Saturday, May 10, 2014

The Long and Brutal Winter of 2013-2014

This winter, according to the history of the weather department, was the longest, coldest and snowiest winter since a similar winter in the late 70's. The bad part was the amount of energy it took to heat homes not to mention the long cold gray days. We were thankful every day for our extremely efficient and economical geothermal heating system but people who had to rely on propane saw their fuel bills escalate and propane companies were unable to fill peoples' tanks more than half way at a time due to lack of supply and huge demands.

My previous post goes back to November 2013 when all this began. Today is Saturday, May 10, 2014 - nearly 6 months later. There is still a bit of ice left on the Great Lakes and we still have a small patch of snow left in our backyard with a little more in the woods. All totaled our area of northern MI recorded a bit over 14' of snowfall. Even as it compressed we still had no less than 4' of snow on the ground at any given time.  Doug spent much of the winter doing this. . .




Toward the end of winter he bought himself this (pic. below) and decided he really liked all this cold and the solidly frozen lakes.  This is called an ice boat and is powered under sail and wind only. These things can get up to 45-50 mph and the sailing is COLD as the sailor is sitting right out there in the wind. Doug's is a one person boat so I haven't had a chance to try this yet.  Now that the lakes are nearly thawed the ice boat is hanging from the rafters in the garage alongside the canoe which will probably be coming down soon - if the weather ever warms up and if it ever quits raining.






No comments:

Post a Comment