The other quirk most people don't know about Minnesota's north shore of superior is that it is mostly a SE/SSE facing ridgeline. Some years with a few sunny days in high 20s for the most of the region in late feb can meltdown all the snow along the shoreline due to increasing sun strength and the marine like influence of the open lake. My dad tells the story often of the first time he and his group went on a snowmobile trip staying "up the hill" from Grand Marais. This was in the late 80's so there was no internet, they had to take the resorts word that they had snow. The resort owner said they had lots of snow, meanwhile nearly all of Minnesota had nothing that year. They drove through Duluth with not a snow pile to be seen, up HWY 61 running along the shoreline to Silver Bay there is nothing. By the time they get into Grand Marais, a few slushy piles of snow. They turn up the road to Devil's Track Lake and in within a few miles up the Gunflint Trail there is massive snowbanks along the roadside and 3' of snow in the woods. The poor deer who didn't yard up by the lake, were up to their necks if they jumped off the trails. I have never seen it this dramatic myself, but have seen it go from bare ground to a foot plus of snow from lake shore to up the hill.

Love this area. Snow gets deep and sticks around until May most years. Done lots of camping/backpacking off highway 1. Before Covid it seemed like an undiscovered gem, now it’s overrun with Instagramers. on topic: Low of 9 this morning. Balmy.

Some weather history for southern Lower Michigan for January 7. 1942: Record cold high temperatures occur as arctic high pressure prevails. The high temperature is only 4 degrees at Grand Rapids and 6 at Muskegon. At Lansing, the thermometer struggles to reach the zero mark during the day, with a frigid northwest wind making it feel even colder 1988: An arctic blast brings several days of sub zero cold to Lower Michigan, including record lows this morning of 15 below zero at Grand Rapids and 11 below at Muskegon. 2014, Southeast Michigan was amidst a 3-day period of record to near record cold temperatures. Record lows were recorded at Detroit, Flint, and Saginaw. Detroit and Flint each fell to -14 degrees while Saginaw fell to -11 degrees. The coldest spot in Southeast Michigan was the city of Saline in Washtenaw County which fell to -23 degrees! The high temperature in Detroit on this day reached only -1 making it one of the coldest days on record for the city. Widespread wind chills in the -30s and -40s were recorded. 2008, record highs were set across Southeast Michigan. Detroit reached 64, Flint 61, and Saginaw 59. These temperatures were only 3 to 4 degrees off of the all-time January high temperatures. Later during the evening, thunderstorms moved across the region. Some of these storms were severe in Midland, Washtenaw and Monroe Counties! Since 1986 only two other January have had severe weather, 1990 and 1996.

@ Tom, you were calling me out on Sunday, where you @ KCMike. I was lurking, just didn't have time to post. I think you know, but I run a large snow fleet and we have been getting our butts kicked. No snow removal company in KC is built to fight 10-13 inches of snow with 3-4' drifts. Heck, we had 50 employees not make it in Sunday night as they were stuck in their neighborhoods, so, we fell behind very fast. Many other companies were in the same boat. The ice on Saturday was so bad in KC, we were forced to ground all of our trucks for 10 hours and wait for the sleet and snow to fall so we could get traction. Wasn't worth the chance of our drivers finding a ditch. What a storm though, businesses are still closed and schools are out. Side streets are still impassable in many areas still today. The amount of snow on our lots and sidewalks were crazy. The standard shovel or snow blower was not working...needed 200 loaders, but only had 15. Massive piles of snow everywhere!! I appreciate everyone posts with maps and updates. What a fun storm to track and experience.

Overall models essentially "peaked" around the 06Z or 12Z runs yesterday and have been a steady disappointment for the most part since slowly trending down. In particular the EPS has had a couple of runs with barely anything up here and no big storms. A lot of this seems to be the models trending back to the west with the cut off low so we never get the proper interaction models had thought we would. At least the 6z GEFS came back with a few bigger members again abut the EPS is not. We are running out of time to fix this though, if I don't see the EPS coming back today I think we are cooked with a good chance of less than 2". Any snow is nice, but I really want a 2+" snow.