GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Do you remember the snowstorm we had two years ago?
From Nov. 17 to 19, 2022 (a Thursday to a Saturday), a total of 23.3 inches of snow fell at Gerald R. Ford International Airport near Grand Rapids (if you like, you can tack on another 1.1 inches of snow that fell on the 16th).
Most of this snow was lake-effect and much of it fell inland, not at the immediate lakeshore. Here’s some snow totals during that three-day period:
- Milwaukee: 1.3 inches
- Muskegon 5.3 inches
- Holland 5.3 inches
- Lansing 8.2 inches
- Kalamazoo 12.8 inches
You can see they didn’t get much snow in eastern Wisconsin. They got a little bit, but this was mainly a lake-effect event.
In West Michigan, less snow fell at Lake Michigan shore. Muskegon and Holland both had 5.3 inches of snow. There’s two reasons for this. First, the relatively warmer water of Lake Michigan meant more of the precipitation near the lake fell as rain instead of snow.
Second, we had a fairly strong wind during this event. Peak wind gusts for those three days in Grand Rapids were 37, 33 and 36 mph. The stronger wind blew the lake-effect snow farther east into the second tier of counties from the lakeshore (Kalamazoo, Kent and Newaygo).
In Grand Rapids, a total of 7.6 inches fell on Thursday, Nov. 17, which broke the old daily snowfall record of 7.1 inches set in 1989 and caused dangerous road conditions.
Another 7 inches fell at the airport on Friday, Nov. 18, just a bit shy of the 9.6 inch record from 2014. That day, there was a 20-car pileup on US-131 near Kalamazoo.
The highest snowfall total for Grand Rapids came on Saturday, Nov. 19, in which 8.7 inches of snow was recorded. This smashed the old daily record of 4.3 inches in 1969. That day, the high temperature in Grand Rapids was just 25 degrees. That was 21 degrees colder than average and that was despite the wind coming off the relatively warmer water of Lake Michigan — so this was quite a shot of early season Arctic air.
That’s only the beginning of fallen records. The Nov. 17 through Nov. 19 stretch marked the first time that Grand Rapids ever recorded 7 or more inches of snow three days in a row in any month. It was also the highest consecutive three-day total ever in November, and the third highest three-day total for any time of year.
The November 2022 monthly snowfall total of 28.0 inches in Grand Rapids was the second-snowiest November ever recorded.
After this snow event, the snow melted quickly as the temperature reached 40 degrees on Nov. 21 and 49 degrees on the 23rd. Three of the last five days of the month had high temperatures in the mid-50s.
By the way, on Nov. 19, 2014, Grand Rapids had a daily record 9.6 inches of snow.
