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Plenty of flooding and ice along Lake Erie shoreline

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Lake Erie has thrown up some wild weather over the last two days with a mixture of wind, snow, rain and sunshine.

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A Lake Erie gale warning was issued Saturday morning predicting winds up to 35 knots that would diminish through the day but continue strong into Sunday.

“The pier in Port Dover is shards of ice,” reported Michael Charlebois, a resident in the small community, on Saturday.

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“We’ve had some absolutely beautiful weather and then, all of a sudden, we get winds and snow and then rain mixed with snow.”

Charlebois said the result has been low flooding of the roads by the pier affecting the Tim Hortons and the nearby gas station.

“Everybody wants a look so they’re trying to drive through the water even though it’s so deep. It’s dangerous.”

But Charlebois walks the area on a regular basis and captured the flooding and trees weighed down by ice after the water has been blown ashore.

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“Some of the ice sculptures are amazing.”

In Turkey Point, the water level rose to cover not just Ordnance Avenue but a number of roads in the community, leaving many of them impassable, frozen and slushy by Saturday morning.

“Unless you had four-wheel drive you couldn’t get around,” said Brad Thomson, the general manager of the MacDonald Marina in Turkey Point where the flood waters pushed up five inches of ice into the docks, lifting their pipes.

“Hats off to the Norfolk County crews that came in with a grader and got things sorted out.”

Thomson said the floods in the area, which used to happen every few years, have increased to several times a year and the marina, along with property associations and lakeside communities, has been lobbying the government to investigate ways to lower the high lake levels.

“We’re hopeful all levels of government can come together and look into dams up north because we’re getting these floods three or four times a year.

“If this is going to be the future, we’re going to lose a lot of shoreline and a lot of tourism. Those great beaches everyone grew up with as teenagers are going to be gone.”

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