, every weekend,
every day after work, blah, blah,blah, blah, blah. Well, you know,
now it gets dark at five 30 here, uh,
in Northern Michigananyway, and, you know,
everything kind of hunsdown and, you know,
(01:25):
I tend to get a lot of reading doneand, and stuff like that, you know,
stuff that normally I wouldn'tget to do. But on the other hand,
I gotta deal with snow. Notthat it's terrible. And,
you know, back a few yearsago, or well, many years ago,
(01:50):
And now it's, uh, you know,going, getting warmer and, uh,
less snowy. Last year, I only had toblow the driveway out maybe three times,
and I don't ever remember thesnow sticking around completely.
Like you, you know, it used to be likemid-November, it would snow and that, oh,
that's the one that's gonna stick.
(02:12):
And we wouldn't see the lawnuntil sometime in March.
But now it always seemsonce a month we get a thaw.
We may get a bunch of snow, but we'llget a, a day or two or three that'll, uh,
we'll thaw. And that's, eh,I don't know. I, I guess,
I guess maybe it's aclimate change, but I,
(02:33):
I believe that climate changeclimate's change all the time.
We used to be in an ice age,
so obviously since the iceage it's warmed up a bit.
And I think it may continue to do thatfor a while and then a little cycle back
and, and all that. And, uh,you know, like I said, I,
I'm not denying thatthe change is happening,
(02:54):
but I kinda wonder about the cause.
I don't think the factthat, uh, you know, I,
I drive around in an old car thatdoesn't have a catalytic converter is
contributing to anything other than, yeah,it kind of stinks. But I don't think,
uh, we're gonna hurtourselves with it. I mean,
one volcano puts out more crap than,uh, than all the cars in the world,
(03:20):
you know, as we've talked aboutbefore, I don't think the, uh,
electric cars are gonna be the answer,answer completely. Maybe, you know,
hybrids, I'm cool withthat. But, uh, you know,
as far as fully electric vehicles and,you know, until there's a charger, uh,
or multiple chargers in, uh,
in quantities similar to gas stations,I don't think it's gonna work.
(03:44):
And of course, our griddoesn't really handle it well,
but let's get back out on thesubject at hand. Snow, uh, you know,
up here we deal with it in,in, in a lot of different ways.
Our County Road commission hasthese great big dump trucks with big
plows on 'em, and they fill'em full of sand and salt,
(04:05):
and they spread sand and salt all overthe roads, and that makes the cars rust.
And, uh, that kind of sucks, but, uh,
at least you don't slide offinto the ditch. You know,
all the big stores with the big parkinglots, they have their snow crew,
and usually they got a couple of bigtractors with, or loaders with, uh,
(04:26):
snow buckets. If you've ever seena snow bucket, it looks like a,
a flat horseshoe, uh, aboutfour feet high and, uh,
you know, two or three times the,the length of a normal loader bucket.
And then it still has kind of the sameloader bucket towards the back of it.
But that way they can push a wholebunch of snow and then kinda lift it up.
(04:49):
Big piles. You know, in theWalmart, uh, area, you know,
in Traverse City here, there's a wholesection of the parking lot by, you know,
the end of winter there's, you'rejust a giant mountain of snow,
and that's always the lastsnow to, uh, melt
And of course there's a lot of, uh,
pickup trucks and whatnot runningaround with plows on the front. And,
(05:12):
uh,
they do people's driveways andsmaller parking lots and businesses
and whatnot. And the city,they, you know, in the,
in the main part ofdowntown Traverse City,
they plow it all into a bigfurrow in the middle of the road.
And then they have a giant snowblowerthat blows it into semi trailers,
um, you know, open top dump trailers,
(05:33):
and then they take it out to a lotthat they have just outside of town,
and they got a giant mountain of snowover there. So that's kind of cool.
Uh, as far as, you know, people athome, you know, there's the snowblowers,
there's shovels of course, and,uh, some people have tractors with,
with plows or snowblowers on 'em,or sometimes both, or loaders. Um,
(05:56):
you know, I've got a tractorwith a plow blade and I got, uh,
a couple of walk-behind snowblowers, andI even have a blower for the tractor,
but the walk-behind ones are easierto deal with, so I never use it.
But you know, we, we, wedeal with it, we deal with,
my dad always jokes he says, he says,yeah, I'm getting tired of winter.
(06:16):
I'm just gonna drive south with asnowblower in my back, back of my truck.
And then, uh, the firststop place I stop where, uh,
I ask somebody what that is andthey say, oh, never saw one before.
That's where I wanna be
Of course, you know,
my wife is retired and I amstill working, but commuting,
(06:39):
you know, 30 feet out my backdoor, so it's not a hardship,
even if it does snow a foot. Okay.
I just have to kick my boots a little bitat the door when I come in the office.
And it's nice and toasty warm in here.It's nice and toasty warm in the house.
If I've gotta go somewhere, I can go out,
start the truck and come back in thehouse and wait for it to warm up,
(07:02):
you know? So I, I'm never in thatbig a hurry to go anywhere, you know,
I don't have to commute to a jobwith that involves a vehicle.
So I don't have to scrape windowsor anything like that unless,
unless I've got time. And thisyear with my shoulder, uh, surgery,
I, I'm not gonna be able to operatea snowblower probably all winter, uh,
because it's, you know, ittakes a few months before, uh,
(07:24):
that's all back up to fight and strength.
So we'll likely hire someoneto take care of the snow
blowing slash shoveling chores. You know,
between the house and the office I use,
I got a small snowblower and that'swhat I usually do is, you know,
do the walks with that.
And they do a trail around the backyardfor the beagles so they don't have to
(07:45):
get in the deep snow if they don'twant to. But it, uh, you know,
that's how we deal withsnow up here. You know,
just like people that live in Phoenixor some other hot desert area,
Vegas, whatever,
deal with the heat in the summer,you know, I don't care who you are,
(08:07):
120 degrees is hot. 105 degreesis hot, even if it's a dry heat.
'cause as you know, a snowblower,uh, snowblower
a blowtorch and a campfireare both dry heat.
So at some point it justgets too damned hot.
So they deal with it withair conditioning. Well, we do it the other way around.
(08:28):
We deal with the heat. You know,most, most places have, you know,
most houses have at least two ways ofheating our house. 'cause you never know,
the furnace might crap out orwhatever. I've got, uh, you know,
just electric heat in thisoffice, a little Eden.
P you might hear it runningin the background, although it's pretty darn quiet.
(08:49):
And if that crap, well if, if theheater craps out, I got another one.
But if the electric crap's out,
well I wouldn't really be out in theoffice if the electric crapped out.
But I do have a generator so I canrun electric heat in the house.
We have a fireplace and gasheat, you know, furnace.
(09:10):
So if the power goes out or thegas furnace goes bad, you know,
we can minimally heat with the fireplace.
And we always keep enough wood onhand to last a few days anyway.
I think we got like half acord or something, you know,
'cause we've really never experiencedtoo many power outages here.
That's because there's not a lotof electric cars up here. If,
(09:32):
I guess if there was more electriccars, we'd have power outages,
you think? But, uh, yeah,
so it's not like the end ofthe world to deal with snow.
We just happen to be in a reallysnowy part of the country. Uh,
it's not the worst snowy partof the country. You know, the,
the buffalo, New York tends toreally get hammered and you know,
(09:55):
there's places in Minnesotathat get hammered pretty bad.
And of course Alaska and outin the mountains and the west,
but a lot of people don't live up there.Or if they do live up there, they,
they're prepared for it. You know,the up of Michigan, you know,
gets a lot of snow and Northernlower gets a lot of snow.
And you know, we're just used to it. Weget the thing called lake effect snow,
(10:17):
where the cold air blows over the, uh,
warm water of Lake Michiganor relatively warm water,
or Lake Michigan. And it dumpsall the snow on us.
uh, we're a little close to the lakehere, so it blows over us mostly,
but a little bit inland.It gets real deep at times.
(10:37):
It could be a sunny day and we'llget a six inches of snow. So
that's, uh, that's just the way it is.And, you know, most people adapt well,
uh, where to wherever they're living.
I lived in Iceland for a year and upthere they didn't get a lot of snow.
They got some, didn't get a lot of snow,
but they get a lot of wind andyou just get used to it, you know,
(11:00):
a 40 mile an hour wind,
you just dress for it and youknow you're prepared for it.
And it just wasn't that bad, you know,
it was actually milderwinters than here. Just,
they lasted for six monthsinstead of four
you know, whatever. So anywho, that's gonna be my, uh,
(11:22):
episode for today. We'llcatch you tomorrow.
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