New website in the works

I'm in the process of moving our website to a host with way fewer and less intrusive advertising messages. I will also be able to move off of blogger that I have used as the method of posting these messages for the past five years.

The new site is here:
http://sandsii.wordpress.com

Comments more than welcome.

Lighthouses of the Great Lakes

Found this map on flickr (the photo posting web site) that links to images of all the lighthouses around the Great Lakes.

The numbers on the map refer to a count of the uploaded images available for viewing for the lighthouse at that location.

Very nice -- check it out!

Big Shock Expected Mid January — winter returns

Those of you waiting for the typical winter weather to arrive won't have to wait much longer. Most Forecasters are now calling for a sharp switch in weather patterns by Mid January. That will change on or around January 14th when the cold air , locked in the far north, finally begins to move into the winter pattern and drops over most of eastern Canada and the U.S.

Up to now, as seen in the maps to the right, the jet stream has for the most part been riding high over most of Canada (a typical warm weather pattern seen in Spring and Summer) by mid January, the jet stream will drop allowing the arctic air mass to move into its winter position.

The record breaking warmth most of North America has experienced this season will dramatically change plunging us into frigid temperatures and possibly a lot of snow.

One of the trouble spots could be the Great Lakes, as the cold air rushes over the warm open waters, heavy lake effect snow and snowsqualls could make up for the lack of snow so far this winter.

 Long range forecasts are spelling out a return to winter that will stay in place til early March.

Up close with the Tawas Point Lighthouse

Tawas Point Lighthouse by midmichphotos

This photo is one of a set of lighthouse photos. According to Terry Pepper’s Seeing the Light (which also has a stunning photo of the Tawas light in the 1800s) nothing came easy for those who sought to establish an aid to navigation of Ottawa Point at one end of Tawas Bay on Lake Huron.

Source: Michigan In Pictures

Great Lakes Water Level Update for December 01, 2006

Lake Superior is currently 13 inches lower than it was a year ago, while the levels of the remaining lakes range from 2 to 10 inches higher than those of a year ago. Currently, all of the lakes are in their period of seasonal decline.

Over the next month, the water level in Lake Superior is projected to fall 3 inches, while Lakes Michigan-Huron and St. Clair are expected to decline 2 inches. Lakes Erie and Ontario are predicted to fall 1 and 4 inches, respectively. Over the next few months, Lake Superior is expected to remain well below last year’s levels, while Lakes Michigan-Huron, St. Clair, Erie, and Ontario are predicted to remain near the water levels of a year ago.

Due to abnormally dry conditions on the Lake Superior basin over the last five months, Lake Superior’s water level is currently below chart datum and is expected to remain below datum through April.

The last time Lake Superior was this low at this time of year was in December 1925.

Source: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Great Lakes could be region of troubled waters, writer warns

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has an interview with author Peter Annin about his timely book about the coming Great Lakes water wars:

The title is trying to convince people to read a book that they otherwise might not read, and the water diversion issue in the Great Lakes basin is the spotted owl issue of this region - very polarizing, very bitter, and for the people who have their opinions about this issue, they are very strongly held.

Q. Do you see Wisconsin as a future battleground?

A. There is no doubt southeast Wisconsin is the front lines in the Great Lakes water wars because so many communities there are sitting on either contaminated or declining - or both - groundwater resources. This is where the next forays into this water war are going to take place. We've seen it with Waukesha. We've seen it with New Berlin, and we saw it in 1989 with Pleasant Prairie.

Q. Are the Great Lakes seriously jeopardized by thirsty communities outside their basin?

A. For those who say the Great Lakes are too big to be damaged, do what I did: travel to the Aral Sea (in central Asia). Once the fourth-largest inland body of water in the world, in my lifetime, four decades, it has been decimated and has now lost 75% of its surface area and 90% of its volume. It shows, indeed, large lakes can be drained by man. They aren't invincible.

Q. What's it like standing on the bottom of a great lake?

A. Trying to describe what the Aral Sea is like is one of the most frustrating exercises of my journalism career. When you drive for five hours on the old seabed in a Russian jeep from the old shoreline to the new shoreline, how do you quantify that to somebody who has never been there? How do you describe the magnitude of the problem when you stop and get out and look around in all directions of the compass and you can't see water anywhere and you know it was once 45 to 50 feet deep over your head?

Nuclear dump triggers protest

The Port Huron Times-Herald carries this article about a proposed nuclear waste dump situated in Ontario less than a mile from Lake Huron:

Activists, politicians, and citizens groups from the United States and Canada voiced their opposition Oct. 23 to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission regarding a proposal to create a nuclear-waste storage site under Kincardine, Ontario.

Kincardine is on Lake Huron, about three hours northeast of Port Huron. Local officials fear the repository could contaminate the lake and other local waterways.

Ontario Power Generation has applied for regulatory approval to build a storage facility deep underground for low- and intermediate-level radioactive wastes generated at the Bruce nuclear plant site in Tiverton, Ontario. The facility also would take wastes from other nuclear facilities in Ontario.

Before the project moves forward, it must pass an environmental-impact study. The nuclear-safety commission is expected to outline requirements of the study within the next six weeks.

The environmental assessment, usually done by environmental experts hired by the nuclear industry, could take until 2011. If satisfied with the assessment results, the commission would grant a construction license.

John Earl, spokesman for Ontario Power Generation, said the storage facility could be operational in 2017.

Bruce nuclear plant officials acknowledged in 2002 that ground water near homes in Kincardine, Ont., tested positive for radioactive waste.

A Wave of Woes for the Great Lakes

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel covers the three day conference on the health of the Great Lakes:

More than 300 Great Lakes experts are gathered in Milwaukee this week for what is essentially a two-year checkup on the health of the world's largest freshwater ecosystem. The conference kicked off with an overview of some of the major issues facing the Great Lakes basin, which holds about 20% of the world's surface freshwater and is a source of drinking water for about 40 million people.

From the rise of invasive species to the prospect of falling water levels to the paving of coastal habitats and the apparent - and perplexing - meltdown of the bottom of the food chain in Lake Huron, most all the news was grim.

Among the most alarming of the problems detailed Wednesday is the disappearance in many areas of Lake Huron of tiny species that are a critical source of nutrition that most every fish in the lake directly or indirectly depends on. The drop is likely tied to the arrival of invasive mussels, though the direct link has yet to be established. The result, however, is a dramatic loss in biomass from the bottom of the food web. Lake Huron is, according to a presentation by Carri Lohse-Hanson of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, beginning to resemble the much less productive waters of Lake Superior, the biggest and coldest of the Great Lakes.

The news isn't all bad for the lakes. The latest studies show that concentrations of some of the nastiest chemical pollutants have dropped substantially since the 1970s. And, thanks largely to water treatment facilities, the lakes remain a healthy source of drinking water. Projects to remove toxic sediments are also under way.

Caught, but not released

The Detroit Free Press has this article on invasive species and bans on regional shipping:

When a new disease called viral hemorrhagic septicemia apparently was brought into the Great Lakes from the oceans and killed a couple of thousand muskellunge in Lake St. Clair last spring, fisheries biologists hoped it was a transitory event that would blow over.

Now, VHS has infected up to 27 freshwater fish species from St. Clair to the St. Lawrence River and presents such a threat that the federal government has banned the movement of most live game and baitfish from eight Great Lakes states and two Canadian provinces.

That represents a major problem for state fisheries agencies, which regularly ship each other millions of baby walleyes, muskellunge, steelhead, Pacific salmon and other game species for stocking, and for fishing tackle shops that get most of their live baitfish from Wisconsin and Minnesota.

James Rogers, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, said, "We knew that there had been some fish die-offs (because of VHS). But only a couple of species were affected. Then some new research came out that said that some species that we thought not to be affected by VHS were affected.

"That caused us to issue the emergency order to stop the movement of fish from (Ontario and Quebec) and the states where the disease has been found," including Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York. And after VHS was found in Conesus Lake, which is near Lake Ontario but has no direct connection to it, New York State banned the movement of the affected species within its borders.

The APHIS emergency order forbids moving live fish from any of the infected species out of the eight states and bans their importation from the Canadian provinces.

The Colbert Report - 2006.10.02 - Threat Down

YouTube - The Colbert Report - 2006.10.02 - Threat Down --

Steve Colbert features Oscoda as the #4 threat:

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Lake Superior closing in on record low level

The Muskegon Chronicle carried this article on the record low water level of Lake Superior:

The water level in Lake Superior is nearing its lowest point in the past century, according to the latest government data.

The water level in the world's second-largest lake dropped in September to within 2.5 inches of the record low for September, which was recorded in 1926, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

"We're getting pretty close" to the record low in Lake Superior, said Carl Woodruff, a hydraulic engineer at the Corps of Engineers office in Detroit.

Water levels in lakes Superior, Michigan and Huron are expected to continue to drop in the coming months, which is typical in the fall, according to the Corps. Lake levels are largely determined by the weather: below-average precipitation and above-average temperatures in recent years have caused levels in the three lakes to plummet, according to federal data.

Lake Superior water levels are significant locally because Superior is a major source of water in Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. Lower lake levels can make shipping more hazardous.

The Lake Michigan water level is 19 inches below average for this time of year, but is still one foot above the record low recorded in 1964, according to Corps data. The lake water level dropped 3 inches in September, an inch more than normal for this time of year, according to federal data.