Snow, more snow and homeless-camps

The big news here is that we have some weather blowing in. The weather weenies tell us to expect between 6"-and-9" of snow out of the event with winds in the 10-to-12mph range and gusts of twice that speed. 

Since the temperature will be below 30F (in Eaton Rapids) for most of the snowfall, the snow will be "dry" and subject to drifting which means plows will struggle to keep even the main roads clear. Minor roads will be unplowed until noonish Sunday, maybe.

On Sunday, the temperature will be at or just above the freezing mark. That will result in the snow compacting, becoming sticky and heavy. Great weather for making snowmen...and for old men holding a shovel to have a heart-attack. 

Some other bloggers I follow are looking forward to 9"-to-12" of snow.

The snow will impact two events for us. We are hosting our family Thanksgiving today. We moved the event to an earlier time so guest could leave before there was heavy accumulation of snow. One of our guests has to travel more than five miles to get here, so that is a blessing. He will be invited to stay the night.

The other event is Mass tomorrow morning. We are going to play that by ear.

How they handle storms "Up North"

The Keweenaw Peninsula sticks up into Lake Superior like a hitch-hiker's thumb.

One of my friends lives in Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula. They get a lot of snow with some years totaling over 300".

They recently had an early ice-storm. Here are some excerpts from the local paper;

“Outlying areas are still without power, UPPCO updated us this morning,” Keweenaw County Sheriff’s Office Corporal Darren Jurmu said. “They have crews still working in outlying areas in Keweenaw County and Houghton County. They have a couple of crews in Lake Lenore today to do some more off-the-road fixing of the power lines.”

Jurmu says ‘a few hundred’ trees of all sizes were knocked down, with several causing the ongoing power outages. He also says up to two feet of snow can be found across the county.

Due to the storm, some areas across both counties opened emergency warming centers for residents without power. “One gentleman, he was like 83, and he was staying in his house,” Bootjack Fire Department Engineer Mark Serotzke said. “It was actually our chief that went on the call as a first responder, and he talked the gentleman into riding in the truck back to the hall and staying here.”

Serotzke says that due to power not yet being restored at the time, the shelter even saved one family’s Thanksgiving dinner. 

“They had their turkey all at home and everything, ready to cook,” Serotzke added. “We told them, ‘Go ahead and go back home and grab your turkey and cook it here and have your Thanksgiving here’. And that’s what they ended up doing. It really made their day.”  

Hat-tip to Coyote Ken for the news article. 

On the other end of the spectrum

In Ingham County (Lansing), a judged ordered a landowner to provide and maintain porta-potties for squatters who the landowner was unsuccessfully trying to evict. Let me clarify, the judge ordered him to do it at the landowner's expense.

Imagine the cost of maintaining enough porta-potties for 40-to-60 people if they are on the flood-plains at the bottom of the steep river bank and 300 feet from pavement.

The landowner complained that some of the squatters had been on his property for more than three years and officials turned a deaf-ear to his complaints. In fact, the police admitted that when they found an indigent or vagrant in a respectable part of town, they would transport him/her to the "camp" and drop them off. 

In that three years, the "camp" grew to be more than 40 people. It is hard to get an exact fix on the population because the residents are transient. They move in. They move out.

The origin of the camp is a mystery, but it may have been one of the landowners allowing a down-on-his-luck family member stay there. After that, one thing led to another.

Think things through before you offer "charity"

Sadly, we live in a time when one simple act of charity can snowball. Don't expect help from the government when you-being-a-victim solves a lot of expensive problems for them.

One gentleman who I know did offer four separate individuals charity. The offers were spaced in time. The man and his wife sat the potential recipient at the kitchen table and outlined what they would do, what they would not do and what their expectations of the receiver were.

They also pointed out that they had firearms, hogs, a backhoe and property. That if the receiver "crossed the line", they would disappear forever.

"Missing persons" reports for vagrants are almost never solved. In fact, they are very rarely filed because they could have just hitched a ride to St. Louis or Atlanta or Charleston...

What made the gentleman's effort work is they made the offer to just one, selected individual at a time AND both he and his wife stone-cold meant what they said about the hogs and backhoe. Most people are not going to be able to make that work.

One of Chicago's many homeless camps. This one is just west of Lakeshore Drive. It is hard to get overhead images of camps because the homeless put their tents beneath trees for the shade.

Ground view of the Chicago camp take a year earlier.