Spring? We've Heard of That...

"Spring" on the Keweenaw Peninsula of Upper Michigan is a matter of semantics.  "First Day of Spring" looks nice on the calendar.  However, those words are the only thing Spring-like the Keweenaw will see for a while.

As I sit typing this post here in exile near Saginaw, I can hear at least three different kinds of frog's singing to the moon in the nearby pond.  On the Keweenaw, I hear there is still about a four foot base of snow on the ground.  They've gotten about 280 inches of snow this season - most of it since New Year's.  While southeastern Lower Michigan is drowning in heavy rain this Spring, the Keweenaw has gotten 27 inches of new snow.  Holy Wah!

The well used joke is that the Upper Peninsula has just two seasons:  Winter and a few days of bad skiing in July.  Well, its not that extreme.  However, I *have* seen in snow in June on the Keweenaw.  That has it's good side because cold snap at that time of the year can help kill off those tiny demons called black flies.  Don't get me started on them.

Spring will come to the Keweenaw....eventually.  In late April or early May the Yooper snow factory will just stop.  All of a sudden, it will get really sunny and warm and the snow will melt.  And, melt it does.  *Fast!*  For a week or two any snow packed roads will turn into slushy, chunky battle zones that make quick travel impossible.  Water will be running everywhere - in the streets, in the streams, and yup, in basements.  The rivers will rise with all the former snow rushing down out of the hills.  Streams and ponds that don't exist the other fifty weeks of the year suddenly appear and then overflow.  The forests sing with running water, birds and frogs.

And then, its over.  It's Summer.  Right about the same time everyone else in the Midwest has summer.  Our Spring is somewhat late and very short.  It's Winter, two weeks of Spring and then Summer.

The frogs calling frantically outside my window here in mid-April, Mid-Michigan seem anxious to get going with life right now.  Their U.P. cousins are still slumbering beneath inches of snow and ice.  Things can be so different in the U.P. from the rest of Michigan.