Thundersnow, twenty foot snowdrifts and record warmth top the list of Michigan weather events on this day in history. From the National Weather Service archives here are the events that happened on Feb. 22.
In 1922, Menominee had thundersnow, sleet and freezing rain in a snowstorm which started on Feb. 21. Two feet of snow fell and was blown into drifts up to 10 feet deep by northeast winds to 50 mph. Telegraph and telephone service were disrupted and trains and streetcars were snowbound. Railroad plows slid off the tracks in Menominee. Delta County had a snowstorm with drifts of 15 to 20 feet deep bringing all traffic to a halt. Cascade Junction in Marquette County had snowdrifts 10 to 12 feet high with some as high as 20 feet.
Record warmth prevails in 1930, with highs in the upper 60s across much of southern Lower Michigan. At Grand Rapids, highs are in the upper 50s or 60s every day from Feb. 19 to Feb. 25. The record for Grand Rapids on this day is 67 degrees. The daytime temperature also soared to 67 degrees in Saginaw, which is the record high for the month of February in this city. This day also marked the fourth day in a row, Feb. 19 to Feb. 22, of daily record high temperatures in Saginaw. The temperature reached 64 degrees in Houghton Lake, which is also a record high for the month of February. Other daily records include Muskegon 55 degrees, Lansing 66 degrees, Alpena 60 degrees, Detroit 65 degrees, and Flint 65 degrees.
In 2001, a cold front moved southeast into the western Great Lakes region from Alberta during the morning and afternoon. South winds ahead of this cold front, combined with cold air over Lake Michigan, and produced a heavy band of lake effect snow across western Mackinac County. The snowfall began during the morning and continued through the evening. By 8:00 p.m., the 12-hour snowfall totaled 8 to 12 inches across the western half of Mackinac County.
A strong cold front passed across the Upper Peninsula in 2007. It produced a wind gust to 68 mph at Bark River in the early morning hours.
In 2010, low pressure moved out of the Central Plains and tracked northeast through the Ohio River Valley. Snowfall totals were generally in the two to eight inch range, with the higher totals occurring along and south of I-69. There were isolated totals up to nine inches reported across Washtenaw County. Some of the higher snowfall totals across the area included Ann Arbor reporting 9.0 inches, Saline with 8.5 inches, West Bloomfield had 8.0 inches, Wyandotte 7.7 inches, and Macomb Township received 7.5 inches. In West Michigan Grand Rapids saw a daily record of 4.9 inches.
