The late season winter storm that had a major impact on the upper peninsula and much of northwest lower Michigan this weekend equated to Leelanau receiving well over two feet of snow in a matter of days.
According to the National Weather Service (NWS) Maple City station, between Sunday and Monday, the area received 25.1 inches of snow. With an additional couple inches of lake effect snow associated with the storm observed on Monday, the total snowfall recorded from the winter storm event came in at 27.1 inches. The heights of snow drifts, depending on the location, varied throughout the county, but many local reports cited anywhere from two to fiveplus feet. The Maple City weather station has recorded approximately 154.1 inches of snow thus far this winter, about 10 inches more than the station’s average of 143.3 inches for a season.
While those in Leelanau and surrounding counties continued to dig themselves out of the storm’s accumulated snow Wednesday, the upper peninsula worked around the clock to do the same. NWS reports that the heaviest snowfall accumulation was recorded in the upper peninsula’s Alger County, located just south of Munising, where they received 52 inches of snow from the storm.
Harold Dippman, meteorologist with the NWS in Gaylord, said in terms of how the storm stacked up, there was a bit of a historic aspect to it as snowfall totals in the short time span were impressive.
“It’s very different from lake effect where you can get those localized snows that occur over several days, whereas this system was generally a 24-36 hour affair for most places that saw impacts from it,” Dippman said. “Generally speaking, because those storms are moving, you don’t usually see the snow totals that we managed to get out of this particular storm. That being said, in terms of the bigger snow storms that do happen across the upper Great Lakes and upper midwest, a lot of times, the late season snowfalls can be very significant.“The majority of the precipitation, which includes snow and sleet, in Leelanau recorded with the storm occurred late Saturday night through the entire day Sunday. Dippman said the greatest concentration of moisture with this system pivoted right above the Leelanau peninsula north and eastward into Charlevoix and up into the straits.
“That did manage to leak into Monday because once this low pressure system got off into Lake Huron, we started getting much colder air wrapping in around the back side of the system. With the recent warmth that we’ve had, Lake Michigan has had a chance to lose some of its ice cover, and that allowed for a lake effect component to take over as we got into Monday, and with strong north to north northwest flow, that led to Leelanau County getting some of the heavier lake effect snows that occurred on the backside of the system on top of what fell.”
Thankfully a more mundane pattern of weather is expected in the days ahead, with some chances of a rain-snow mix at times. Seasonal temperatures in the upcoming days will also be in the 30s and 40s, however, dense packed snow will be slow to erode and melt.
“In general, these precipitation events do look quite light in comparison to what we have just seen,” Dippman said. “So in comparison to those, these will be very mundane and light with just some light accumulations and maybe some light rainfall amounts as these disturbances quickly zip their way through the upper Great Lakes.”
