Michigan’s Airwaves Go Silent After Devastating Ice Storm

While Northern Michigan is often equated with beauty and tranquility, residents in the northwest region of Michigan's Lower Peninsula have been devastated by a severe ice storm that some have labeled 'catastrophic.'

In addition to impassible roads and downed power lines and trees, several broadcast towers have collapsed due to the weight of excessive ice, silencing more than a half dozen radio and TV broadcast stations.

Ice Storm Causes Catastrophic, Historic Damage in Northern Michigan

While severe weather caused widespread power outages throughout Michigan's Lower Peninsula beginning last weekend (March 26 - 27), residents of Northwest Michigan and the eastern UP were socked with crippling ice that knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of residents.

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Harold Dippman is a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Gaylord. He says this week's storm is the worst ice storm in modern times.

"You have to go back all the way to 1922 to find something even remotely close," Dippman tells the Petoskey News Review. "It's a generational storm, one people will talk about for the rest of their lives."

Today - seven days after parts of the region saw up to 1.5 inches of ice - roughly 50,000 power customers have yet to see their lights come back on.

Several Broadcast Towers in Michigan Collapse Due to Ice

As ice coated roads, trees, and power lines in Northern Michigan, FM and TV broadcast towers began falling like Dominos. MacDonald Garber Broadcasting's Peter Garber tells Ramp that a total of six TV and radio towers have buckled in the last week in Northern Michigan.

Legendary Top 40 station WKHQ-FM (106 KHQ), which is owned MacDonald Garber, was silenced early Monday morning (3/31) when its tower collapsed from the weight of the ice.
Days later, another of the company's towers crashed to the ground, putting sister station WLXT-FM (Lite 96.3) on ice indefinitely.
A broadcast tower in Vanderbilt (about 40 miles south of the Mackinac Bridge) collapsed as well, silencing 105.1 FM in Cheboygan, Fox 45-TV in Cadillac, and a Smile-FM affiliate.
Classic Hits WMJZ-FM in Gaylord, Michigan, and two affiliates of the 'Promise-FM' radio network were taken off the air when their towers suffered structural damage as well.

WKHQ has since returned to the air, broadcasting from an auxiliary site until its main broadcast tower can be rebuilt.

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