MUSKEGON, Mich. — For Halloween this year, fall in West Michigan dressed up as winter.
"We’re always ready," said Andrew Nichols, maintenance superintendent for the Muskegon County Road Commission. "We watch the weather; we know it's coming."
With a Winter Weather Advisory in the forecast for Muskegon, Newaygo, Oceana, and Ottawa Counties, Nichols kept his crews close to the office, calling them back when weighty, wet flakes started to fall around noon.
"There's a lot of preplanning," Nichols said. "We're not really caught off guard with this stuff."
For the out-of-season storm, the road commission plans to "splash a little bit" of salt on bridges and Nichols predicts still-warm surface temperatures on the road will prevent the formation of ice.
"You might see a little bit of slush," Nichols said. "But it's going to melt."
In recorded history (since 1896) in the Muskegon area, the National Weather Service documented only "trace" amounts of snowfall on Halloween, making October 31, 2023, a record-setting day.
"We'll take what we can get," Nichols said. "Keeps the guys busy. They love driving in the trucks and doing something different. Just another day in the park for us."
