This photo by m•cole•m is so awesome (see larger in her slideshow) that I had to post it with the Legend of the Sleeping Bear. The tale is kind of the Leelanau creation story, and I rewrote it because I couldn't find a version online that I liked. If anyone has suggestions, please let me know or post a comment.

Years and years ago, in the great forest that covered the place that is now named Wisconsin, lived Mishe Mokwa (Mother Bear) and her two cubs. One day, a roaring fire swept through the woods, burning everything from horizon to horizon and driving Mishe Mokwa, her cubs and all the animals before it. Soon they came to a place where they could go no further, the great Lake Michigan.

Like all bears, Mishe Mokwa and her cubs were powerful swimmers, and at her urging they plunged into the lake. Mishe Mokwa knew there would be no food after the fire was spent, so she kept the light and smoke of the fire behind them and swam east. Now bears are powerful swimmers, and Mishe Mokwa and her cubs were fat from the bounty of the forest so they were able to swim through that day and through the night. Somewhere in the dark she lost them.

Late in the next day, she sighted the tall white dunes of Michigan. When she reached the shore and looked back,  her cubs were nowhere to be seen. She called to them with no answer, finally climbing the dunes to look back. As the sky turned red with sunset, she saw her cubs struggling far offshore through the cold waters. Her heart broke as first one and then the other slipped beneath the waves.

Heartbroken and exhausted, she lay upon the dune for days and days, watching the places where her cubs had perished. Gitche Manitou was moved by her sorrow and faithfulness and raised two islands, North Manitou and South Manitou to celebrate the bravery of the cubs. Knowing that her heart would never mend, Gitche Manitou laid a slumber upon Mishe Mokwa and drew the sand over her like a blanket.

Sand & Shadows. by John Levanen

It's been a very busy time at Leelanau.com. More precisely, at Leelanau Communications, Inc., the company that produces Leelanau.com. In addition to a lot of work for the Leelanau Peninsula Vintners Association, including the forthcoming Traverse City Wine & Art Festival, we've been working to redo Leelanau.com to take advantage of social media including Facebook, our Leelanau.com Flickr group and our This Week in Leelanau email.

Last week the northern lights made an appearance over Leelanau, and Ken Scott got out and took some great shots! There's one below and you can see more in his Northern Lights slideshow or on his Facebook.

Northern Lights are usually a rare treat but lately we've been seeing them more often. A little over a year ago astronomer Dick Cookman - who owns Enerdyne in Suttons Bay - noted that we are right in the middle of the best aurora borealis viewing in a decade, so hopefully there's more on the way.

Ken also has a short aurora time lapse and you there are also see two short time lapses by Guy Strong that you can watch here and here.

Real Bikes with Bear Power!

In addition to signs in the sky, we've also seen signs of spring in the form of morel mushrooms and cherry blossoms. Both are out there now, though the morels are fairly elusive and the cherry blossoms sparser than normal. Another sign of spring, pair of Sandhill Cranes, were caught at Glen Lake by Mark Miller.

Coming Events

Artist in Residence Presentation ~ Thursday, May 3rd

Linda Walker from Mattawan, MI, is a muralist and decorative painter while pursuing a Graduate Teaching Certificate in Art Education at Grand Valley State University. She will use her residency to focus on plein air painting with the goal of expanding her professional portfolio. Attend her presentation Thursday night at the Glen Arbor Art Association Office.

Spring Sip & Savor Wine Tour ~ Friday, May 5th & Saturday May 6th

Join the 19 wineries of the Leelanau Peninsula Vintners Association the weekend of May 5-6, 2012 for the Leelanau Peninsula Vintners Association’s annual Spring Sip & Savor wine trail event. In addition to food & wine pairings at each winery, participants are encouraged to participate in the Sip o’ de Mayo Hat Contest try to win one of the prizes that many of the wineries will be offering and the fabulous Grand Prize.

A few other items of interest from our Leelanau Calendar at the Suttons Bay Powwow this Friday from 1:30 - 9 PM, the Traverse City Chocolate Festival this Sunday from 1-4 PM and a pair of Leelanau Chamber events, the Business Expo from 11-6 on Wednesday at the Strongheart Center and the Chamber's Business After Hours next Thursday at 5:30 at Sugarfoot Saloon.

Many more on the Leelanau Calendar!

The Bay Theatre in Suttons Bay has Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (PG-13) starring Emily Blunt, Ewan McGregor, Kristin Scott Thomas ending tonight. Starting Friday is 21 Jump Street (R) starring Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, Brie Larson, Dave Franco, Ice Cube.

The Bluebird in Leland invites you to their Ethnic Dinners every Wednesday and Thursday through the winter & spring. Their season is winding down, but you can head out tonight for Italian and next week for Southwestern featuring Camarones Cozumel, Tortilla Crusted Snapper, Manchengo Chicken Chili Satays and Black Bean, Corn, and Portugese Sausage Nacho w/fire roasted bell peppers & Jalapenos!

The Weather

It's 60 degrees and raining hard at Leelanau Coffee Roasting in Glen Arbor as severe thunderstorms rake the area. They've dumped buckets of (hopefully) morel-bringing rain with more to come. The record high for a May 3rd is 88 from 1955 with the low of 22 set in 1967. Highs are expected in the low 70s today. Rain and thunderstorms will continue overnight, bringing up to an inch of rain by tomorrow. Expect rain to move out tomorrow by noon, bringing mostly sunny skies with highs in the mid to upper 60s. The weekend outlook calls for sunny skies and low 70s on Saturday and mostly cloudy skies and low 70s on Sunday.

Ken Scott captured the Northern Lights late Sunday night. Several more photos from the night are right here and you can also view a short video below!

The Great Lakes Echo has been asking photographers to send them their toughest Great Lakes shots for their Flash Point series. They recently featured Ken Scott of Ken Scott Photography...

South Manitou Lighthouse

Lit by a full moon, this is a stack of 350, 30-second exposures.

The hard part was getting the timing to work out so I could travel out to the island when there would be a full enough moon to light the landscape and no clouds to interfere with the shoot. It was a crap shoot and took a few trips out to get the timing the way I wanted it.

The easy part was hanging out on the beach under a full moon!

The interesting part (for me) is how technology has changed and with it, so have techniques. I used to do long exposures on film to get star trails, but if there was any man-made lighting, like street lamps, it would over-expose that part of the image and many times make the whole image unusable. Now with digital, you can take shorter exposures keeping lights better exposed and stack many photos to get the star trail effect without blowing out highlights. The time lapse of all the images to make this photo are here.

-Ken Scott

We featured this on Michigan in Pictures this morning...

Beautiful Blossoms 5320-11 by StacyN - MichiganMoments

Cherry blossoms are out a full month early on the Leelanau Peninsula, and "Summer in March" appears to have claimed much of Northern Michigan's 2012 tart cherry crop. Interlochen Public Radio reports:

A spring freeze last week across Northwest Michigan killed more than half of the buds on tart cherry trees. Industry officials estimate the loss for the region in the 50 to 70 percent range. Trees can produce a decent crop if a third of the buds survive. But several factors, including another freeze this spring, could still damage more of the crop before harvest.

Leelanau County saw the heaviest loss, estimated at as high as 90 percent of sour cherries killed in many orchards. But other fruit trees, like apple and sweet cherries, are in decent shape.

Other county crops like apples and sweet cherries appear to be in better shape, but with a hard frost out there this morning, it's probably not over yet.

Check this out bigger and in Stacy's Spring slideshow.

This week's photo is South Fox Island ... tower view, spring panorama by Ken Scott. A glorious shot for an unprecedented March. Don't miss his slideshow from South Fox Island.

The South Fox Lighthouse Association maintains this light, has lots of great history and photos and is a worthy target for your donations. Click the "f" to the left to visit them on Facebook.

Recently, I made the acquaintance of Terry Pepper. Terry's Seeing the Light is hands-down the best Great Lakes Lighthouse website out there and I've used him as a resource for years in dozens of lighthouse features on Michigan in Pictures. Terry told me I could lean on him (even more) for photos and information. It seems a shame to waste that gift, so here goes. On his South Fox Island Lighthouse page he begins:

South Fox Island is located approximately seventeen miles off Cat's Head Point, at the tip of the Leelanau Peninsula. The story of this Island light began with Congress's appropriation of $18,000 for the construction of a lighthouse there on March 2, 1867.

Work on the light station began immediately, with the construction of the Cream City brick tower. With walls thirteen inches in thickness, the square tower topped-out at forty-five feet in height, and contained a forty-eight step cast iron spiral staircase leading to the lantern room.

The lantern was outfitted with a flashing red Fourth Order Fresnel lens, and the station's first keeper Henry J. Roe climbed the tower steps to exhibit the light for the first time on November 1, 1867.

Read on for much more including Keeper Warner's battle with drifting sands and snow that piled so high as to interfere with access to the station's buildings and more about that Cream City brick from Milwaukee.

OK, now who's up for a little stroll around South Fox Lighthouse?

It is extraordinarily rare for climate locations with 100+ year long periods of records to break records day after day after day.
~Jeff Masters, Chief Meteorologist, Weather Underground

UPDATE: March 23rd

As near as we can tell, we've set record high temperatures since last Friday. That's a full SEVEN DAYS of record temperatures. Michigan-based Weather Underground Meteorologist Jeff Masters has been writing some fantastic stuff about what he calls "Summer in March". This morning he wrote (in part):

The duration, areal size, and intensity of the Summer in March, 2012 heat wave are simply off-scale, and the event ranks as one of North America's most extraordinary weather events in recorded history. Such a historic event is difficult to summarize, and in today's post I will offer just a few of the most notable highlights.

I've never seen a case where the low temperature for the date beat the previous record high. This happened on at least four occasions during "Summer in March, 2012". The low temperature at Marquette, Michigan hit 52° on March 21, which was 3° warmer than the previous record high for the date.

It is exceptionally rare for a weather station with a 50+ year period of record to break a daily temperature record by more than 10°F. During "Summer in March, 2012", beating daily records by 10° - 20°F was commonplace, and many records were smashed by over 20°. Yesterday's high temperature was 24°C (44°F) above average. Pellston, Michigan in the Northern Lower Peninsula - dubbed "Michigan's Icebox", since it frequently records the coldest temperatures in the state - hit 85° on March 21. This broke the previous record for the date (53° in 2007) by 32°, and was an absurd 48°F above average.

Numerous cities have broken high temperature records on seven consecutive days during "Summer in March, 2012", including Gaylord, Pellston, and Traverse City in Michigan.

Anyway, sorry for the extra-long post but this is a truly historic and significant event that we feel warrants everyone's attention.

As I write this, it's 81 degrees under sunny skies in Leelanau County. I just read an article that says Morel mushrooms are out in southwest Michigan.

Add record highs of 87 Wednesday the 21st and 76 Thursday the 22nd.  The record high for a March 20th was a scorching 74 degrees in 1938 with the low of -6 set in 1989. That's "was" because it is now 81. (ed: make that 86) March 19th at 83 was also a new record as were March 17th AND 18th at 82 degrees. March 16th only logged 70 degrees but that was a record as well.

We heartily urge you to read Jeff Masters article at Weather Underground for more about the weather science behind this  just how aberrant it is to have SIX days of record high temps with over 100 years of data. If you'd like to scare yourself, check out an article Jeff links to titled Perceptions of Climate Change:The New Climate Dice by researches from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and elsewhere. It explores how we have loaded the weather "dice" to make extreme weather much more likely and begins:

"Climate dice", describing the chance of unusually warm or cool seasons relative to climatology, have become progressively "loaded" in the past 30 years, coincident with rapid global warming. The distribution of seasonal mean temperature anomalies has shifted toward higher temperatures and the range of anomalies has increased. An important change is the emergence of a category of summertime extremely hot outliers, more than three standard deviations (?) warmer than climatology.This hot extreme, which covered much less than 1% of Earth's surface in the period of climatology, now typically covers about 10% of the land area.

It ends with some very scary conclusions ... all rooted in hard data from the most sophisticated monitoring network in the world.

Photo credits: Suttons Bay Sunrise ... morning findings by Ken Scott

Searching by kevin dooley>

Here's a new background for you to help you keep up with the crazy March weather! Just click to download from Flickr.

More backgrounds from Leelanau.com! (also see our Backgrounds page)

The majority of our snow comes from lake effect. We don’t usually see that heavy cement-mixer type of snow."
~ Gaylord-based National Weather Service meteorologist John Boris

As Leelanau continues to dig out from a MAJOR winter storm, we thought we would post some of the highlights (or is that low points) of this very disruptive storm. TV 9&10 meteorologist Tom O'Hare explains: (more...)

This week's photo was taken by Andy McFarlane - more in the Snow Day Slideshow!

Thousands are still out of power according to the Record-Eagle. IPR News Radio has a report on the storm and power outages that says that Consumers Energy still has 35,000 customers without power, including thousands in Leelanau County. In all, 169,000 customers have had service interrupted due to the storm. TV 9&10 is following the crews restoring power and has a video report.

Leelanau was ground zero and