Saturday, December 20, 2008

The Joys of Michigan in December


Are you a Flint Expatriate living on the West Coast or down South who sometimes misses Michigan in the winter? Here's a recent shot of downtown passed along by Randy Gearhart, along with some footage from December 12, 2000 to refresh your memory.




23 comments:

  1. What does it mean when the Weatherball is frozen solid?

    ReplyDelete
  2. it means "yeah, this is Michigan". I'm sitting here on Sturgeon Bay, watching ice shelves form from the bitter wind. hard to remember sometimes that there's a wonderful sandy beach just a couple hunnert feet under the perma-ice.

    ReplyDelete
  3. To all the west coast expatriates:
    If you don't like winter weather, stay away from Flint now! Lots of snow and cold are present, and more to come!!! Yuck.

    ReplyDelete
  4. what's really fun is when the wind is so frigid that your tears freeze at the edge of your eyes. you breath in thru your nose, and the nostrils freeze to the septum. love the brown slush in the picture there. there was usually around a foot of semi-clean, semi-frozen water right under it and you'd find out about it wearing new wingtips and thick n thins...and the damn bus would leave right before you got back on the curb, belching diesel smog and cigar smoke in your face and splashing the brown sludge water all over the front of your new hughes, hatcher and sufferens(sp). man, I DO miss Flint! seriously! I want a coney so bad right now it hurts...or a kewpies.

    ReplyDelete
  5. You has a way with them words, bustdup. LOL in GA (where, at 11:10 PM I still have the windows open, by the way).

    ReplyDelete
  6. Man I really miss Michigan winters - not the driving, not the accidents, just the snow and the excitement. I always loved being snowed in and getting those days off of school...ahhh the memories. And your description is as on the mark as ever bustdup - I can feel every word of it!

    ReplyDelete
  7. I'm supposed to go to Flint this January, and I'm getting prepared to freeze to death!!! I'm not used to all that snow anymore! I better get tough and take a lot of sweaters!

    ReplyDelete
  8. One thing I can thank Flint, Michigan for, is teaching me to drive in snow. I can still recall driving home from a night out in a blizzard... it was just part of life, never thought to stay home.

    Out here on the east coast we get the snow, but we stay home because unlike Flint, there are some substantial inclines that will land you right into a reservoir.

    So even though I have the snow here, I really miss driving in Flint. :) Flat staight streets are a luxury out here... so are curbs.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I love Michigan winters, though I'm not looking forward to shoveling out the end of my driveway (the plow truck finally came down my street this morning).

    ReplyDelete
  10. yeah, shoveling snow is a wonderful cardio workout!just came in from shoveling the 10in. off the driveway and another 10in off the roof. my pulse is about 410/02 right now. and the plow truck ain't been by yet, so I'll have to hit it again in a few. and my wingtips are still wet...meesh-i-gan is def. a winter driving school. live and learn or do and die. CG, if I opened my windows right now, the snow drifts would fall in.

    ReplyDelete
  11. @Dad, aka Bustdup - I'll bring you a Halo Burger and a quart of Gillie's finest coney sauce on New Year's Day. Just to add to the cookies and stuff I made. :D

    ReplyDelete
  12. uh huh...right. like the last coney promised? who ate THAT one? Hmmm?! don't blame You though...more than a person can stand. bring a bunch of 'em and I'll split 'em w/RedGirl. Church Guy don't get any for the 'I got my windows open" teasing!j/k. Hey Maggie, hit Ruggero's also, and I'll forget about the last coney incident, eh? we'll overnite fedex a couple out to Gordy, too...

    ReplyDelete
  13. I'm really praying about forgiving you for the coney snub, Bustdup.

    Okay, I deserve it.

    You'll be happy to hear that it is 34 lowly degrees out here in the GA countryside this morning. I must go out and make a run to the store in town. Now, where did I put that jacket of mine? It's been so long...

    ReplyDelete
  14. wow! 34 degrees! balmy, teeshirt weather CG!! my Bay froze over completely last night. Turn the other cheek and I'll smack Ya w/the kewpee burger. Just kidding Monnie. I'd commit a mortal sin for some 34 degree weather right about now, even if it was raining! well, I s'ppose I can stand the rest of winter, all six months of it. Atlanta's pretty, but if I got that far south, I wouldn't stop til I hit Key West. Some salt water fishing, Capt. Morgan's, co-eds, and the smell of coconut oil tanning cream sounds pretty good right now! instead, I gotta find my ice creepers and my extra longhandles....Pray for Peace.

    ReplyDelete
  15. That picture reminds of another thing I hated about winter. Overcast gray skies. I only visit Michigan in the summer.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Hey, that burger and coney sat in my fridge for three days before I succumbed and ate it! And I was pregnant and fighting the same craving I had with both kids - Flint coneys, heh heh heh. Drove poor Jeremy nuts with "You know what sounds really good, honey?" This time, I'll just grab two quarts of sauce, one for me and one for you, and we can toast the new year with a coney. I'll even bring some sunglasses, some Captain Morgan, a heat lamp, and give Matthew a spray bottle full of salt water. :D

    ReplyDelete
  17. Boy, I sure don't miss the nostril freeze. But thanks for the memories, bustdup!

    I remember one winter day, a couple of years after we moved east. A co-worker came running into my office squeaking that there was a SNOWSTORM out there.

    I said, "Can you see the building across the street?"

    "Uh, yeah ..." she replied.

    "Then it's not a snowstorm!"

    Now I just go along with it.

    People in Boston carry umbrellas when it snows (that used to make me laugh, out loud) - and no one here knows how to dress for cold weather.

    We've got a foot or so on the ground (one day it was 60 degrees and then a couple of days later, it snowed for 2 days), but it's supposed to rain tomorrow and be around 50 on Christmas Day ... so I guess no coney for me, either.

    As they say out here, "Don't like the weather? Wait a minute or two."

    ReplyDelete
  18. oh Gillian, I'd share a dog witchas anytime. No worries Mon! I liked the description of the Bahston storm. we had one hit here a few years back: the Bay was still open, it was Christmas when it hit. 70mph winds, snow was blowing in vertical from the lake and the temp bottomed out at about 30-35 below. the front of my cabin looked like a sugar glazed donut. we had 1/2in thick ice on the interior door hinges and knob. I put on my gear, got my Pyrenees and headed down to the dunes. we tried to get down to the water,(the waves were probably hitting 15-16ft.), but couldn't do it as the wind was so fierce. The spray would freeze in that wind, and you felt like your face was being sand blasted. Magnificent and deadly. CG and Dave, as gloomy as the sunless days are, that wee bit o' cloud cover do help w/the temp. depressing? yeah. ah well, so it goes. Merry Christmas All, and Happy Hogmanay!Sliante----ken

    ReplyDelete
  19. Hmmmm.....I'm in Chicago....I just get the same weather a day before you now.....lol.

    ReplyDelete
  20. and here I thought that our weather blew down from Hudson's Bay. Guess Studs Terkel was right...

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.