Our first blast of cold air is coming. It will be cold enough for the Upper Peninsula to have snow. While the first flakes are not imminent for Lower Michigan, here’s a look at when we normally get our first snow.
The strongest cold front of the fall season is going to swoosh through Michigan today and tonight. Watch the radar forecast to see rain showers in the U.P. transition to snow showers tonight.
The higher elevations of inland areas of the western U.P. could have one-half inch of snow tonight.
But when do we normally see our first snow in Lower Michigan? The chart I prepared below shows southeast Lower Michigan should think about the first snow in mid-November. Detroit, Ann Arbor, Flint, Saginaw, Bay City, Midland and Kalamazoo all average between Nov. 15 and Nov. 17 for the first one-tenth of an inch of snow. One-tenth of an inch is what we would call a dusting of snow. Grand Rapids gets the first snow about one week earlier than the southeast part of Lower Michigan.
As we move into far northern Lower Michigan, the first dusting of snow usually occurs in the last two weeks of October. That’s only two weeks from now! Gaylord gets its first snow around Oct. 26. Sault Ste. Marie has snow on average around Oct. 21.
We know we can average Mother Nature’s results, but Mother Nature is rarely average. We’ve had big snows earlier than the first dusting snow date. Flint had a 3.5 inch snow on Oct. 19, 1989. That was the earliest heavy snow at Flint. Detroit had 2.7 inches of snow on that same day. Saginaw had four inches of snow on Oct. 27, 1997. I remember that snow.
For Grand Rapids, the earliest substantial snow was 2 inches on Oct. 12, 2006. The heaviest October snow for Grand Rapids was 8.2 inches on Oct. 27, 1967.
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