Cold, wet, windy storm causes road, electrical problems

Oct. 19—TRAVERSE CITY — Communities contended with multiple forms of severe weather, resulting in power outages, school closings and traffic crashes in Tuesday's winter preview.

Some areas were hit with the first snowfall of the season in the early hours, while high winds, flooding, sleet and rain extended throughout much of the day. The National Weather Service issued multiple hazards — a wind advisory for many of the communities along Lake Michigan, a winter storm watch for inland counties, a lakeshore flood advisory for Grand Traverse County, and storm-level wind watch.

One meteorologist said it can be a surprise to see snow by mid-October, but it's not unusual. Snow accumulation was the highest in the higher terrain, inland counties.

"We have these huge bodies of water called the Great Lakes, and no other area in the country has that," said Sean Christensen, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Gaylord. "So when you have cold air over warm water, it's really easy to get snow early in the season."

High winds are more rare, Christensen said, though still not record-breaking, with gusts reaching 50 miles per hour at times.

For the Grand Traverse County Road Commission, conditions provided the first occasion to deploy snow plows, as roadways saw an inch or two of slushy buildup and slippery conditions early.

It was the earliest those plows have been needed in the three years since Jay Saksewski, Grand Traverse County Road Commission superintendent, has been around, he said.

Problems also arose throughout the day as the roads became obstructed, either by flooding caused by ground oversaturation, or by fallen trees.

"[There were] kind of two fronts that our crews were fighting on, but they rose to the occasion," he said.

He noted that most of the wind seemed to die down by afternoon.

Thousands lost power at points between Monday evening — when the winds started — and Tuesday afternoon. By 8 a.m., Great Lakes Energy announced more than 6,000 outages across its nine-county service area.

As of about 2 p.m. Cherryland Electric, which serves six counties, including those from Northport to Manistee, as well as Kalkaska, reported a total of 5,000 customers without power throughout the day, though the number tended to hover between 800 and 1,200.

Most outages were concentrated in the northern part of the service area, around Leelanau County, said Rachel Johnson, spokesperson for the utility company.

Johnson said this storm was unique among many of the other weather events that cause outages, in that the outages were spread out over a period of many hours.

In most cases, there's a single storm that causes many homes to lose power all at once.

"What's happened with this storm is we restore one outage, and one new outage comes in," she said.

Power outages also closed several area schools, including Ellsworth Community School and Grand Traverse Academy. Buckley Schools started the day, but a power outage sent students home at 10:30 a.m.

Sheriff's Department Captain Randy Fewless said Tuesday was the first big incident of downed power lines and branches this season, resulting in several 911 calls. Meanwhile, by mid-afternoon, Saksewski estimated the road commission responded to 25 to 30 incidents of fallen branches.

Winds also knocked out traffic signals, including the intersection of M-37 and M-113 and Front and Division streets.

With the worst of the weather projected to taper off throughout the day Tuesday, Christensen said some lake-effect precipitation would continue through Wednesday.

After that, the weather should clear up considerably. As the low pressure system responsible for the storm moves out, it will be accompanied by a southern breeze and some sun.

"We'll actually see warmer temperatures, reaching into the 60s for most areas," Christensen said.

Record-Eagle reporter Elizabeth Brewer contributed to this report.

Report for America corps member and data journalist William T. Perkins' reporting is made possible by a partnership between the Record-Eagle and Report for America, a journalism service project founded by the nonprofit Ground Truth Project. Generous community support helps fund a local share of the Record-Eagle/RFA partnership. To support RFA reporters in Traverse City, go to www.record-eagle.com/rfa.