Lake Huron is still here…despite the bad press!
Climate science predicted doom for the Great Lakes every ten years since 1960. As Mark Twain once wrote, reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.
It’s quite entertaining really. Some people chat about it over breakfast at one of the seasonally-opened restaurants near the Sand Lake. Or make fun of it while out in the deep waters, wondering if the military will ever find the Chinese spy balloon they shot down near here.
Some claim that there will be so many seasons of overly inclement weather that the lake will flood part of the state of Michigan out of existence.
Too late. 170 years ago Lake Huron covered the area now occupied by Hale, Whittemore, Tawas, and East Tawas. This according to a map a former township supervisor in a nearby county had access to in 2022. So here’s hoping that the lake doesn’t return to its former banks for at least another 170 years. We plan very slowly up here in the Thumb.
Experience showed me that Lake Huron and the other Great Lakes have minds of their own. They do what they want, when they want, and the predictions made about their behavior are as accurate as those made about eight year old children’s career choices. Today.
When I moved down to St. Clair County in the 1980’s the Lake and its tributaries scared me to death. One time, as I was driving down M-29 for the first time past Algonac, the road suddenly disappeared.
One moment, as I made a turn, there was pavement. The next, just water.
My disaster prevention training screamed “You NEVER drive through water! There might be a current, and YOU COULD DIE!”
But I had a job to do. Managing to drive forward with loud prayers, fingers crossed on the steering wheel, and last words sent to my family via ESP I slowly made it through.
The WAG Theory, Wild Ass Guess, triumphed once again. My guardian Angel could take a cloud break and I could breathe. Until I had to turn back, this time in pitch black night. Ooh, I still shiver sometimes when I think about it.
Funny, next year there were small currents lapping against the side of that road. The county hadn’t even put rocks into the area as a barrier against the water. By the time I got past that area of M-29 I barely realized where I was. No, I was not on Valium of Oxycodone, only Zoloft.
Every seven years or so we go through a heavy patch of wind and rain, or snow and Canada’s polar vortex. During El Nino, we often get little snow. Each of the last three years the area was primed, according even to CNN and Fox BOTH, for historically wet weather.
We barely had a white Christmas.
So, Time, Newsweek, Huffpost, or some other “news” outlet will write either about the flooded lake, or the drying up lake, or that magically does both in the same year.
Most of us, those of us who don’t read the above publications, go about our days and nights with the proper gear. Most of the people in the area do not go out and seek out “conversations” about the topic. They want to just live their lives, enjoy the Lakes and their families. Until the state wants to steal our farmland and development property for a wind farm. And then, when we say “NO” pass a law that takes decisions away from us and gives them to a state board or commission.
So you can go ahead and comment on my science denial, which actually is not denial. It’s acceptance of three things.
One, this dance of high and low lake levels has been going on for 80 years, and will go on when I am part of the plant life. Two, nothing that man can do has anything to do with it. In fact, our and the world’s poor benefit from the longer growing seasons and the higher yielding seeds. Three, there are plenty of rocks, gravel, and pieces of concrete. The waves up at the northern point of Iosco County haven’t conquered the seawall in decades, even during the worst of times.
We will cope with whatever happens. Death from weather catastrophes is down by well over 90% across the world. And if people, such as climate hysteric Barack Obama buy homes on the seashore and get flooded out, he and his wife can move.