Lake Michigan writes its own forecasts. A northeast wind crosses open water, picks up everything it can hold, and unloads it over Waukegan in bands that can bury one street and leave the next one dusted. Kingston Snow Removal keeps hours that match — out at three in the morning with the blade down, plowing driveways and lots, cutting walks clean to the pavement, laying salt where the melt will refreeze by breakfast. The best part of the job happens before anyone sees it: a drive opened, a doorway path squared off, headlights swinging out onto a street at six as if the storm had been a rumor. Waukegan winters do not negotiate, so the answer is simply to be there first.