Tag Archives: storms

Nature

The Big Blow-down: How the Wind Storm of 2015 Affected Local Forests

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The overhead canopy opens to the sky. Image courtesy of the author, 2016.
The overhead canopy opens to the sky. Image courtesy of the author, 2016.

Anyone living in Northwest Lower Michigan within a region extending from Leelanau through Kalkaska counties, will not forget the big storm of August 2, 2015.  It was one of those signature events that cause you to remember exactly where you were when it happened.  I was on the phone with a friend: we talked nervously, wondering when the connection would go dead, all the while thinking we should both head for our separate closets in case the roofs of our homes should blow away.  Trees bent the way you see them do in videos of hurricanes and trash containers became missiles driven by the wind.  In fact, on the basis of observed damage, the wind speed did exceed that of a category 2 hurricane in places, more than 100 miles per hour.

Tipped trees expose roots and soil. Image courtesy of the author, 2016.
Tipped trees expose roots and soil. Image courtesy of the author, 2016.

What do storms like that do to forests?  Are there winners and losers in such a catastrophe?  What effects can be observed after one, fifty, and a hundred years later?  These are the questions that intrigued me as I walked through a devastated forest in Leelanau county, a few weeks after the Big Blow.  Mostly, the trees tipped, though a few were broken off at the middle.  Earthen mounds containing tree roots made walking difficult as you took circuitous routes to get to places that used to be reached directly.  The uneven ground of mature forests is due to tipped trees, some brought down a century or more ago.  That is one long-term consequence of the storm: the hills and valleys of the new forest could remain for centuries.

A hardwoods in Michigan is generally covered with last year’s un-decomposed leaves from last two or three years.  Called leaf litter, it acts as a blanket, keeping moisture in and repelling the growth of small wildflowers, ferns, and other small plants.  When the leaf litter is torn apart as it is when a tree tips over, opportunities abound for seeds waiting for their chance.  They sprout and grow rapidly, their growth speeded by sunlight that touches the forest floor as tree canopies no longer provide shade.  Along with natives, invasive plants like garlic mustard thrive in the disturbed ground.  It is a changed habitat for all and those best adapted take advantage of their genetic heritage.

Shade-intolerant black cherry sprouts under an open canopy. Image courtesy of the author, 2016.
Shade-intolerant black cherry sprouts under an open canopy. Image courtesy of the author, 2016.

Certain trees win out in the competition for sunlight, casting others in shade as they overtop them.  Shade intolerant trees grow the fastest—birch, black cherry, poplar red pine—while shade tolerant trees like sugar maple, American beech, and white pine bide their time in their shade.  Before long, only the seedlings of those trees will dominate the forest floor, since only they can tolerate summers’ complete shade.  Poplars and black cherry (together with scattered oaks and maples) will dominate the first generation of trees on the hilly moraines of Leelanau and Grand Traverse counties.  In time, they will be replaced by hemlock, beech, and a more dense population of sugar and red maples.

Epicormic sprouts on sugar maple. Image courtesy of the author, 2016.
Epicormic sprouts on sugar maple. Image courtesy of the author, 2016.

Naturally, a few middle-sized trees will survive a massive blow-down after a storm.  After wind storm, with sunlight flooding in as the dense overhead canopy disappears, they respond to the changed conditions for growth.  Buds under the bark spring to life, sending out small, leafy branches.  Called epicormic sprouting, this phenomenon has serious consequences for those wishing perfect timber for logging, since the wood grain is interrupted by new vascular tissue that supplies the new branch.  Look for epicormic sprouting in forests damaged by the August 2nd storm.

Invasive white poplar sprouts race towards the sun. Image courtesy of the author, 2016.
Invasive white poplar sprouts race towards the sun. Image courtesy of the author, 2016.

Secondary effects of a severe windstorm are too numerous to count.  The loss of nests and dens that occupied old trees, the loss of stable food sources like acorns and beechnuts, the disappearance of animals that prefer the cool, deep shade of a mature forest (like land snails), and the opening of hilly terrain to erosion are four obvious ones, but even those only scratch the surface.  Of course, the winners will move in—the deer that browse on shoots of poplar, ground squirrels, rabbits, blackberries and raspberries, and uncountable weed species—as the older residents die or move out.  It is a scene that has been re-enacted for untold thousands of years.

Shade-tolerant white pines under oak canopy. Image courtesy of the author, 2016.
Shade-tolerant white pines under oak canopy. Image courtesy of the author, 2016.

Whenever something catastrophic happens in nature, we know it is wrong to take sides—since some living things require the housecleaning that enables them to thrive.  At the same time, we cannot help but grieve for what has been lost.  After all, isn’t a mature hardwoods rarer and more precious than acreage covered by poplar sprouts?  Virgin timber is very hard to find in Northern Michigan: Ever since the nineteenth century loggers have destroyed those ecosystems without mercy.  So it is that we feel a pang in our hearts when the big trees go down and the sunlight pours in.  We know we have lost something that took centuries to form.  The Big Blow damaged far more than human property.  It destroyed a natural relic that is not easily replaced.

Then and Now

Storm Cripples Entire City–No Hope For Relief Until Night: Memorable Storms of Traverse City

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There is nothing like weathering a storm to bring people together. After the storm of Sunday, August 2nd, how many complete strangers did you tell about the felled trees in your yard, or where you were standing when the hail started coming down? And, in return, how many of these stories did you listen to? Our “flashbulb memory” of the event may already be fading, but the repetition of sharing our common story certainly helps to hold that experience in our minds, in addition to the records kept in personal diaries and local newspapers.

As your friendly neighborhood reference librarian, I had more than my share of chances to hear the stories of narrow misses and total destruction. Each story led to the same question, “Do you think this was the worst storm on record?”

Already, you clever readers are parsing the question apart. What does it mean to be “the worst”? Are we measuring the number of people affected, or the dollar figure attached to the destruction? What type of storms are we comparing, just wind, or does snow and ice count? Who is doing the recording? While this article will attempt to answer some of these questions, unfortunately there are too many variables in the recording methods for weather, as well as in reporting damage by dollar amounts, to be able to provide a definitive answer.

A thorough look through the index of the Traverse City newspapers, available at the reference department at the TADL Woodmere Branch, and online thanks to Osterlin Library at Northwestern Michigan College, reveals that, indeed, weather phenomena has always captured our attention. Each article on “Storm Cripples Region,” and “Lightning and Hail Does Damage,” always make the front page. Of course, not only did freak storms provide the locals with something to gab about; many people’s livelihoods depended day-to-day on the land and seas. A true disaster could spell economic doom for the region; imagine if the crops were beaten down by hail, or an ice storm of any magnitude could prevent supply trains from making the trip up north and keep ships from docking.

The following describes a severe windstorm (“with a velocity of fifty miles an hour”) of October 20, 1905, from the Traverse City Record-Eagle:

A storm which for severity has never been equaled in this region, struck this city early this morning of soon after midnight, though rain began falling at 5 o’clock yesterday afternoon which continued until at 2 o’clock this afternoon, a maximum of 1.4 inches had been registered at the government observatory by S.E. Wait. Coupled with the heavy rainfall, the heaviest this year, a wind which increased in velocity until it became almost a tornado drove the waters of Grand Traverse bay up with terrific bombardment along the entire waterfront scattering all water craft, with their sheltering houses, promiscuously along and shorewards until to stand and look at any portion of the bay it was no uncommon sight to see the wreckage of small boats pounding against the shore with logs, broken timbers, and thousand of smaller wreckage of the elements, these in themselves doing untold damage by the force of their combined pounding against docks, boat houses, railroads and embankments…

Hannah Lay sawmill on West Bay, undated. In 1905, West Bay was not the groomed property it is now, largely due to the industrial mills that occupied the waterfront at the turn of the last century. Image courtesy of History Center of Traverse City.
Hannah Lay sawmill on West Bay, undated. In 1905, West Bay was not the groomed property it is now, largely due to the industrial mills that occupied the waterfront at the turn of the last century. Image courtesy of History Center of Traverse City.

The article goes on to describe tattered awnings throughout the city, broken windows, damaged roofs, fallen trees, dismantled schooners; in short, a scene of devastation. Despite our recent history and the wind storm of 1905, it seems that snow and ice storms would have been feared to a great degree, if for no other reason than their frequency. Of the storms that made the news between 1865 and 1927, 9 were of snow or ice; 5 were floods; 3 (give or take) were general storms, sometimes with hail.

A deeper look reveals that, as our dependence on electricity and telephones increased, the reporting on snow and ice storms also increased. Perhaps there was indeed just more snow after the widespread placement of overhead lines, but we will leave that data for the next big snow storm. Whether it was a matter of more reporting, or more snow, this article from 1919 reveals the primary concerns were the immediate loss of power and the threat of people unknowingly handling live wires:

STORM CRIPPLES ENTIRE CITY

Snow and Sleet Work Havoc With Electric Light, Power And Telephone Wires.

Night of Total Darkness Followed By Great Haste To Repair Damage Today — No Hope For Relief Until Night.

Traverse City today is recovering from the most damaging storm in history. After a night of darkness and dread, business finds itself at a virtual standstill, with electrical current for power and lighting cut off, and telephone service demoralized.

The snow and sleet of yesterday was responsible. In the early day, heavily laden wires began to snap. By night, thousands of wires were down. For the most part, they were telephone wires, but in dropping on power wires, they disabled the latter, until, at six o’clock, conditions were so serious that both electric companies were ordered to completely disconnect their power… The fire department had its hands full yesterday afternoon and last night responding to fire alarms and taking care of fallen wires. Again people are cautioned to be careful around wires, and to handle no wires they find in the streets or alleys.

Men working on putting up the first telephone lines in the region, ca. 1898, the work of Citizens Telephone Co. Image courtesy of the History Center of Traverse City.
Men working on putting up the first telephone lines in the region, ca. 1898, the work of Citizens Telephone Co. Image courtesy of the History Center of Traverse City.

In the lightning and hail storm of September 16, 1920, The Citizens Telephone Company reported over 200 telephones out of work, and all toll lines (used exclusively for long-distance calls) out of commission; same with Bell Telephone. This report on the phone lines warranted a full paragraph of explanation, but agriculture was limited to one sentence at the tail end of the article. Reporting seemed disproportionate to the effect on citizens, as agricultural interests constituted the livelihood of many more people in the region than, say, the filing cabinet that lightning struck in the Johnson-Randall Company office, burning a hole through it.

In 1925, we see a shift back to reporting on agricultural interests, largely because of the high wind storm of June 10. The Traverse City Record-Eagle  credits the hills surrounding the city proper as having saved the city from the brunt of the wind, “but south, west and east in the farming territory the gale was on a rampage and the wind was the worst in years.” The editors of the Record-Eagle claimed that it was impossible to estimate the actual extent of the injury to the corn crop, and could only report that “a survey this morning shows many fields of corn a complete loss”. In addition to those losses, many families also suffered from having farm buildings blown down and tops ripped off their automobiles, and a good number of “telegraph and telephone poles all over the state were toppled over.”

What have we gleaned from these reports of years past? That overtime, communications to the outside world began to take a precedence over immediate survival, as presumably the Grand Traverse Region could stand on its own without frequent supply trains. We can also guess that, in spite of this shift in attention, the disruptive nature of freak storms captured our interest in equal measure then as it does now.

Amy Barritt is co-editor of Grand Traverse Journal. Header image courtesy of Andy Simonds, “Wall Cloud- Lake Michigan,” taken 6 August 2008.