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Joe Ross
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Two big reasons why Lake Superior is not a good location for fair-weather friends:
One, you’re going to spend a lot of the year friendless.
Two, you’re going to miss some spectacular atmospheric disturbances. Lake Superior is, after all, most likely why the phrase “lake effect” came into being.
As we all know, weather is the favored topic for Big Lake residents and visitors. It can be the ice-breaker for conversations with strangers or newly introduced acquaintances.
Weather talk fills the uncomfortable gap at the end or beginning of letters to relatives – “It has been [nice, windy, rainy, snowy, sunny] here. How is it for you?”
Plus surviving our weather is a way to show moral superiority, politely, when you’re on the phone to a happy snowbird – “Yeah, it was 50 below last night, but I went out and shoveled the 8 feet of snow off the roof anyway. You just gotta do what you gotta do. How is it for you in Florida?”
One recurring joke-cum-truth around the Big Lake is that if you don’t like the weather now, wait five minutes and it will change. (Lately I’ve discovered that this is also a personal weather pattern very familiar to women of my age.)
Rapid weather shifts make life interesting and are an attraction for those residing here beside a body of water big enough to make its own weather (again, a little like older women’s personal weather).
While any season makes for good weather talk, there is no doubt that winter is the best time and usually brings the most captivating details.
That’s why we’ve chosen this mid-winter issue to offer up our special State of the Lake report “Wild about Weather.”
Besides taking a look at what makes our region so weather wealthy, we also are giving you a great tool kit for weather chatting – a glossary of weather terms, some blow-out tales from meteorologists about weather that’s changed their plans (ha!), plus a review of our record highs, lows and mosts (think snow and rain). There are graphics and photos to help get you in the mood, like my visual example in the photo here of snowfall differences between Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (on left) and the rest of the world (on right). Or this photo by a Lake Superior traveler, Joe Ross, that shows the snow gauge in the Keweenaw Peninsula. The arrow shows where the snow ended up last winter, a bit below the 240-plus-inch average that the region is used to getting, but still, 15 feet of snow is ample.
It so happens that this is a good issue if you want to do more than talk about the weather. You can see all sorts of meteorological conditions, sunny to frigid, through the lenses of our 16th annual Lake Superior Photo Contest winners. They evoke all seasons and moods. Guaranteed, you’ll find something to savor that will give you a wish-you-were-here feeling.
But if you are a fair-weather type, don’t despair – we have a few things to save you from the icy chill. I visited a “happy house” where staying inside brings you a bright, witty interlude any time of year and where tables, sinks and walls become canvases for the artists who live there.
In her Recipe Box, Juli Kellner offers some warm advice on soups that will take the edge off subzero days.
Yes, the weather outside might be frightful, but the stories will be delightful. If you live here by the Big Lake, remember – there is probably only six months of winter to go. That’s just how it is for us. Now please excuse me, but I have to get up on the roof with a shovel.