• Tuesday-What'sUP March 21 - 08:16 am

If you've ever sat at a hockey game at the Dee Stadium in Houghton and wondered what the Zamboni does with the accumulation of ice it scrapes between periods, while resurfacing the ice, well wonder no more. Brian Rendel solves that mystery for us with the first photo. It simply gets dumped over the dock right outside the Dee, to melt away with the rest of the ice in the spring. Brian snapped another photo while out on the dock, that of the Ranger III, as she begins to thaw out from the winter ice that surrounded her hull. Before you know it, she'll be making her twice a week trips over to Isle Royale, carrying hikers, backpackers and kayakers, too.

The third photo is a neat comparison for those of you watching the early melt-down we're having here in the Keweenaw. Chirs Anderson took two separate panoramic shots from the same spot, only 9 days apart. The top photo was snapped on March 9, 2012, with the adjoining shot on March 18, 2012. What a difference a few days can make in our weather here. We seem to have gone from winter, right into spring and even some summertime temperatures. Makes me wonder if Mother Nature will have a few surprises up her sleeve for us still?

Nice to see things opening up. All of the lakes are open around here.

Spring, the re-birth of a year.

Good Morning & Happy Spring, you all. Those are really interesting photos today. I had wondered what the Portage looks like up close now, as to ice coverage, etc. I'd also wondered where some of that ice got dumped. It's also interesting that the Dee dump vehicle is dumping the ice right by the "No Dumping" sign, oops?

Mary says: Actually, Marianne, that sign says "No Diving - Shallow water", not "No Dumping". :->

Ah yes, nice time of year. Now we need a good rain to clean up my dusty Spring field.

Love the before and after pictures of the liftbridge. I put a bunch of before and after pictures together. With some of them I actually waited for Spring to go back and take pictures of the same thing.

The octopus, picked up off the ice of a Red Wings game in Detroit, would get thrown into the Detroit River.

Here in Baraga, there's hardly ANY snow...except where it was plowed and pushed into big piles....My birthday is on St.Patrick's Day, and it was 80 degrees and the most beautiful Spring weather I have ever experienced in my life! NORMALLY...there's a whopping blizzard to celebrate with! LOL...This is just weird...and the buds on the trees are popping...my flower bulbs are poking up....Spring? Really??

Happy (belated) Birthday, Donna.

Marianne--I thought the same thing until I looked closer. The sign , I think, says NO Diving. I know that part of the shore and I wouldn't dive there. When I was a kid,70 years ago, that area was a popular suicide "jumping off" site.

Oops, thank you, Mary. No Diving makes more sense; it was hard to read that sign from that angle. :-)

That's interesting, DickinGrayling. Is there a bunch of junk underwater, or is it shallow, or what?

Marianne The North American and South American tour boats used to park along that area so it's fairly deep but because of the age of docks I feel there are a lot of crumbling stuff down there. The bow of the ships was right where the power company building was/is. In those days the builging was owned by Cohodas-Paoili produce company. West of that there was no more docks until you came to what is now the library. In the day that was where Gundlacks (sp) was and earlier it was Roach and Seeber Co.

Quite a difference 9 days can make.

After high temperatures in the 80s last week in Arizona, now this (yesterday):

From The International Business Times, March 19, 2012:
(click →) Arizona Snow: Rare Storm Hits Flagstaff and New Mexico in Spring, Avalanche Warning Issued [PHOTOS].

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Quote:

"Nearly Four Feet of Snow Gone in Two Weeks!

In the wake of an early March winter storm we reached a maximum snow depth for the season of 47 inches here at the National Weather Service on the morning of March 4th. Exactly two weeks later on the morning of March 18th, in the grip of unprecedented record warm temperatures, our snow depth was reduced to little more than a trace. Surprisingly with the rapid snowmelt, no flooding has been reported thus far across west and central Upper Michigan. A big reason we escaped flooding was the lack of significant rainfall which occurred during the rapid snowmelt.

The record warming trend is expected to continue at least into the middle part of this week before a frontal passage ushers in slightly cooler temps for the end of the week. But given the lack of additional significant snowmelt runoff, area rivers and streams should see only subtle rises as levels are expected to remain below bankfull."

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FRNash, I have a cousin who lives in Yuma, bet he's not getting any of that.