“The worst storm since the storm of March…1939” buried all of Upper Michigan with a foot or more of wind-whipped snow beginning on this date 54 years ago.  It was a wide-ranging system, dropping 17 inches of snow on Ottumwa in south-central Iowa, and a foot or more from northern Missouri into Wisconsin.  This March classic developed from the Rockies into the Texas Panhandle on March 4, 1959 (Image 1 above), moved to southwestern Missouri near Springfield on the 5^th, then took a sharp left turn to southern Lake Michigan, as the upper low supporting it “closed off” and intensified over the Mid-Mississippi Valley (Image 2).  On the morning of March 6, a deep low with a pressure of 29.20 inches of mercury (988mb) was situated over the southwest corner of Lower Michigan (Image 3). 

At least two lives were lost on U.P. highways due to the March 1959 blizzard.  A snowplow driver found the bodies of an elderly couple, a brother and sister, inside a car on a snowbound road near Carney in northern Menominee County.  They apparently became stuck in a drift, and made the mistake of keeping their car running with their windows closed to stay warm.  They died of carbon monoxide poisoning. 

During the height of the storm, severe drifting closed most of Delta County’s 840 miles of roads.  It took a while to clear them all, and eventually a county plow driver discovered a stranded vehicle on a back road, nine miles or so north of Rapid River.  Much to the surprise of the plow driver, there was a couple with the car waiting to be rescued.  They had been stranded almost three days! 

Farther north in Munising, the blizzard was so ferocious a “lifeline” was set up to help guide workers into the paper mill.  “The snow was so deep,” remembers Dan McCollum who worked at the mill, “that they parked cars along H-58 at the old plywood plant and then followed a rope into the paper mill.  The next day the cars were gone…buried in the snow.”  When the road was finally cleared, a long bamboo pole was used to find the buried cars.  A “snowgo” then cleared around each vehicle and a tow truck pulled them out of the snow bank.  In town, 45 students at Washington Elementary were forced to sleep in their classrooms after their bus “became hopelessly stuck.” 

After the storm, more moderate weather prevailed the rest of the month.  The last half of March 1959 saw a majority of days with temperatures above average.  The warm weather ate away at the snow banks left by the severe blizzard.  At the same time, Marquette County prepared for the arrival of the cast and crew of Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder, which began filming on location in the county just as the last remnants of the great blizzard melted away. 

No major storms are in our immediate future.  The current system affecting areas to our south will cause major problems along the East Coast.  The next system now off the West Coast will gradually chug eastward.  If it were to affect the Great Lakes, it would not be until early next week.