Chapter 10

Mrs. Wise wasn’t kidding. When I stopped by to see the condition of the BMW, she repeated the offer.

“Half a dozen bikers have been here to have a try at assembling the Beamer but no one has been able to do it. If you want to have a look... ?”

The barn is huge. Remember, central Michigan is snow from November to April and equipment needs to be stored inside. So does livestock. Even the chicken coop needs heating, if only to keep the water from freezing. Along about the middle of November the weather becomes ... unpredictable ... no matter what the weatherman said.

Weatherman: the only job where the employee can be dead wrong three out of five days and keep the job. No other kind of employment offers such.

There Are places where the weatherman is mostly right ... generally. Like Kansas. “Listen up folks. It’s gonna storm right at 3:15 this afternoon.” And it does... 95% of the time.

When the forecaster is wrong ... it’s a doozy.

Even when they’re right, it’s a miracle:

Can a storm be a both blizzard and a cyclone? Yes, and it’s nasty. The Storm of the Century wreaked havoc from Cuba to Canada. As strong as a hurricane, covering an entire continent, the storm was responsible for 310 deaths, $6.6 billion in damage, and shut down the South for three days. Coming a week before spring, on March 12, 1993, the hit was hard to take. However, the Storm of the Century marked the first successful five-day forecast by the National Weather Service of a storm’s severity, and a State of Emergency was declared in some regions before snow even started falling. Google(Live Science)

Note that First Successful Five Day Forecast. That storm dumped 19 inches of snow on Knoxville, Tennessee; in the Smoky Mountains a troop of Boy Scouts weathered that storm. Flying colors. Always prepared are Scouts.

A blizzard with hurricane-force winds, this devastating storm is the deadliest natural disaster to ever hit the Great Lakes region. More than 250 people died when the winter whopper, called a November gale, struck the Great Lakes on Nov. 7, 1913. Waves on the lakes reached 35 feet high (10 meters) and the storm’s sustained wind speed reached 60 mph (96 km/h) for more than half a day.

Notice the weather service did’t predict this one. In fact, everyone was surprised at how fast the storm formed.

An exploding bomb (weather lingo for a large pressure drop) went off over the Midwest on Nov. 11, 1940, as cold Northern air collided with warm Gulf Coast moisture. The raging blizzard quickly chilled the air, and fierce winds built 20-foot (6 m) snowdrifts. A total of 145 deaths were linked to the storm, including about 25 duck hunters who were not prepared for the cold weather forecasters had not predicted the severity of the coming storm.

The National Weather Service had this to say about the Armistice Day storm: