“Traverse City gets about 101 inches” is true at the airport. Drive west into the Leelanau uplands and the long-record normal is 142.1 inches; drive north to the tip of the peninsula and it is 93.1. The gradient runs the opposite way from what most people coming Up North expect, and it decides how often a plow comes out.
Traverse City Snow Plowing is a referral service. The snowfall figures here come from federal climate records, and the plowing they drive is done by independent contractors under their own names and insurance, not by this site.
These are the 1991–2020 climate normals published by NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information for the stations around the area that have a snowfall normal at all. A normal is a thirty-year average, measured at one spot.
| Station | Setting | Normal |
|---|---|---|
| Maple City 1E | Central Leelanau uplands, the Cedar, Empire and Glen Arbor side | 142.1″ |
| Kalkaska | Inland and higher, to the east | 135.2″ |
| NW Michigan Horticultural Research Station | Leelanau County, near Suttons Bay | 112.9″ |
| Frankfort 2 NE | Benzie County, on the Lake Michigan shore | 103.0″ |
| Cherry Capital Airport | Traverse City | 101.4″ |
| Northport 2 W | Tip of the Leelanau peninsula | 93.1″ |
Read the table as a map. Interior Leelanau gets about 40% more snow than the airport. The shoreline tips get less than town. Traverse City sits in the middle. Leelanau County’s road commission puts the county as a whole at 120 to 140 inches in an average winter, which matches the spread between its stations.
What the table does not have is just as important. There is no snowfall normal for Old Mission, Glen Arbor, Empire or Kingsley. The stations on Old Mission and at Kingsley have no snow normal in the NCEI set, and no station was found for the other two. This site does not fill those gaps with an estimate. It names the nearest station instead, and so does the lookup below.
Choose a community to see the nearest long-record station and its normal. It runs entirely in your browser and sends nothing anywhere.
Lake-effect snow forms when cold air crosses relatively warm open water. The air picks up heat and moisture over the lake and drops it as snow once it reaches land. Around Traverse City there are two sources: Lake Michigan to the west, and Grand Traverse Bay, whose two arms lie on either side of Old Mission.
When a cold wind comes across Lake Michigan, the first high ground it meets is the Leelanau uplands. Lifting the air wrings out more snow, and the Cedar, Maple City, Empire and Glen Arbor side of the county ends up with the area’s highest totals. That is the same ground where many of the second homes are, which is why a vacant-property contract on the Leelanau shore often covers more storms than a city driveway. Kalkaska, inland and higher to the east, runs high for a similar reason.
The tips of the peninsulas and the low shoreline sites along the bay sit outside the heaviest bands and come in lower. Northport, at 93.1 inches, gets less than town.
University of Michigan climate researchers put it plainly: lake-effect snow “typically diminishes late in the winter season when the formation of lake ice leads to a reduction in the supply of relatively warm and moist air.” The bay is the local version of that switch.
West Grand Traverse Bay froze over in early February 2026, the first time since 2019 and only the seventh time since 2000. Before 1980 it froze in about 80% of winters. Since then it has frozen in just under 40%. So in most winters now the bay stays open all season, and the peninsulas stay exposed to lake-effect snow into March. A late-winter lull that comes with ice is the exception here, not the rule, and a contract end date should assume snow through March with a tail into April.
| Oct | Nov | Dec | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Snowfall (in) | 0.2 | 9.0 | 26.7 | 33.2 | 18.9 | 10.7 | 2.6 | 0.1 |
| Days with 1″+ on the ground | 0 | 6.8 | 19.7 | 28.7 | 24.8 | 16.3 | 1.2 | – |
January is the only month that averages more than 30 inches on its own, and December through February together bring 78.8. October and May are trace months. Across the year there are about 98 days with at least an inch on the ground, 58.6 days with any measurable snowfall, about 32 with an inch or more, and 11 with three inches or more.
The record season at Traverse City, nearly double the current normal.
150% of normal. December 2024 brought 48.2 inches, the second-snowiest December on record.
Counted through April 1, with 53 inches in January alone and 88 days with six inches or more on the ground, against a typical 57.
A blizzard that put 13.3 inches down in a day at the airport and 19.8 at the co-op station southeast of town. Leelanau closed its county government center and its schools.
Two back-to-back winters over 140 inches at the airport, a site that normally sits in the middle of the local range, is the reason so many people who ran their own snowblower last year are pricing a season contract this fall.
A trigger is a depth, and a snowier place crosses it more often. The day counts above are for the airport only; NCEI does not publish them for Maple City or Northport. But the direction is not in doubt. A driveway near Maple City, where the annual normal is about half again the Northport figure, will see more three-inch days in a normal winter than a driveway at the tip of the peninsula, and more visits under the same contract.
That is why an operator asks where the house is before quoting, and why a season price that is fair in Northport can be thin in Cedar. Give the community along with the driveway details, and check whether your road is one the county does not plow at all; the seasonal roads page covers that. For the structure of what you will be quoted, see what plowing costs.
Name the community and describe the drive, and you will be matched with an operator who plows that side of the county.
Call (231) 715-4148 Get a Season Price
Traverse City