The snow has stopped falling in most of the Upper Peninsula, the sun is shining, and the winds are nearly calm. But Tuesday is a day of digging out after the Sunday-Monday blizzard paralyzed the entire region. Many businesses were still closed on Tuesday, all schools in the area were shut down, and Northern Michigan University, Bay College, and Michigan Tech University were all closed.
But Dan Weingarten at the Michigan Department of Transportation Superior Region says crews have been working almost non-stop to keep those highways with the “US, M, and I” designations as passable as possible. He says M-DOT crews are in charge of plowing in Houghton, Baraga, and Mackinac Counties, but the state pays the road commissions to do that work in the other 12 Upper Peninsula counties.
Weingarten tells RRN News that there’s been a lot of progress made on at least making highways passable, and he says that work will likely continue for another day or two. He says that while the entire area received heavy snow, the biggest problem was high winds that created large snow drifts on nearly every street and highway.
Some lake effect snow was still falling Tuesday morning close to Lake Superior, and M-28 remained closed between Munising and Harvey. That’s because some of the snow drifts there are so large that plows cannot move them, so they’ll be bringing in heavy equipment to chop those down and push them to the sides.
Weingarten urges people to continue to stay home for another day to give crews more room to maneuver on the highways. He says when there’s a disabled vehicle alongside a highway, that slows the plows down.
You can hear Jack Hall’s interview with Weingarten by clicking here:
Photos courtesy of M-DOT in northern Schoolcraft County
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