Kame

Posted on by farlane

Winter Wonderland - kame

Winter Wonderland – kame, photo by the little red hen

The sign in front of this hill (back right) reads:

The hill in front of you, known as a kame, was formed thousands of years ago when water from melting glacial ice flowed through a large crack in the ice. Glacial melt water carried sand, gravel, and rocks, depositing them at the base of the crack to form the kame. To help picture this, imagine how sand flows through an hourglass and creates a rounded pile of sand in the bottom of the hourglass.

You can read a little more from about this from Lynn on her blog. Check the photo out on black and see more shots from the day in her Michigan slideshow.

More geology on Michigan in Pictures.

Two seconds at Tahquamenon Falls

Posted on by farlane

upper tahquamenon falls, michigan

upper tahquamenon falls, michigan, photo by twurdemann

A waterfall for your Wednesday morning.

Check this out on black and see more including another view of this scene in twurdemann’s Michigan slideshow.

Many more Michigan waterfalls and also quite a lot of Tahquamenon Falls on Michigan in Pictures.

Happy Holidays!

Posted on by farlane

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays!, photo by Silver Cat Photography

Happy holidays to everyone. I hope that the days and year to come bring you all manner of happiness and health.

View this photo bigger and in Silver Cat Photography’s beach slideshow.

Megatron Monday: Calvin Johnson sets single-season receiving record!

Posted on by farlane

Megatron-Calvin-Johnson

Calvin Johnson, photo by Gavin Smith / Detroit Lions

“He’s unreal … I’m just proud to be associated with him.”
~Lions QB Matthew Stafford

With 11 catches for 225 yards against the Atlanta Falcons, Detroit Lions wide receiver Calvin Johnson strode into the record books to set the single-season yardage record for a wide receiver with 1892 yards. ESPN reports:

Johnson surpassed Jerry Rice’s single-season yards receiving record of 1,848 with his 10th catch in the fourth quarter Saturday night. That put Johnson over the 200-yard mark in the game against the Atlanta Falcons. He needed 182 to surpass the mark Rice set in 1995 with the San Francisco 49ers.

Johnson had more than 100 yards receiving for an eighth straight game, breaking an NFL record set by Charley Hennigan in 1961 and matched by Michael Irvin in 1995. Johnson broke another league mark with 10 receptions in a fourth game in a row.

It was Johnson’s 11th game with 100 yards receiving this season, tying Irvin’s NFL mark.

In the first quarter, Johnson surpassed Herman Moore’s single-season franchise record of 1,686 yards.

You might also enjoy Mitch Albom’s column on Calvin Johnson, who seeks the 2000 yeard milestone this Sunday against the Bears. View more photos from Megatron’s record-setting game and also see shots of Calvin and his dad post-game. You can get a Facebook cover of the catch from the Detroit Lions Facebook page, and there’s video of the catch as well.

More Detroit Lions on Michigan in Pictures.

Born & Raised in South Detroit

Posted on by farlane

Born And Raised In South Detroit....

Born And Raised In South Detroit…, photo by DetroitDerek Photography

Just a small town girl, livin’ in a lonely world
She took the midnight train goin’ anywhere
Just a city boy, born and raised in south Detroit
He took the midnight train goin’ anywhere
~Journey, Don’t Stop Believin’

mLive says that Don’t Stop Believin’ is the world’s all time most dowloaded MP3. It’s certainly one of the most fun songs ever to sing along with, so “South Detroit” is probably the world’s all-time most believed in totally made up place. Former Journey high-note-hitting frontman Steve Perry explains:

“I ran the phonetics of east, west, and north, but nothing sounded as good or emotionally true to me as South Detroit,” he says. “The syntax just sounded right. I fell in love with the line. It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve learned that there is no South Detroit. But it doesn’t matter.”

It doesn’t matter … if you don’t care about Detroit at least. Derek explains:

This image, taken facing South, shows you that… well… South Detroit is on the other side of the river… it’s Windsor… Canada… there is no South Detroit…. sorry if I ruined anyone’s Christmas by revealing this “sacred classic rock” information. Makes a good lyric though…

See it on black and view more in Derek’s My Faves slideshow.

More Detroit on Michigan in Pictures

It’s the end of the world as we know it

Posted on by farlane

Walkway to the Future

Walkway to the Future, photo by James Korringa

It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.
~REM

NASA has a page for anyone feeling worried about all the end of the world talk with

Does the Mayan calendar end in December 2012?

Just as the calendar you have on your kitchen wall does not cease to exist after December 31, the Mayan calendar does not cease to exist on December 21, 2012. This date is the end of the Mayan long-count period but then — just as your calendar begins again on January 1 — another long-count period begins for the Mayan calendar. (see links in yesterday’s Michigan in Pictures for more on this!)

What is the polar shift theory? Is it true that the Earth’s crust does a 180-degree rotation around the core in a matter of days if not hours?

A reversal in the rotation of Earth is impossible. There are slow movements of the continents (for example Antarctica was near the equator hundreds of millions of years ago), but that is irrelevant to claims of reversal of the rotational poles. However, many of the disaster websites pull a bait-and-switch to fool people. They claim a relationship between the rotation and the magnetic polarity of Earth, which does change irregularly, with a magnetic reversal taking place every 400,000 years on average. As far as we know, such a magnetic reversal doesn’t cause any harm to life on Earth. Scientists believe a magnetic reversal is very unlikely to happen in the next few millennia.

In the event that NASA scientists are wrong, I hope everyone has a wonderful last day on earth. There are also those who feel that it’s a new age in conciousness dawning, which might be a nice thing. In the event those folks are right or it’s just another day, here’s hoping your short and long term future is better than you hope!

James writes that this walkway is in Detroit. View it on black and in his Favorites slideshow.

Draco, Snowmageddon and the naming of winter storms

Posted on by farlane

Fierce

Fierce, photo by farroutdude

Meteorologist Paul Gross of WDIV has a nice forecast for Michigan & Metro Detroit (although the weather maps were a little confusing to me). In Winter Storm Draco ends record snowless streaks across Midwest, Dr. Jeff Masters of the Weather Underground adds that:

Winter Storm Draco is powering up over the Upper Midwest, and is poised to bring a resounding end to the record-length snowless streaks a number of U.S. cities have notched this year. Blizzard warnings are posted over portions of Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin, and snowfall amounts of up to a foot are expected in some of the affected regions. While the heavy snow will create dangerous travel conditions, the .5″ – 1.5″ of melted water equivalent from the the storm will provide welcome moisture for drought-parched areas of the Midwest.

…Average water levels on Lake Michigan and Lake Huron are near their lowest December levels ever recorded, preliminary data from NOAA’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory indicate. The U.S. has had its warmest and 12th driest year on record, according to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. It should be no surprise, then, that a number of major cities have set records for their longest period without snow. Most of these streaks have come to and end (or will do so in the next day or two) because of Winter Storm Draco.

Draco? You might be wondering when & why we started naming winter storms. The answer is actually due to social media:

A new naming system put in place by The Weather Channel has its roots in social media to make it easier for people to communicate and share information about winter storms. The network is the first to name them, similar to how tropical storms and hurricanes have been referenced for years.

“In addition to providing information about significant winter storms by referring to them by name, the name itself will make communication and information sharing in the constantly expanding world of social media much easier,” The Weather Channel meterologist Tom Niziol wrote on the site. “As an example, hash tagging a storm based on its name will provide a one-stop shop to exchange all of the latest information on the impending high-impact weather system.”

Mind your dragons folks and enjoy the last day of the 13th b’ak’tun cause the next time doesn’t roll around for 394.25 years!

See the dragon in faroutdude’s photo? View it on black and see more in his Marquette slideshow.

More Michigan blizzards on Michigan in Pictures.

Andy’s Trees … and Michigan Bigfoot

Posted on by farlane

Andy'sTrees

Andy’s Trees, photo by swatzo

I’m guessing these trees aren’t for me, but I still love them. Another thing that I’ve loved since I was a kid was the search for Bigfoot. mLive reports that last April, the team of Bigfoot researchers from Discovery Channel’s Finding Bigfoot show came to Michigan:

After their first search yielded no sightings or additional evidence, BFRO held a town hall meeting in Houghton Lake to solicit additional leads from local residents. A show of hands revealed that a large group of those gathered had seen what they thought was a Bigfoot creature. One woman had made recordings of what she claimed could be a sasquatch which prompted Moneymaker to investigate further.

During the second night of searching, BFRO was joined by Mike Berg, a Michigan Bigfoot tracker. Berg partnered with Barackman to explore one tract of forest while Moneymaker camped out in a tree stand on the property of the woman who had made the sound recordings. While both locations yielded sounds that were thought to be from a Big Foot creature, no visual evidence was obtained.

Meanwhile, Holland and Fay were investigating woods where a local boy reported a sasquatch sighting. The two attempted to communicate with the creature by making different types of calls at varying pitches. After hearing several wood knocks after the calls, Bobo clapped back, which was followed by more of the wood knocks. The knocks were followed by movement on the road, but their chase also failed to provide a definitive picture of sasquatch.

Watch a clip at the Finding Bigfoot website and also on YouTube. The episode airs this Saturday at 7 PM and other times this week on Discovery. More about Bigfoot in Michigan at the Michigan Bigfoot Information Center.

Check this out on black and see more in Steve’s slideshow.

More trees on Michigan in Pictures.

Hill of Beans: The Michigan Bean Elevator in Saginaw

Posted on by farlane

Michigan Bean Elevator - Saginaw, Mi

Michigan Bean Elevator – Saginaw, Mi, photo by jhoweaa

I know that many of you have been losing sleep because you don’t know the location of the world’s biggest bean elevator. You can rest easy now, because Waymarking.com explains that the largest bean elevator in the world is in Saginaw MI:

As a young man, (Albert L.) Riedel was one of the organizers of the Producers Elevator Company of Port Huron which later grew into the Michigan Bean Company. He was elected secretary of Michigan Bean when it moved its headquarters to Saginaw’s Bearinger Building and he was only 27 when he was named general manager of the company.

…In 1937, Riedel became president of the company as well as general manager and served in that capacity until the firm was sold to the Wickes Corporation in 1955. As president of Michigan Bean, Al Riedel pushed the idea of selling packaged, trademarked beans to the retail market instead of relying on bulk sales.

He was instrumental in making the Jack Rabbit brand of beans known all over the world. And it was while Riedel was president that the famous Bean Bunny neon sign was erected at the top of “the world’s largest bean elevator”.

The Bean Bunny, now proudly relit, has become one of Saginaw’s most beloved symbols. During World War II, too old for active service, Riedel volunteered as a dollar-a-year-man and served as a consultant attached to the Quartermaster Corp. He revamped purchasing and shipping programs and designed and developed waterproof bags for shipping food overseas.

You can learn a lot more about the Bean Bunny sign and see photos at mLive. The Michigan Bean Commission has tons of information about Michigan beans.

James also has some information about the bean bunny on his blog as well. You can also buy a print or a card there. View his photo on black and see more in his Interesting slideshow.

More from Saginaw on Michigan in Pictures.

Low water exposes Grand Haven shipwreck graveyard

Posted on by farlane

Grand Haven Shipwrecks

Grand Haven Shipwrecks, photo by Kevin Ryan

mLive has a feature on how our historically low water levels have revealed a number of shipwrecks in Grand Haven:

Maritime archaeologist and director of the Tri-Cities Historical Museum Kenneth Pott said the area around Harbor Island was an apparent dumping zone for abandoned vessels and 1930s aerials held by the museum and the city of Grand Haven show that additional wrecks exist there. If the water line were to recede even more, then more vessels may be exposed.

“We’re quite sure that there are more in the area,” Pott said. “This is something akin to a graveyard for vessels. This is very unusual.”

The wooden sections of the 290-foot steamer Aurora, once the largest wooden steamer on the Great Lakes, and parts of at least four other shipwreck hulks were exposed recently by the low water levels and area residents alerted maritime historians to the find. The Aurora was identified by members of Holland-based Michigan Shipwreck Research Associates and local historians earlier this week.

Read on for more info including the publicly-accessible location. You can also read more about the Aurora right here and see a photo gallery.

Check this out background big and see a couple more views including a nice one of the rough outline of the wreck in Kevin’s slideshow.

More Michigan shipwrecks on Michigan in Pictures.