Last Looks At 2025: The Year's Most Eye-Popping Numbers, From Airport Traffic To Food Insecurity

From airport traffic to food insecurity, 2025 was a year of record-breaking, eye-popping numbers across northern Michigan. The Ticker touched base with a smattering of local organizations for our annual year-in-numbers breakdown.

The airport

885,499: Total passengers recorded at TVC – in terms of enplanements and deplanements – between January 1 and November 30. By itself, that 11-month total is enough to topple last year’s total by 20 percent – a sizable feat, given that 2024’s 12-month tally of 787,114 passengers was itself a record-breaker.

56,858: TVC’s anticipated passenger count for December 2025, according to Autumn MacClaren, director of air service development and marketing. That number would bring TVC’s year-end total to 942,357, begging the question: Will 2026 be TVC’s first million-passenger year?

3: Years in a row that TVC has broken its previous record for passenger numbers.

7: Airline carriers active at TVC in 2025, thanks to the addition of JetBlue. Collectively, those airlines offered 20 different nonstop routes at TVC last year.

1,744: Parking spaces available at TVC once an in-progress parking expansion is complete, including 1,175 long-term spaces, 200 short-term spaces, and 369 economy spaces. The airport struggled throughout the year with parking demand outstripping supply.

Food insecurity

19%: Increase in food distributed by Food Rescue to 70 food pantries and community meal programs compared to 2024, according to Food Rescue manager Taylor Moore.

10,000: Pounds of food distributed by Food Rescue each day in 2025 – or as Moore puts it, “enough food to make 8,300 meals.” That number is up from 8,000 pounds of food distribution per day in 2024.

267,000: Pounds of local produce “rescued, repacked, and distributed” by Food Rescue in 2025, through November.

322,804: Visits to food pantries recorded by the Northwest Food Coalition for the first 10 months of the year – a 5 percent increase compared to the same period in 2024. 7,075 of those visits were made by parents with infant children. In the same 10-month period, the Food Coalition also served 311,072 free meals at community meal sites (up 9 percent year-over-year) and purchased 113,896 pounds of fruits, vegetables, eggs, fish, and meat from local farms.

54%: Share of food pantry users who “had to skip meals or reduce meals sizes because they couldn’t afford food in 2025,” according to a Northwest Food Coalition survey. 70 percent of respondents said they were “concerned about not having enough food in the next six months.”

Local sports

368: Career three-pointers scored by former Traverse City Christian basketball star Reece Broderick – the most of any male player in Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA) history. It’s not the only state record Broderick had before he graduated this past spring, either. In a January 24 game against Grand Traverse Academy, he scored 15 three-pointers – good not just for 45 points of his team’s winning 52-40 score, but also to tie an MHSAA record for the most three-pointers ever scored by one player in a single game.

8: Years since the football teams from Traverse City Central High School and West Senior High met twice in the same season. The schools played one another on consecutive Fridays in October, with West winning the first game 21-20 and Central prevailing in the second 15-13. The latter contest was a playoff game, which meant the Trojans eliminated their crosstown rivals from post-season contention. In 2017, the only other season where the schools played each other twice, the same thing happened: West won the regular season matchup, but Central triumphed in the playoffs. The Titans still have bragging rights in the rivalry overall, though: The teams have met 32 times since West opened in 1997, and West has won 17 of those games.

0.927: The Kingsley High School volleyball team’s win percentage this season, en route to a Division 3 state championship victory against Kalamazoo Christian. The team’s final record included 57 wins, four losses, and one tie.

504: Points scored by the Kingsley football team, en route to their runner-up finish in the Division 6 state finals.

35: Years between the two most recent state titles for the Traverse City St. Francis baseball team. The Gladiators edged out Marine City 5-4 in June to win the Division 3 state championship, the school’s first baseball title since 1990. The Glads had made it to the finals twice in recent years, in 2017 and 2021, but came up short both times.

3.7: The combined team GPA for the Traverse City Central varsity volleyball team, which earned academic all-state honors in a season that saw them go 34-10 en route to a quarterfinal loss to Rockford on November 18.

.367: Baseball player Aaron Piasecki’s total career batting average at the Traverse City Pit Spitters, which broke a 25-year-old Northwood League record for highest career batting average.

3: Where you’ll find Traverse City Central track star Lorelai Zielinski on Scholar Champion Athlete (SCA) Recruiting’s list of the top class of 2027 girls track and field recruits in the United States. SCA considers Zielinski one of just four five-star track recruits from the 2027 graduating class. This past spring, as a sophomore, Zielinski won two Division 1 titles in track, in both the discus and the shot put.

Weather records

149.5: Inches of snow recorded at the Gaylord National Weather Service (NWS) office during the “meteorological winter” of December 1, 2024 through February 28, 2025. Remarkably, it’s the snowiest winter ever recorded at the Gaylord site, breaking the previous record from the 2016-17 winter by half an inch.

94: The high temperature recorded in Traverse City on the second day of summer, June 22, in degrees Fahrenheit. It was a new record for that particular date, according to the Gaylord NWS office. The previous high, of 93 degrees, was set in 1966.

89: The high temp on October 4, another record – and not just for that particular date. According to NWS Gaylord, the steamy Saturday tied the warmest temperature ever recorded in Traverse City in October – a record that had stood untied and unbroken since 1922, 103 years ago.

Miscellaneous local stats

$3.25 million: The sale price fetched by the first condo in the Brownstones at 100 Park project in downtown Traverse City – equating to $1,415 per square foot for the condo’s 2,295-square-foot footprint. It’s the highest price-per-square-foot rate ever recorded for a condo sale in the state of Michigan.

$4,363,398.39: Total sales of local produce at Oryana’s two stores in 2025, through December 23. Other notable stats from Oryana include: 6,500 pounds of local turkey sold the week before Thanksgiving; $36,207.21 in donations to local nonprofits thanks to the cooperative’s “Groceries for Good” program; and another $20,859 to local charities through the “Beans for Bags” program.

67: Total number of flights flown as part of the Munson Medical Drone Delivery pilot program, which ran from May 9-20 and tested the use of uncrewed aerial systems for the delivery of medical samples between Munson facilities. The project saw a 91 percent success rate. Munson is looking at drones as a way to cut down on the estimated 90,000 miles staff drive each year to transport patient laboratory samples between facilities.