Season Snowfall: Muskegon, Hart and Niles reach the 100" Club

Six Places in the U.P. have had over 200" of snow this winter

Season snowfall update: Muskegon, Hart and Niles have reached the 100” club this winter. As I write this, Muskegon has had exactly 100.0” of snow this season. Average for the entire winter for Muskegon is 87.2”. The last time Muskegon had over 100” in a winter was in the winter of 2017-18.

The most snow in a single season in Muskegon is 173.9” in the winter of 1981-82. We had 3 major snow events on 3 successive weekends in Jan. 1982, including Blizzard Warnings. The snow was accompanied by Arctic cold air and strong winds that blew the snow into huge drifts.

This winter may very well be the snowiest in Muskegon since 2013-14, when we had 132-7” of snow in the Port City. To make it a top 10 snowiest winter in Muskegon (records go back to 1896), we’d have to beat the 136.8” total from 1989-90.

Here’s some West Michigan Season Snowfalls as of Tuesday morning (2/24)

A good portion of our snowfall this winter has been lake-effect. Temperatures have been colder than average for much of the winter. Here’s the difference from average for each month in G.R: November -1.3°, December -4.4°, January -4.6°. For February 1-23, Grand Rapids was 2.2° above average…but, 12 of 23 days (more than half) were colder than average and one was exactly average. Cold temperatures often means more opportunity for lake-effect snow over a longer period of time. On the other hand, it wasn’t been cold enough to freeze most of the surface area of Lake Michigan, we we have had mostly open water.

Across Lake Michigan, Milwaukee has had 36.0” of snow and to our east, Lansing has had 38.6” of snow this winter. You can see the difference lake-effect snow can make.

This year we have had more lake-effect snows with a north or northwest wind. That means the areas near Lake Michigan in Oceana and Muskegon Counties get more lake-effect snow. Same storm for the south end of the lake. Note the high snowfall totals this winter at South Bend IN and Niles MI (Berrien County). With a north wind, the lake-effect band of snow sometimes sets up west of Holland and Kalamazoo, where less lake-effect snow falls.

Here’s some updated season snowfall totals from the U.P. and I included Gaylord in northern Lower Michigan. As I write this, Marquette has 47” of snow on the ground, nearly 4 feet

Here’s some snowfall totals from East Coast snowstorm. More totals:

Here’s some peak wind gusts…over half a million customers lost power from the storm

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As I type this…the Lower 48 (contiguous) states combined are -3.8°F below normal.

Final unrelated note. Baseball Hall-of-Famer Bill Mazeroski has passed away at the age of 89. He hit (arguably) the most dramatic home run in baseball history. It was the bottom of the 9th inning, 7th game of the World Series with the series between the New York Yankees and Pittsburgh Pirates tied at 3 games apiece. This was it, the final 7th game. It was the first time the Pirates were in the World Series since 1927 (when they lost the series 4 games to none). Now - here’s the film of that exciting home run.