Rosie Vasquez gripped the snowblower handles like her life depended upon them as snowflakes fell on her driveway and the temperature stubbornly hovered at 12 degrees, where it had stood for most of the day.
“This is why I married him,” she said above the roar of the bright orange snowblower, which seemed more ready to go than Rosie. Her husband, Gerardo Vasquez, was offering instructions while relinquishing one of his usual winter responsibilities due mostly to foot surgery.
But he also wanted his wife to have the skills needed to survive a Leelanau winter on her own. Her first lesson came Tuesday, four days after winter’s belated arrived on the Leelanau Peninsula.
And what an arrival it was. Ten inches of snow was recorded Friday night and Saturday at the volunteer Maple City weather station sanctioned by the National Weather Service, with more than eight inches falling over the next two days. Over a seven-day span ending Monday some 27.9 inches of snow were tabulated.
The story turned to temperatures on Monday, which came and left with a high of 13 degrees and a low of 10. The thermometer was forecast to remain below 20 degrees through Saturday before moderating.
After next week, it’s a crapshoot as to whether frigid cold will return, according to Jeff Zoltowski, meteorologist at the Gaylord station of the National Weather Service.
“I would say the warm temperatures will be here just for next week. After that it gets uncertain, and there might be an opportunity for cold air to come back at the tail end of the month and the first of February. After that predictions get pretty cloudy,” Zoltowski said.
Earlier this week daily forecasts calling for one or so inches of lake effect snow proved exactly right — if you were in the right place. Bands of snow developed along patterns created by southwest winds that dropped more of their white blankets in northern rather than southern Leelanau County.
That prompted a county Road Commissioner at a meeting Tuesday to comment that he encountered two inches of snow in Suttons Bay only to find nine inches upon driving to Omena.
Speaking of the Road Commission, snowplow drivers — whether by title or need — have been working overtime to keep roads passable, according to manager Brendan Mullane. Crews started fighting winds gusting to 50 mph starting Friday night that drifted snow back onto pavement soon after being cleared by plows.
“On Saturday they were up at 4:30 in the morning, hit it hard, and got up Sunday and did it again. This weekend we’ll probably have to do it again. We’ve got guys working three weeks straight, and everybody will have worked two straight weekends if they have to come in this weekend,” Mullane said.
There’s a 40 percent chance of snow showers Friday night with a forecast low of 10 degrees.
“We have a good crew of seasonal drivers, and our managers plow. They are out at 2:30 in the morning scouting roads, and then they hop in a plow truck. We had a few mechanics on the road last weekend, too, which is very much appreciated,” Mullane said.
Still, motorists can expect to drive on snowy roads for the rest of this week as salt won’t do its job in temperatures of 15 degrees and less.
It had been a quiet winter until Friday evening, and it still has a ways to catch up. Through Monday some 50.7 inches had been recorded at Maple City; the normal by that date is 71.7 inches. There’s a chance of snow, though, most days well into next week.
The timing of the storm was a disappointment to students who already had Saturday and Sunday off, and most government offices were scheduled closed Monday for Martin Luther King day.
It’s been mostly the cold temperatures this week that had the potential to cause disruptions. Not so, though, for the construction crew at North Shore Contracting that was putting up walls late Tuesday on a newbuild spec house near the Lake Leelanau Narrows.
Owner Jonathon Haskins said he and his hardy crew were accustomed to working outside regardless of the temperature. They weren’t going to miss a beat of their hammers.
“I’ve never seen it too cold to work,” said crew member Craig Raley. “All of us have worked outside our entire lives. It’s very, very satisfying to build a high-end house while looking at Lake Leelanau.”
