February 2023 was a relatively sunny and mild month. To go along with the above average sunshine, we also had above average precipitation and it was a relatively windy month. (top image – a February sunrise at Reeds Lake).
Here’s a summary of February 2023 weather (NWS Graphic). Grand Rapids was 4.4° warmer than average. The warmest day of the month was Valentine’s Day with a high temperature of 54°, which was a record high temperature for Feb. 14. The coldest morning was a 5° reading on Feb. 3rd. That also tied for coldest temperature of the winter (not all that cold by Michigan standards).
We had that one day in the true Arctic air. The high temperature was 33° on Feb. 2, just 15° on Feb. 3 – then back up to 35° on the 4th.
Grand Rapids had 12 days when the temperature reached 40°. Nineteen of 28 days were warmer than average.
Precipitation in Grand Rapids totaled 4.10″, which was 1.98″ above average. We had not one, but two days when we set a daily record for precipitation. The first 1.1″ of rain on Feb. 9. The second was 1.07″ on Feb. 27 – a day when we had some freezing rain. It took 8 days for some customers to get power back after that icing event. We had 0.84″ of precipitation, including some freezing rain on Feb. 22. Those 3 days accounted for nearly 3/4ths of the precipitation we had that month.
After a near record snowfall in Grand Rapids during Nov.-Dec., snowfall has been below average in Jan.-Feb. February brought G.R. just 5.7″ of snow. We did not see measurable snow from the 5th through the 15th. We did not have a day when we had 2″ of snow.
A big story was the amount of sunshine we had in February. After a near record cloudy period from Nov. 29 – Jan. 31 (just 11% sunshine), we had the sunniest February that we’ve had in 20 years. The percent of possible sunshine we saw was 46%.
It was also a windy month, with an average wind speed of 12.3 mph. We had only 3 days when the average wind speed was less than 10 mph. There was no lightning or thunder and we had just two days when we had a brief period of heavy fog.
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Nationally, there was a lot of rain and mountain snow in much of the West. Mammoth Mt. Ski Area in California had 113″ of snow in February – compared to just 7″ in February 2022. They are up to 525″ of snowfall for the season and they have 225″ of snow on the ground – that’s 18 3/4 FEET!
