ESCANABA — Road crews have had a challenging week cleaning up from a blizzard the likes of which haven’t been seen in the banana belt in almost half a century. The snow that fell between Sunday the 15th and Tuesday the 17th dumped between 33 and 52 inches in Delta County. Those measurements were taken in Escanaba and Round Lake, respectively.

Some have compared the recent storm to the blizzard of 1978, which also dropped around three feet in the area. As Escanaba Public Works Director Kent Dubord pointed out just days before Winter Storm Elsa, road-clearing is different today and can be trickier for his department, considering that there are now more cars on the road, bigger plows and fewer DPW employees.

“The crew was called in to begin plowing streets at 8:30 a.m. on Sunday, March 15. They split into two shifts: one worked until 9:00 p.m., while the other continued until midnight,” Dubord explained. “The crew that finished at 9:00 p.m. went home for a few hours before returning at 2:00 a.m. on Monday to resume plowing. The second shift remained at Public Works overnight and began their next shift at 4:00 a.m. Monday.”