Cold April 1982

Last week Grand Rapids had a low of 19° on Easter morning. This was good for 3rd spot for the coldest on April 1st but the all time coldest low of +3° happened in 1982. That year like this year March was on the cold side at the highest it got in March of 1982 was just 58° vs 56° this year. of course the coldest in March was +3° in 1982 vs a mild 17° here in Grand Rapids this year. (note it has gotten down to 19 here this month) Getting back to 1982 that April started off much warmer than this year with highs of 48° 54° and 58° before a sharp cold front brought temperatures down for a high of just 27° 27° and 28° and 29° before getting above 32 again on April 8th (35) on the first day of the cold Grand Rapids reported 5.8” of snow on the night of the 3rd than 0.4” on the 4th and 4.9” on the 5th and yet another 1.1” on the 6th The lows were 20, 18, 18, 19, that record of +3° and +7° After that cold and snowy week the temperature did reach 70 on the 15th and 76° by the 16th That April ended up with a departure of -6.2° and was the 2nd snowiest April at Grand Raids with 12.4” of snow fall.

Here are some interesting facts as to just how cold this April has started. For the at least the first 6 days (and maybe more) the warmest it will be is just 43° and the departure is now at -11.5° going back to 1950 Here are some past cold April’s 1950, 1953, 1956, 1961, 1971, 1972,1975, 1982, 1996, 2000, 2013 Of all of those April’s only two did not have highs in the 70’s (1950 67° and 1961 68°) the rest had highs in the 80’s ranging from 78° in 2013 and 1956 to 72° in 1953.  This April has yet to have a 50° day and none are expected until late next week, All of the above cold Aprils had highs in the 50’s and 60’s before than except 1975 where that did not happen until the 13^th

As we head into April it’s time to look in the past and find some top 5 Aprils. But before we do here is the average mean temperature is 48.0° with the average high temperature on the 1st being 50° on the 1st and by the 30th it’s up to 63° the low starts out at 32° on the 1st and is up to 43° by the 30th the record high temperature was 90° way back on April 29, 1899 and the record low was 3° on April 7th 1982. The biggest snow April snow storm was 12.0” on April 16-17 1961 and the most rain was 2.94” on April 17, 1922.
Now here are Aprils top 5
Warmest monthly
1. 1915 53.8°
2. 2010 53.7°
3. 1896 53.6°
4. 1955 52.8°
5. 1921 25.7°

Coldest monthly
1. 1907 37.6°
2. 1950 39.6°
3. 1975 39.8°
4. 1926 40.4°
5. 1904 40.9°
Last year Grand Rapids 51.9° Lansing 52.6° Muskegon 50.8°
Snowiest
1. 1961 15.6”
2. 1982 12.4”
3. 1926 11.2”
4. 1952 10.5”
5. 1936 10.1”
Last year Grand Rapids had 0.4” Lansing had 0.4” and Muskegon had 0”

Slim