Spring officially arrives this week, but be ready for more severe weather after one of the snowiest winters on record.
‘We have a system coming next week that could bring in misery,? said National Weather Service Meteorologist Bill Deedler last Wednesday. ‘Right now, models disagree on the track, but the storm could come in Tuesday, bringing freezing rain, snow, and then rain. We may get mostly rain, we may end up with snow.?
The NWS in White Lake recorded 78.3 inches of snow this winter, and Deedler says the average in a season for this area is 40-50 inches of snow. The snowiest winter on record for the Flint area was 1974-75, when 82.9 inches of snow fell.
‘While it’s not certain, this could become the snowiest winter on record since 1942,? said Deedler, who adds that Detroit will not break any snow records, since 58.9 inches fell this year and the record is 93.6 inches of snow in the winter of 1880-81.
Deedler says the 1970s and early 80s were notorious for snow, and some area residents recalled one major snowfall in particular? Jan. 26-27 of 1978.
Rose Marie Paetsch, now 61, had moved into her Hummer Lake Road home in Brandon Township in the summer of 1977 and only knew one way home from her job in Detroit, when her employers sent her and everyone else home around 1 p.m. on that January day 30 years ago because of heavy snow. She was driving her Pontiac Phoenix hatchback north on I-75, but when she got to Adams, she found the police had closed the freeway. She told an officer there she didn’t know how to get home.
‘Every possible vehicle they had they’d put a plow on the front, and they called a garbage truck to plow me a path on I-75,? she recalls. ‘The snow was over a foot deep already.?
The truck plowed to get her to M-24, and on her way home she stopped at the A&P grocery store. She called home to see if her husband and five stepchildren needed anything, and learned her neighbors had given her husband lists of things they needed since they knew she was out. Paetsch bought a lot of milk, bread, coffee, cereal and canned soup, and grocery workers pushed her car to get her going again. It took her another hour and 15 minutes to get home.
‘The neighbors came over on snowmobiles to get stuff out of my car,? she said. ‘Everyone went home and we just sat and watched it snow. We couldn’t see out the windows. It was such an experience we don’t remember anything else about that winter.?
Paetsch said her front door was covered in 6-and-a-half foot drifts, and after five days they opened windows and pushed snow to the side and dug a tunnel. They shoveled and made a path to the door. She and her husband walked to the neighbors? house and the 5?3? Paetsch remembers falling through a hole the neighbors had dug for a pond and the neighbors looking out a window and laughing as she disappeared.
Brandon Township Clerk Jeannie McCreery said it was 30 years ago when she was living in a subdivision off a main road in Springfield Township when that storm hit and two pregnant ladies in her neighborhood went into labor and had to go on snowmobiles to get to the main roads. McCreery and her husband went out walking. She recalls the wind was blowing snow and as they walked, they suddenly realized they were standing on top of a small car.
‘That’s how bad it was,? she said. ‘It took three days before they plowed out our roads and we could get to the main road. It was fun. We didn’t have to go to work. The sun came out and it was beautiful. It was pristine and beautiful and there was no traffic. There were no cars racing up and down the street, and children were playing and neighbors were calling to each other. When it cleared, it was like a playground.?
The snow this year is amplified because of La Nina, a weather pattern occurring every four to five years in which cooler than normal water temperatures in the Pacific Ocean tend to cause a storm track from the Great Plains into the Great Lakes region. La Nina began affecting weather in the fall and should continue into the early summer, with above normal precipitation.
Deedler says this spring will start out cool, and will change from April into May.
‘With that change, we have to watch for severe weather,? he said. ‘The risk of severe weather picks up because of the pattern we’ve seen this winter. The storm track doesn’t abate that quickly and we’re concerned about severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. We’re not out of the stormy pattern yet. Be prepared for anything, even more so this year.?