An Alberta clipper crosses Michigan fast and dry, and it can lay three inches on Long Lake Road between midnight and four with nobody awake to watch it happen. Gresham's Snow Removal runs those hours — plowing driveways and lots, clearing walkways, salting the ice that sets in once the wind dies. Winter here is less about the one big storm than the twenty small ones, and the unplanned ones are the ones that count. The truck works its route while the houses stay dark, and by the time kitchen lights come on the concrete is showing again. That is the entire point: the morning goes ahead as though it never snowed.