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Birthday · January 21, 2024

The Upper Michigan Blizzard of 1938

January 21, 2024

The atoms in your body have known many forms: star core, drifting dust, ocean mineral, living cell.

The Upper Michigan Blizzard of 1938

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APOD published January 21, 2024. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.

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The Upper Michigan Blizzard of 1938

Original APOD · January 21, 2024

Yes, but can your blizzard do this? In the Upper Peninsula of Michigan's Storm of the Century in 1938, some snow drifts reached the level of utility poles. Nearly a meter of new and unexpected snow fell over two days in a storm that started 86 years ago this week. As snow fell and gale-force winds piled snow to surreal heights, many roads became not only impassable but unplowable; people became stranded, cars, school buses and a train became mired, and even a dangerous fire raged. Two people were killed and some students were forced to spend several consecutive days at school. The featured image was taken by a local resident soon after the storm. Although all of this snow eventually melted, repeated snow storms like this help build lasting glaciers in snowy regions of our planet Earth.

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