Jet stream 'buckle' to bring snow, ice to region

Feb. 22—TRAVERSE CITY — Another snowstorm this week is forecasted to interrupt some relatively temperate spells northern Michigan has seen this season.

Tuesday afternoon, the National Weather Service declared a winter storm warning for Wednesday afternoon through Thursday evening.

That could bring heavy snow, possible glare ice, and winds up to 40 miles per hour to portions of the northern Lower Peninsula, including Grand Traverse and surrounding counties.

"There's a fair amount of northern Michigan that looks like it's going to get a potential of at least 6 inches of snow," said Jeff Lutz, meteorologist for the National Weather Service office in Gaylord on Tuesday morning during a winter storm watch.

NWS upgraded the watch to a storm warning at 4 p.m.

Traverse City is within the zone currently predicted to receive the most snow and ice, according to graphs from the NWS.

Projections show a band of high snow accumulation stretching across the state, beginning near the M-72 corridor and extending north.

Prior to that forecast, meteorologists had a couple of different models they were looking at, which, at the time, painted contrasting pictures of which path the storm would take.

One model showed the storm blowing further south. If that model was correct, this region would have avoided some of the heaviest precipitation. It also would have meant the region stayed on the colder side of the front, and that precipitation would have been primarily snow, Lutz said.

But, throughout the morning Tuesday, those models became increasingly consistent: the storm would stay further north, and would feature a wintry mix of ice and snow, posing a greater risk on the roads, according to National Weather Service reports.

That's at least one reason why Matthew Skeels, Benzie County Road Commission director, is preparing for a different kind of storm than the one that kept people snowed in during the holidays in late December.

On one hand, it looks like the it might not be quite as heavy of an onslaught as that one, meaning road crews will be able to clear the roads more readily, he said.

But slippery road conditions remain a concern — especially now, in late winter, when the pavement has begun to warm up a bit, and the traffic "kind of irons" the snow onto the road, he said.

"That's always a concern," he said. "We hope people will be cautious, especially when it first starts snowing, because ... we can't be everywhere all at once."

Lutz said the sudden shift in the weather can be explained by a shift in the northern polar jet stream.

That band of quick-moving, meandering air, which circles the Northern Hemisphere around the North Pole, has left the west coast of the U.S. in a "low-pressure trough" throughout much of this season, dumping cold air and snow on that region. Meanwhile, that system has mostly skirted around the Great Lakes region and east coast, leaving those areas with warmer temperatures and high pressure, Lutz said.

"Every once in a while, there's a buckle that just kind of like upsets the whole flow," Lutz said, bringing northern Michigan back down to at least average temperatures and snowfall levels for this time of year.

Report for America corps member and data journalist William T. Perkins' reporting is made possible by a partnership between the Record-Eagle and Report for America, a journalism service project founded by the nonprofit Ground Truth Project. Generous community support helps fund a local share of the Record-Eagle/RFA partnership. To support RFA reporters in Traverse City, go to www.record-eagle.com/rfa.