In northeastern Michigan, heavy rain and snowmelt swelled lakes and rivers in Cheboygan County and sent large pieces of ice into residential areas, where residents reported damage that included ice breaking through windows and doors.
Photos and video posted Wednesday showed ice sitting inside living rooms along Michigan’s Black Lake, with homes, garages and sheds surrounded by several feet of muddy, brown water. The flooding was tied to spring rains and winter melt that pushed torrents of water through the county’s communities on their way to Lake Huron.
The Cheboygan County sheriff’s office told residents last week, in a post on its Facebook page, that Black Lake, the Black River, the Cheboygan River, Burt Lake, Mullett Lake, the Sturgeon River and “nearly every waterway in the county” had overflowed beyond their banks. The post said the rising water swallowed docks, roads, yards and, in “far too many cases, homes,” and that “What should be familiar shorelines are now unrecognizable expanses of water.” The sheriff’s office also said homes along Black Lake’s west side were evacuated over the weekend.
Christopher Narsesian, who took photographs and video of the damage, described the ice as massive. “These are ice sheets. They’re massive,” Narsesian said, adding that the ice was like “mini glaciers” that “just run down everything in their path” and that “Nothing can stop that kind of weight.”
Meteorologist Patrick Bak of the National Weather Service in Gaylord said that if water levels had been normal, lake ice would have melted in place rather than being carried into shoreline areas. “The ice on Black Lake, more than likely, was pushed ashore by the wind,” Bak said. He also said the high water meant the ice had “more room to travel,” which helped explain why the floes reached homes.
As water levels rose and overflow threatened stressed dam systems, state and county officials focused on keeping ice and debris from clogging the Cheboygan Lock and Dam Complex so water could keep flowing downstream. Patrick Ertel, a spokesman for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources Incident Management Team, said crews were using pumps and restoring power to an older hydroelectric station to increase water flow through the dam, and that cranes were used to remove gates that hold back water.
Ertel said the problem was aggravated after a large chunk of ice snapped the safety cable at the Cheboygan Lock and Dam Complex on April 9, which led the department to close access points upstream and downstream of the dam. “We can’t have large chunks of ice flowing down blocking up the gates,” Ertel said. He said two marine vessels were breaking up ice chunks on the Cheboygan River and that increasing safe passage at the dam would help bring relief to Mullett Lake, where officials said they had managed ice issues before.
The smaller Alverno Dam sits between Black Lake and the Cheboygan River. Ertel said ice from Black Lake was expected to be held up rather than making its way down to the Cheboygan River.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer declared a state of emergency in Cheboygan and more than 30 other Michigan counties due to flooding and other severe weather this month.
After the worst of the rise, water was receding, Narsesian said, though he described high levels as still continuing and said the ice was still out on the lake. “As long as the wind doesn’t pick up and move that around again, we should be OK,” he said, warning that if the ice returned it could cause additional damage. He said the longer-term concern for the community was the aftermath, noting that “Most people don’t have any help — coverage,” and adding that flood insurance “was never necessary” because residents had not “ever seen this here.”