The climate has a lot of advantages in the Grand Rapids area. Summers are splendid and the humidity is very low most of the time - you can be very active and not overheat here. Fall is gorgeous and winter has its own beauty if you don't mind the cold. The only season I think is bad would be Spring because it gets so wet and muddy.
I grew up in GR, and attended college in East Lansing and Ann Arbor. I was NEVER snowed in for two weeks. I was never snowed in for more than a day or two and that probably happened a handful of times, even in GR. The winters weren't that harsh when I grew up in the 1950s -70s. The roads were cleared quickly and the temperatures were rarely frigid. It's much colder in northern states that aren't surrounded by the Great Lakes and/or farther north, like Minnesota or Vermont.
I was in high school during the '78 blizzard, and while the main roads were open in a couple days, the secondary roads took a couple weeks. While I say 'open' it was one lane each way. The National guard was called in to help remove it. People were getting deliveries by snowmobile and certain back roads had to be cleared with front end loaders.
Pro: Western MI, Lower UP north of the Zilwaukee Bridge, and the Thumb Area, are a gorgeous, to say nothing of the UP. If you're outdoorsy, particularly if you like fishing and golf, MI has a lot to offer. Con: Good luck trying to visit those places enough to enjoy them. You'd have to be pretty rich or resourceful to live out those ways, and most of the jobs, housing, and competition over such, are in the SE, in Oakland / Macomb / Wayne. The cost of living is high, while infrastructure is suffering, violent crime seems to be increasing (a friend of mine had SWAT called to her street in Rochester recently, normally a decent-to-good area), and our State and Local Government orgs - regardless of desire or party - just can't seem to keep up with the many problems. And more people from out of the state seem to be moving here every quarter, which isn't helping much - if anything, it feels like everything here is Tourist Priced now. In short, for all the things I like about MI, it feels like living in the pull of a black hole, and the times I get to see the beauty of the dunes and trails are too rare to make up for it. I almost think I'd give my left arm to leave, if I knew where I might like to go and had no other means to get there. So, caveat emptor, prospective neighbors: by all means, visit, but be absolutely sure if you want to move here, because you might be stuck for it after.
SW MI is stunningly beautiful. We draw tourists every summer (pro: revenue, con: more people). We are the fruit belt and seem to be growing in the beer and wine industries. From SW MI you can access Chicago, Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, South Bend in about an hour or two. So you can have small town feel with bigger city access. The last several winters have been mild, not terribly cold or much snow. Our climate has changed and we have even changed in growing zones.
Born and raised in Kalamazoo. There is a lot of seasonal beauty in Michigan. The crime in our bigger cities is sky rocketing as of late and we are now number two in sex trafficking. I am moving out of the state next month with my family following my siblings who already left. Both parties are failing this state.
For the lower peninsula, West Michigan gets hit harder with the lake effect snow than Mid and East Michigan. We have plenty of cold months throughout the state, and there are years that even the eastern parts of the lower peninsula get hit hard with the snow, but you definitely have more of a hassle with the snow on the west side.
We are considering moving to Michigan (the UP specifically) next year. My only two concerns are first, about weather, when does winter turn to spring, and are summers actually warm. Where I currently live, we get at best a couple week of true “summer” weather, and some years, like this past one, it’s only a few days in August. We would like an actual summer where we can wear shorts and tshirts and not get chilled. The other question is job opportunities in the UP for my husband. We are moving from a high cost/high pay state and will be buying a homestead in cash, and over the first few years we expect to be able to be largely self sufficient, but while we get everything up and running, my husband will need an income. We don’t expect him to make what he is making now, and he is fine with doing any sort of blue collar work (he currently works in junk removal) but he is concerned that with low population numbers in the UP, there simply won’t be anyone hiring. Is he right or are there job opportunities in the UP?
Last snow up here last year was the first week of May, summers can get up to 90 or even 100 degrees F. There are many blue collar jobs and industry up here but I don’t know about the availability of them.(it is pretty desolate with opportunities)
Do yourselves a favor and avoid this state, unless you like creeping communism from the CCP and a horrible run of Governors compliments of Detroit and Dearbornistan.
As for harsh winters; I spent my first 18 years growing up in Jackson. In general the winters were not all that cold compared to what I have come to know in Nebraska. Yes there was a lot more snow than here, but temps usually didn't get much below the upper teens, and on the occasions it did, it was newsworthy. Where I live now, warming seems to be making for significantly milder winters, but when I moved here in the late '70s, we might have weeks at a time with subzero lows and highs below 10. Granted, Jackson is far south in Michigan, but I don't ever remember cold spells remotely that bad.
I'm a lifetime Metro Detroit resident, and moved out of state in 2017. Considered West MI as I love the Lake MI and still go back often. But in the end moved to FL. Still like FL, but the brutal summer, uncontrolled growth, and exploding insurance premiums are getting to me. Winter in FL is nice though.
I'm from Southeast Michigan born and raised. Moved to NC a few years ago. One of the issues with Michigan is the lack of growth. The state has been stagnant for a long time. The bigger cities in the state are not thriving as they could be. Detroit is supposedly making a comeback, but still nothing close to other major cities in the U.S. It's like the people running the state gave up and don't care about making it attractive for residents to stay and for people to move there.
West Michigan resident for my entire life, 50+ years and I love it here. Major con for Michigan is the incredibly corrupt political system. It is embarrassing, expensive for it's residents and sad. Vote all you want, the outcome is predetermined here.
Same, this is home I'm not going anywhere. We are making progress @ the township and county level we have to keep working our way up to the cesspool that is Lansing.@@kevinmirwin
You left out politics, which seems to be important to people relocating to Michigan. UP: red, northern LP: reddish with some blue influences, western MI: red with areas of flaming scarlet and points of blue (Grand Rapids), southeast MI: blue and having the most population and opportunities. Michigan is more than the weather and most people want to live where they'll feel welcome.
Unfortunately for MI, K-12 education has suffered under Republican administrations & the crazy growth of charter (Corporate) schools that siphon off funds by eg not accepting special needs kids. Also, MI suffers from the doings of the Christian Nationalist movement funded here by the likes of the Great Lakes Education Project, started by none other than the Amway DeVoses , esp former education Secretary under Trump Betsy DeVos, whose brother Eric Prince was leader of Blackwater, the private security firm that infamously killed numerous innocent civilians in an incident in Iraq. SO IM THANKFUL FOR OUR CURRENT DEMOCRATIC ADMINISTRATION ADMINISTRATION THAT VALUES ALL PEOPLE.
