[al_borland]

I’ve lived in Michigan most of my life. I always hear people talk about lake effect snow, but it doesn’t seem that bad. I shoveled maybe 6 or 7 times this past winter and only bothered to pull out the snow blower one or two times. Even when I lived on the west side of the state, it wasn’t that bad. I only remember one time where is snowed about a foot… the roads were cleared and the rest of the winter was pretty uneventful.

There are some areas up in the UP that are bad, but very few people live there and they know what they’re signing up for.

Meanwhile, the people I know who live in NJ got wrecked by snow repeatedly this year, multiple feet at a time. I don’t recall ever getting anything like that around Detroit.

[BrandonM]

I live just west of Lake Michigan, and what you described would be a high-snow winter here. The lake effect is real. I grew up in the Cleveland area, and I was surprised how much less snow we get in Wisconsin. Longer, colder winters, though.

[al_borland]

I lived in Chicagoland for a few years as well, I didn’t notice much of a difference. I would assume that’s similar to Wisconsin.

Of course, I was in apartments with covered parking and snow removal services the whole time, so I didn’t need to care too much.

I do remember the guys in the Chicago office talking about when they got a foot or so of snow and had to walk to the nearby hotel to spend the night, because it wasn’t safe to drive home. I heard stories like that from people in the Michigan office too, but in my 20 years working I still never ran into it. Just lucky I guess.

[t-3]

Lake effect precipitation effects the entire Midwest, but the temperature moderation predominantly effect the peninsulas. We did get more than a foot on the ground earlier, but it all melted, then froze again, then 70 degrees, now 20... the weather is crazy everywhere.