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Photo courtesy of Butch Schulte

The late afternoon December 23 blizzard included wind gusts in excess of 70 miles per hour. Earlier in the day, the temps were in the mid-30s, and light snow fell, but as the temperatures dropped, the melting snow turned into a sheet of ice, and many vehicles slid off the road and had to be pulled out of ditches. The strong winds knocked trees down across roads, Nordic ski and snowmobile trails, and even across decks, like the tree above that crashed into Butch Schulte’s deck. The big winds ceased about 2 a.m. on Christmas Eve. The winds left more than a foot of snow in some places, high snowdrifts in other areas, and lots of cleanup for plow truck drivers who worked through the night and long into the next day.