How cold is cold (in MI)? (cross country, winters, work)

[djmilf]

Originally Posted by SageCats

How cold does it get in Detroit? Is cold extremely cold? Unbearable?

It gets so cold that one December I went outside and saw a dog stuck to a fire hydrant.

[sailelsa]

Originally Posted by SageCats

I've been living in warm climates (AZ and CA) for 10 years before moving back to the NYC area where I was born and raised. I haven't experienced a winter yet since I moved back (only a couple of months ago) so my body forgot what cold is like. I'm guessing NYC winters are similar to Detroit's? How cold does it get in Detroit? Is cold extremely cold? Unbearable?

Hi SageCats... I see you left AZ, went to SF, then went back to the east coast. I am also from the East Coast - Philly. I did similar to you. I left Philly - went to AZ for 6 years - had a beautiful house there - left to try something new, Denver. And it is not working out at all. I don't really like it here, aside from the mountains) and I don't like the weather (meaning winter). I moved from a big beautiful resort like house to a tiny brick ranch bc housing is so expensive here.

Anyway, can you private message me? I am thinking about moving again bc life is too short to be in a place you don't like - so I am either thinking of moving back to Phx (which is how I found you from your thread on there), or moving back to the east coast closer to family (which seems like what you did). I would not move directly back to Philly though - I am thinking Virginia Beach - because one thing that Denver has taught me is that I do not want to do any kind of real winter weather! lol. Anyway would love to chat. Thank you!

[Ummagumma]

Not nearly as cold as Boston or Chicago. The temps may be the same or even lower, but without the wind and high humidity due to being right next to a huge body of water, it's far easier to take. Walking in Detroit in the middle of winter is mainly the question of having enough insulation.

[Tyryztoll]

Originally Posted by jasonsjwou

Detroit is going to be colder compared to AZ and CA.

No......REALLY?

If you live in Detroit, you freeze your @ss off in the winter. It's what you do.

[Geo-Aggie]

My perspective (as someone who grew up in the Intermountain West) is that Detroiters are complete pansies when it comes to their definition of cold.

The first December week I was here, where it got down to about 30 degrees at night, I had at least 3 coworkers were saying "Heyyyy Geo-Aggie, pretty cold huh? Bet you didn't know what you were getting yourself into, huh" My typical response was, "Yeah, it was 20 in Salt Lake last night. Also I spent last winter in Northern Alberta. This isn't cold." And they all told me "just you wait" because of how cold it was going to get. I don't think we saw single digits once last year.

Then last April it was cooler. We had 2 weeks of highs in the 40s, lows in the 20s, and a couple light snow storms - people here lost their bloody minds. "Where's spring?!" Well, it's April - in most of the US, it snows in April. I actually had snow for finals week literally each and every year of my undergraduate degree living in Nowhere-Near-Detroit.

Now Detroit is obviously not Miami or Phoenix. It gets cold. You will wear a coat and long underwear in January and February, because you occasionally will see single digits, and possibly even below zero once or twice - that's cold, but it's by no means the arctic wasteland that so many Michiganders like to pretend it is. It's just typical continental interior weather with four distinct seasons. Personally I prefer that to the mono-seasons of places like Los Angeles and Jacksonville.

[Coldjensens]

[quote=Geo-Aggie;45453225]My perspective (as someone who grew up in the Intermountain West) is that Detroiters are complete pansies when it comes to their definition of cold.

The first December week I was here, where it got down to about 30 degrees at night, I had at least 3 coworkers were saying "Heyyyy Geo-Aggie, pretty cold huh? Bet you didn't know what you were getting yourself into, huh" My typical response was, "Yeah, it was 20 in Salt Lake last night. Also I spent last winter in Northern Alberta. This isn't cold." And they all told me "just you wait" because of how cold it was going to get. I don't think we saw single digits once last year.

./QUOTE]

The cold weather comes in January. It is rare to get much below 20s or 30s before then. January - February will typically see a few days with sub-zero temperatures and significantly sub-zero wind chill. I do not remember 2015, but this past winter, (2016) we definitely had some sub-zero days.

However it is not the ambient temperature that makes it cold, it is the wind. Regardless of official wind chill factors, 20 or even 30 and windy makes you a lot colder than -10 and still. A wet wind negates a lot of what your layers and layers of clothing can do for you to stay warm. It is fun and refreshing to go out when it is -10 and still/sunny, but if there is wind during the winter, I try to stay inside. I love wind normally, but below 30 degrees, I hate it with a passion.

We got spoiled by a few years of mild short winters. One year it warmed up in February (it normally does for one week and then gets cold again), but it stayed warm. We had 60s and 70s in March. People got spoiled and thought global warming was shortening our winters for good.

The hard winter months hear are January, February and sometimes March. April is often on and off cold, but you can tell that winter is breaking. By the end of April, the early flowers are usually blooming, sometimes through the snow, but it is definitely warming. When April comes and there is no sign of winter breaking, people get frustrated.

[Geo-Aggie]

Originally Posted by Coldjensens

The cold weather comes in January. It is rare to get much below 20s or 30s before then. January - February will typically see a few days with sub-zero temperatures and significantly sub-zero wind chill. I do not remember 2015, but this past winter, (2016) we definitely had some sub-zero days.

However it is not the ambient temperature that makes it cold, it is the wind. Regardless of official wind chill factors, 20 or even 30 and windy makes you a lot colder than -10 and still. A wet wind negates a lot of what your layers and layers of clothing can do for you to stay warm. It is fun and refreshing to go out when it is -10 and still/sunny, but if there is wind during the winter, I try to stay inside. I love wind normally, but below 30 degrees, I hate it with a passion.

We got spoiled by a few years of mild short winters. One year it warmed up in February (it normally does for one week and then gets cold again), but it stayed warm. We had 60s and 70s in March. People got spoiled and thought global warming was shortening our winters for good.

The hard winter months hear are January, February and sometimes March. April is often on and off cold, but you can tell that winter is breaking. By the end of April, the early flowers are usually blooming, sometimes through the snow, but it is definitely warming. When April comes and there is no sign of winter breaking, people get frustrated.

Yeah, winds and higher humidity are pretty typical of continental interior winter weather patterns. This is the experience of ... literally the entire interior of the continent, minus the deep south. You just don't really hear people from Omaha, Des Moines, Calgary, Cheyenne, Toronto, Pittsburgh and Boise complaining about it quite as much as you do here, because that's January. January does that. Last winter felt like a mild, snowless winter to anyone who hasn't spent the majority of their life in some place like Houston.

[snoopygirlmi]

It also depends on where you are in Michigan.

Detroit isn't reflective of the rest of the state when it comes to winter. Detroit winters tend to be more mild than the rest of the state - which doesn't make you feel much better when you are digging out from snow storms.

Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids get slammed by lake effect snowstorms.

The UP gets much colder and the snow is deeper than what we get in the LP.

A couple of years ago, 2013-2014, I don't remember my son ever having a full week of school that winter. It got so bad that they cancelled school because they were afraid the school buses wouldn't work right in the below-zero temps/wind chills. We also had really heavy snowfalls, it seemed, every week. It just didn't let up and the height of the snowdrifts was extremely high for this area. It really wasn't surprising when the district used up all their snow days, which is very unusual for non-rural school districts.

Last winter, we only got 2 major snowstorms and, afterwards, the snow was pretty much gone after a couple of days. It didn't stick around for weeks like it usually does.

Usually, we are somewhere in the middle of these two extremes.

My friends to the South and on the East coast got a lot more snow than we did last winter.

[Coldjensens]

I think Texas may have gotten more snow than we did last year.

[DTWflyer]

Winter 2015-2016 was much more mild and less snow that usual. Especially since we had an extremely warm December. It was warm and rainy and gray for most of December up there early January. We got our last real snowfall for the winter the end of Feb and by early March we were regularly seeing 40s & 50s.

Winter 2014-2015 was very cold but somewhat less snow that the winter prior. Most of our measurable snow came in a few snow events in February only, particularly a big one that hit on Super Bowl Sunday.

Winter 2013-2014 was the very cold and very snowy winter. We had consistent snowfall and snow cover from New Years-mid-March that year. We more or less had a winter more typical of that found in Grand Rapids and parts of Northern Michigan. We set the seasonal snowfall record that year. I think we broke a much of record lows and record low temps for some of the months in there too.

I don't remember Winter 2012-2013

Winter 2011-2012 was a very mild and snow-less winter. This was the year that we shattered records with about 3 weeks of 70s and 80s in March.