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The Leelanau Community Cultural Center will host the "Exposures 2012" exhibit to celebrate the art and creative writing of Leelanau County students in grades 7-12 chosen for this year’s publication. The opening reception is on Friday, April 27 from 4:30 to 7:30 pm featuring original artwork, essays and poetry, and live music. Hors d'oeuvres are provided for everyone’s enjoyment courtesy of the LCCC Board, local grocery stores and restaurants.

All students whose work is included in the book will receive a complimentary copy of Exposures 2012. Additional copies will go on sale for $5 per copy at area book stores. The exhibit continues on Saturday, April 28 from 10 am to 4 pm at the Old Art Building in Leland.

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

Forecast Radar Cameras Photos

For the latest Leelanau & Traverse City weather you can use the resources on this page and also check out our latest This Week in Leelanau feature.

Coming Events

Check the Leelanau Calendar for events.  You can click that link to add your Leelanau & Traverse City events to the calendar for FREE! Not only will they be distributed with our weekly newsletter, but they may be a featured story on Leelanau.com!

More Weather Resources

Please also check the less pessimistic Weather.com forecast)

Weather Underground is just about as old as the internet (the first net weather service) and is located in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Sometimes the above banner will show personal weather system data from Leelanau Coffee in Glen Arbor, sometimes from Leland and sometimes it comes from a vineyard on Old Mission (it tells you which in the top left of the page it links to).

Buoy 45002 in Lake Michigan is located halfway between North Manitou Island and Washington Island in Lake Michigan. It provides wind and wave data. Also check out Michigan Sea Grant Coastwatch for water temps (the "early evening" images in their archive will give you a better idea of actual temps during peaks swimming hours ... in seasons where you might actually want to swim!).

Spring is an excellent time for new or frequent visitors to enjoy Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. From signs of spring at the farmsteads of Port Oneida learning about returning migratory birds along Lakeshore's magnificent trails, a Ranger-led hike in the park can be a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

Every Saturday afternoon at 1 PM you can meet a Park Ranger at the Philip Hart Visitor Center in Empire. They'll introduce the afternoon's topic and then lead a car caravan a short distance to where the walk will begin. Each week features a different topic and location, and hikes last 1 to 1 1/2 hours and are no longer than 1 1/2 miles. Dress for the weather!

• The Best of Both Worlds (April 7) - Experience the best of both worlds at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Rangers will take you to a place where history and nature both share the spotlight.
• What’s the Point of the Dunes? (April 14) - Explore the Sleeping Bear Point Trail and learn why the dunes are here.
• Picture Yourself at Sleeping Bear Dunes (April 21) - For the official start of National Park Week, join a Park Ranger for a hike with some magnificent views. Bring your camera to capture the scenery.
• National Junior Ranger Day (April 28) - Join Park Rangers for a day of fun exploring, learning about and protecting Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Events start at 10:00 a.m. and the swearing in ceremony is at 3:00 p.m.

The Saturdays at the Lakeshore program is held every Saturday from now until mid-June when summer programs start. Hikes are free. Participants need only purchase the park entrance pass or have an annual pass displayed in their vehicle to join in the fun. Please call 231-326-5134 extension 328 to make reservations and for details, or visit www.nps.gov/slbe visit their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/sbdnl.

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.

U.S. Senator Carl Levin and National Lakeshore Superintendent Dusty Shultz break ground on the trail last summer.

The Glen Arbor Sun reports that a Glen Arbor couple has offered a challenge match for Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail:

Glen Arbor residents Bill and Vicki Anderson, who were among the first supporters of the Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail (SBHT), have issued a challenge pledge with a 2:1 match for all donations to the new trail through the end of March. The campaign still needs to raise $30,000 in order to secure the full Anderson Challenge match of $50,000. Bill Anderson shared with Traverse Area Recreation and Transportation (TART) Trails his family’s motivation for posing the challenge match.

“This summer, 10 years of planning and effort will become a reality for the first five-mile link of the Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail,” he said. “To help sustain the momentum and encourage additional financial support we are offering a match of $50,000 if the $100,000 goal is reached by March 31st.”

The first section of trail connecting Glen Arbor to the Dune Climb will be completed this July. The trail will provide easy, car-free access to amenities and attractions including the DH Day Campground, Glen Haven, Glen Arbor and the Dune Climb.

Read on at the Sun and learn more about the trail and make donations at sleepingbeartrail.org or by calling Pam Darling (231) 941-4300.

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...)