Folks on the eastern end of the U.P. were hit pretty hard last week with ice and snow, bringing down many trees blocking roadways and pulling down power lines, leaving over 18,000 people without power for numerous days. Brenda Leigh was out after the storm, snapping some photos of the cleanup under way and helping neighbors in the Brimley area. Here’s what Brenda had to say about her photos: “Many people are not aware that snow plow drivers also clear the roads of debris in storms. They carry a saw on their truck as you will see in the photo. It took about 40 minutes to clear just this one tree and huge trees like this were down everywhere. Later another plow truck came and pushed the end of the huge tree off into the ditch. What a mess... Brenda said they were without power for a little over two days, but others were without for longer.

Brenda’s hubby, Jim Solko made a video of Ranger Road in the Brimley area, while Brenda was driving, to give everyone an idea of the road conditions that day. It looks like this was after many of the down trees were cleared from the roadway and pushed off to the side so traffic could get moving.

We have been following the progress of the line crews over the last week! The number of outages would drop and then jump back up again after more trees came down. A few big outages but mostly 1-10 at a time all over the Eastern UP, as well as the islands. Quite a few without power for a week. God bless those linemen/women and 'mutual aid' crews who came in to help.

Ominous looking road, thanks for the drive. Hope everyone involved has a good fireplace.
We've seen nothing like that in SE-MI, we've been rather lucky so far.