For years I’ve noted the anniversary of the Great Ice Storm of February 22, 1922, or 2/22/22. I never thought that Mom Nature would throw another ice storm, although nowhere near the scope of the original, on Tuesday, 2/22/22. They said that the 1922 storm was one of those once in a hundred years, or more, kind of a storm. Does that mean that we’ve dodged the bullet until now with this anniversary storm? Not exactly. Nothing, including this week’s much hyped storm, has been of the scope of 1922. That biggie encased much of the upper midwest in thick ice.
There have been some pretty dramatic ice storms in my memory. With the Blizzard of January 1967, the southern portion of the lower penninsula was coated with thick ice before all the blowing and drifting snow. In February 1975, Mom Nature threw a heavy ice storm, again for the southern portion of the state. We lived in Flushing then and that icing event was the worst I have ever seen.
It began as an innocent ‘spring thaw’ kind of event. As temps fell and hovered just at freezing, a not so springy rain began to fall. Ice began to build up quickly. First twigs and small branches fell from the trees, then much larger limbs and eventually entire trees uprooted or snapped off from the incredible weight.
The freezing rain fell for many hours and into the night. We woke to what looked like the site of a major war. In a way it was. Trees, power poles and lines were broken and shattered in all directions. In our yard, a large and elderly (no pun intended) boxelder tree beside our garage uprooted and fell across the driveway and against the house. It took out the phone, electricity and blocked my car in the garage, all in one crash. Amazingly, the only damage was a broken storm door window and the electric meter. Our power was out for four days and was finally restored by a crew from another state. And at only four days, we were very lucky.
The damage from that ice storm extended for many miles in a large swath across the state. It took the landscape years to recover. Each autumn when the leaves fell, the scars from the battle between ice and trees were seen once again. It was a winter-long reminder of how brutal the weather could be.
In 1922 Marion, Michigan, most of the damage suffered was to Marion’s lovely maples and elms and to the many telephone lines and the poles that carried them. All about town, and along Main Street to the telephone office, then located in what is now the Marion Twp Hall, the whole system was down, a snarled, broken mess.
At that time, electricity was not a steady and reliable utility, coming as it did from the power plant at Stone’s Dam, some three miles to the west. At best, Stone provided only a few hours of energy daily, and never at night. Because of this, the entire village had other lighting plans, from personal power plants and gas lights to the more standard and reliable kerosene lamp. Homes were heated by wood, coal or kerosene, no power required. Folks kept warm and fed and chilled their food in an ice box.
As far as the things seen as necessary, the Marion of 100 years ago was far more comfortable with that storm than we would be today in the same monster event. No electricity or phones means that the transmission lines and cell towers are downed, laden in ice. Miles of transmission lines and hundreds of towers across the midwest. If you could get to town, there would be no gas or shopping at any store. Again, no electricity to power any of those things. Generator power is certainly a possibility, but they too require energy to make energy. We would be in quite a pickle in a long, powerless event. And pickle, is being polite. We may like to read or watch stories about the good old days, but we don’t want to live them.
We’re mighty thankful that this ice storm was not as bad as originally forecast. And we should all be thankful that we had an advanced warning. There was no National Weather Service Radar in 1922. Our photos this week were taken by the Morton boys just 100 years ago in Marion. The building is the Marion School.