Grand Rapids April Weather Review-Wacky!

Our broadcast partner WZZM TV 13 celebrates 50 years of news and information this month. One of the nice things about having a local weather staff that has been in the area so long is they have the resources and time to recap our ever changing West Michigan Weather. Chief Meteorologist George Lessens has a wind up to April.

George tells us "Temperatures for the month averaged 48.3°F, 0.3°F above average and 1.6°F warmer than last year (46.7°F). April was cooler than March (50.7°F) for only the second time in history, which also occurred in 1907."

"Since April was cooler than March I wanted to find out if there was any possible relationship to forecasting summer temperatures. I calculated the differences between March and April temperatures and came up with the top ten:

MAR APR DIFF SUMMER DIFF W/C
AVG 35.6 48.0 12.4 70.6
2012 51.6 48.3 -3.3 TBD
1907 38.5 37.6 -0.9 68.3 -2.3 C
1945 45.9 48.2 2.3 66.7 -3.9 C
1946 44.1 46.9 2.8 68.1 -2.5 C
2000 42.2 45.9 3.7 67.9 -2.7 C
1961 37.7 42.3 4.7 69.1 -1.5 C
1973 41.9 46.8 4.9 71.7 1.1 W
1920 36.1 41.1 5.0 69.3 -1.3 C
1936 37.3 42.3 5.0 72.8 2.2 W
1910 45.1 50.3 5.2 70.4 -0.2 C
2007 39.6 45.1 5.5 72.0 1.4 W

The results show that seven out of ten summers were cooler than average while three were warmer.

His full report is here "April 2012 Weather Stats/Summer Temps for Grand Rapids"