Snow covers a car on Friday in Gile. Credit: The (Ironwood) Daily Globe

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Residents in the northern Wisconsin community of Gile have named their hometown "the snow capital of the world," and for good reason: In just nine days, the hamlet has been blanketed with more than 6 feet of snow.

That's 73.1 inches, to be exact, as of the latest spotter measurement Tuesday. Another 4 to 7 inches is forecast to fall between Wednesday and Thursday evening.

Gile is in Iron County near the Upper Michigan border. And while national attention Wednesday focused on Buffalo, N.Y., where a ferocious lake-effect snowstorm dropped 6 feet of snow in one day, Gile received its share of national attention last week when the area was hit with more than 4 feet in as many days.

Gile topped 6 feet on Tuesday, with the latest dump of some 23 inches. That brought Gile to about a third of its normal annual snowfall, and we're not even to Thanksgiving.

Gile averages 217 to 227 inches, about 30 to 40 inches more than nearby Ironwood, Mich., said Kevin Huyck, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Duluth, Minn.

"It's starting to drive some people crazy," said Jay Hengtgen, owner of Burgers Bar & Grill, the only restaurant in Gile, part of the larger community of Montreal. "You're limited to where you can go. If you have a two-wheel (drive) car, it's tough.

"They're plowing all the roads, but the roads keep getting thinner and thinner. You park one (car) on one side and one on the other, it's hard to get two down the middle."

Getting around Gile is challenging, and not just for humans.

"There are no deer. They're all hunkered down. The only ones you see are the ones walking down Main St. because the roads are plowed," Hengtgen said. "They can actually walk, vs. in the woods. There was one outside my door yesterday. I said, 'Let 'em in! Give them a beer!'"

Wisconsin's gun deer hunting season starts Saturday. However, the large amounts of snow will make it difficult for many hunters near Gile to reach their cabins or tree stands with all-terrain vehicles and pickup trucks, as they normally do.

A few hunters are planning ahead and have called Eagle All Sports to rent mountain sleds, which are longer-track snowmobiles. The season for those doesn't normally start until Christmas, Eagle All Sports owner Tim Scheele told the Journal Sentinel on Wednesday.

"I've never rented a snowmobile out for deer hunting in my life," he said. "They gotta get out to their stands somehow. How else are you going to get out there?"

The store has 14 or 15 mountain sleds. Scheele is expecting them to be in demand as hunters show up this weekend and realize they can't get to their destination without them.

"It's a longer track and they have 21/4-inch paddles on them, which makes them go through snow a lot easier. They're longer length, and the paddles are way bigger, like a scoop shovel on a track," he explained.

Scheele said customers are eager to rent snowmobiles to get out on Iron County's more than 500 miles of trails, but for now, he has to disappoint them: The trails don't open until Dec. 1. The nearby ski resort is scheduled to open this weekend.

The snow took a break Wednesday morning, but Huyck said a lake-effect snow advisory is in effect for Gile from Wednesday afternoon through Thursday night.

"They may see another four to seven inches, it looks like," he said.

Gile's elevation and distance from Lake Superior make it the perfect target for large amounts of snow: As cold northwest winds blow across the still-warm surface waters of Lake Superior, moisture from the lake evaporates into the air. When it blows onshore, it elevates into clouds and falls as snow when it gets far enough inland.

Gile residents may as well get used to powdery stuff: Lake-effect snow continues until enough of Lake Superior freezes over. That doesn't usually happen until January.

"Three years ago, Thanksgiving day, they were playing volleyball in shorts in the yard, which is just two blocks down," bar owner Hengtgen said. "Today you're going to be building an igloo."