michsnowfreak

15.8" at DTW this March. No complaints. I only wish every March was like this. As I had said the midwest/lakes region in general has not had a snowy march in years. Usually February is the month that obliterates climo. Hopefully in '23-24 it's December.

I said our region was due for some good March snowstorms and there have been several this year.

Wow I had not heard of that one. I just looked it up. It was Sept 5, 1881. That september still stands as the hottest on record for detroit. On Sept 5 the high/low was 94/74 amd the low that night only dropped to 77.

I agree that the rating system is kind of silly. But it gives you a feel for how the Winter as a whole was, and its cool to see how the line graph rating the winter changed categories either way as the winter progressed. It rates the entire Cold season. Detroit easily rates as mild and we had 4 winter storms that caused damage. Meanwhile 2017-18 was rated as extreme and we had nothing damaging that year, just a good cold snowy winter. You can check out buffalo's individual seasons here. https://mrcc.purdue.edu/AWSSI/chart.html?stn=BUFthr For detroit the most "mild" winter was 2011-12, just beating out 1952-53 & 1997-98. The most "extreme" winter was 2013-14. That was in it's own time zone, nothing else came remotely close. A far distant second was 1977-78.

The Chicago fire was 1871. I think the michigan wildfires were also early 1870s

April 2009 saw that. Contrast indeed

It may even be later on that but it will be quite unsightly by then lol. DTW has a lot they dump snow in from the runways. Some years it can get huge.

Love your avatar. Bang, zoom!

Never happy to see a snow miss, but let's just say the trees need a break lol Jan 25 Feb 22 Mar 3 Mar 10

There were incredibly roller coaster winters in those decades. Very warm winters in the Midwest were 1875-76 1877-78 1879-80 1881-82 1889-90

Still be a while before these dirty mountains melt

That's the spirit. Where was this attitude before?

Bringing cc into every post is annoying. But id be all for a regional thread on it. Locally there's things I like (more snow) and things I don't like (more heat). The book that I mentioned above is actually a great way to look at what this area looked like almost 200 years ago.

How come when discussing how much winter temps warmed we start in 1970, but when discussing greenup we start in 1800? And if trees blooming in early-mid May is "exceptionally early", I guess we had to wait til June in 1800. I have a 580 page book by Bela Hubbard called "memorials of a half century". It literally details everything (weather, trees, etc) around Detroit from the 1830s-1880s. It's a fascinating read. There were many open winters back then btw. I'd say winters of the early 19th century were colder and drier overall.

You're a trip lol. Actually if it's warm I'm fine with it. Only 7 months til the first flakes of '23-24. It's when we get these prolonged spring cold snaps it's hard for a snow weenie to not root snow.

Wow thanks. I knew it was not much, but didn't realize it was that little. Glad I made him shovel my mom's driveway at Christmas, gave him a little winter lol.

Question for chicago lakeshore folks. Do you guys have any idea how much snow fell this season approximately on the lake shore? Maybe 12-15"? My brother was asking, I told him he undoubtedly had less than the 19.7: at ORD.

Hey we have an above average April snow streak to keep going.

This Nov event wasn't great here. Just run of the mill dusting, then 1.8" from the Arctic front on Nov 19.

When did you start greening up? All dormant here

Best LES for DTW is Harry's favorite and mine, the I94 band.

When I have time I'm going to look up each winter here since 1950 and see what they called it. Then based on temps/snow/snowcover I can get a better feel for what their weighing most heavily. But I have a feeling it's cold and snowcover.

I can't really figure it out because there were a few colder winters with low snow they considered avg or even severe. For marquette the line is really straddling between average and severe

It really depends on the year. For not being in a lake belt, our weather still is greatly affected by the lakes. We always get mood flakes anytime there's a cold frontal passage while it's often clear by you. But whether or not it's a bunch of traces or something more depends on flow, fetch, etc. Rarely can we say a significant percentage of our seasonal snowfall came from LES, but the two most generous lake seasons for DTW off the top of my head are 2006-07 & 2016-17. I would say the most difficult aspect of trying to decipher synoptic from LES is so many times cold fronts or clippers, which would have a certain amount of synoptic with them to begin with, get "lake enhanced", boosting totals in MI. In analyzing this year's totals, since everything is fresh enough in memory, of the 37" I estimate around 4-5" has been LES and maybe another few inches lake enhanced. Most of our snow has been synoptic, most of it wet. It's probably very realistic to assume the difference in snowfall average between DTW (45") and ORD (38") is LES

Grand Rapids saw one of its snowiest winters on record and hardly any place in Michigan has a big snowfall deficit. In fact southern MI has had some more fierce winter storms than usual. But we don't need cold to get snow. The winter overall was mild and the snow and ice cover less than normal. For individual cities you can go back to 1950 for AWSSI and it's clear that it's an all encompassing formula they use.