Mild winter weather is shutting down logging operations across the region. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:
Transcript
Mild winter weather is shutting down logging operations across the
region. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:
Rain and mild temperatures have caused the ground to thaw, making
logging impossible in some places.
Al Steege is with the Keweenaw Land Association in Ironwood in
Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. He says logging in the UP is down about
75 percent for this time of year.
“I’ve been here ten years, I don’t remember a winter quite like this.
We’ve had winters where there’s been a lot of snow and that has caused
some issues with us logging, but as far the temperature-wise, I don’t
remember the ground situations being quite like they are this year.”
Steege says the UP needs single-digit temperatures for several nights in a
row to get logging production back up. The winter logging season runs
through mid-March. Some areas in the UP, Minnesota and Wisconsin
can only be logged in the winter because they stay too wet in the
summer.
For the GLRC, I’m Erin Toner.