MUSKEGON, Mich. — After a very quiet start to the 2012-13 winter season, Mother Nature has more than made up for it along the Lake Michigan shoreline.
With 6.9 inches of snow setting another daily record for the Muskegon airport, the site marked a snow total of 77.4″ for the season, now two-tenths of an inch above average for this point in the winter.
However, that snow has come in an extremely lopsided fashion. Looking at snow totals by month yields this:
- November 2012: 0.8″
- December 2012: 7.4″
- January 2013: 31.4″
- February 2013: 37.8″ (through the 19th)
The numbers are even more amazing if you break down January into two parts:
- January 1-18: 1.4″
- January 19-31: 30.0″
So, for the season through January 18th, Muskegon saw 9.6 inches of snow. In the month since then, an amazing 67.8 inches have fallen. This equates to five feet, seven-point-eight inches, or essentially the height of an average person.
Of course, not all of that snow is on the ground now, thanks to a late-January warmup that pushed temperatures as high as 59° on the 29th. On that date, nearly two and a half inches of rain melted all the snow that was on the ground at that point.
That rain, added to the snow, gives Muskegon a total of more than eleven inches of liquid-equivalent precipitation since the start of December — nearly double the average for that time period.
The 7 Day Forecast gives at least a couple of chances to add to both rain and snow totals around West Michigan. You can check it out anytime on the Weather page.
