The National Weather Service expects a warmer and wetter than normal winter in southeast Michigan. But that doesn’t rule out chances for a few days of heavy snow, ice, and bitter cold.

The Detroit/Pontiac forecast office is looking for volunteer winter weather spotters to report extreme conditions.

What do spotters do?

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has declared Nov. 3-9 as Winter Hazards Awareness Week in Michigan. NWS Meteorologist Steve Considine says the agency will train people how to identify winter some of the most significant ones.

“That can be terrible road conditions, tree damage, or power lines from either high winds, heavy snow, or ice,” he said. “They report snowfall and rainfall amounts directly to the National Weather Service.”

Read more: Observers track rain data on Detroit’s flood-prone east side

Considine says spotters play a critical role in reporting and understanding the effects of severe weather.

“It gives us kind of a big picture as to what is going on during adverse weather conditions in communities,” he said. “It gives us a little bit of ground truth from what the radar and observational data are indicating.”

The training sessions are free, but spotters will need some basic equipment.

“For rainfall, they will have to have a rain gauge,” Considine said. “For snowfall, it’s just a ruler and a plain piece of wood set outside.”

Where to sign up

The weather service will hold in-person training sessions in Detroit on Nov. 13 and 16.

Considine says the agency wants to gather more weather information from city residents so meteorologists can understand how weather affects them.

The National Weather Service says this winter could be warmer and wetter than usual in southeast Michigan.

The agency recently issued its seasonal outlook for the region. It forecasts the chances of various weather scenarios based on 30-year averages.

The probabilities favor higher-than-normal temperatures and precipitation between Dec. 1, 2024, and Feb. 28, 2025.

Meteorologist Trent Frey says a phenomenon known as La Nina will affect our weather patterns.

“La Nina is when the Pacific Ocean waters near the equator are cooler than the long-term average,” Frey said. “It affects where the jet stream sets up during the winter months, and that affects how it steers storm systems across North America.”

Winter is coming…right?

The past two winters in southeast Michigan were among the 10 warmest since the U.S. government started keeping records for Detroit in 1874. Frey says 2023-24 was the warmest winter on record for the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. He says warmer winters are becoming more common.

“The way that climate change is manifesting here in southeast Michigan is that our winter months are becoming warmer much faster than our summer months are,” Frey said.

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Detroit’s average high temperature in winter is 35 degrees Fahrenheit. Frey says over the past 15 winters, the normal temperature has risen by about one degree compared with the longer 30-year average.

“That might not seem like much, but is pretty significant,” Frey said.

Slushy, anyone?

Southeast Michigan typically gets about 6.5 inches of rain and almost 3 feet of snow a year.

Frey says it’s hard to predict how much snow will fall this winter.

“Out of the past five week La Ninas, we’ve seen two of those had above normal snowfall, two of them had below normal snowfall, and one of them had near normal snowfall.” Frey said.

Last winter’s outlook accurately predicted warmer temperatures, but slightly underestimated rainfall.

“It actually ended up being a little wetter than normal,” Frey said. “But because we were so warm, our snowfall ended up being about 20 inches below the normal.”

The NWS Detroit forecast office recorded almost 2 feet of snow in 2023-24. That’s the 16th smallest amount of annual snowfall on record for the region.

The agency is recruiting volunteers to be winter weather spotters.