(Southern Michigan gets quite a lot of snow. Prevailing winds are westerly so lots of lake effect. Grand Rapids gets almost 2x the snow that Detroit gets. Cleveland also gets more snow than Detroit, lake effect from Erie)
Detroit may have a lot more complex situations than Grand Rapids, and even thought it gets much less snow it does get storms with several inches which is enough to cover all the lane marking and making things very messy with traction control coming on a lot. I would say they need to deploy to as many cities in as diverse conditions as possible, but that's after they master stuff like in this article.
I drove in Grand Rapids and Chicago today. I'd take bad weather in GR than here at home any time. More snow more often doesn't mean more difficult to drive, more population and smaller streets here make it way riskier. Ice and sliding are easy problems to account for in code, bad manners are not.
(Southern Michigan gets quite a lot of snow. Prevailing winds are westerly so lots of lake effect. Grand Rapids gets almost 2x the snow that Detroit gets. Cleveland also gets more snow than Detroit, lake effect from Erie)