Bill’s Blog: Snow on Thursday

Bill Steffen
·3 min read

The top map is the total precipitation expected over the next 7 days. You can see a strip of snow rain south) that will pass through Lower Michigan on Thursday. You can also see another a”atmospheric river” coming into California (next weekend) with more heavy rain flooding and possible mudslides. There’s the snow near New York City and southern New England that’s falling today and significant rain is likely along the Gulf of Mexico into Florida.

There could be a few flurries north of Gr. Rapids this (Tue.) morning. Best bet is across northern and central Lower Michigan….not a big deal, most roads dry.

Here’s radar

We’ll be a little colder today and the wind will be up a bit out of the northwest. So, it will feel a bit chillier than yesterday. Afternoon temperatures will be in the low-mid 30s. Wednesday looks like a nice day with some sunshine and afternoon temperatures approaching 40° as winds turn back to the south-southwest.

The map above shows total snowfall over the next 10 days. A good portion of this comes on Thursday. South of I-94 there may be more rain than snow, so amounts are lighter there. The band of significant snowfall may be only 2 or 3 counties wide from west to east across Lower Michigan. We’re looking for 1-4″. Look for slick spots on the roads (roads mainly wet toward the Indiana border). It will also get windy, with gusts to 30-35 mph possible Thursday PM into Friday AM.

Here’s forecast high and low temperatures from the overnight run of the European model. The coolest days will be Friday – Sunday. Saturday will be a good day to head to your favorite ski resort. They’ll be able to make a good amount of snow between now and Saturday. Note how we warm back up above 40° next week – so this will be a relatively brief incursion of cooler air.

Here’s forecast high and low temperatures from the overnight run of the European model. Pretty much the same story here…chilly Friday into the weekend…then back up above average starting Monday afternoon.

The models have backed off on snow amounts with the East Coast Storm today and shifted the heaviest snow ever so slightly south. The storm is deepening, but it’s also moving at a pretty good clip, so the amount of time it snows is a factor in the amount of snowfall.

We have a record low ice cover on the Great Lakes for February 13th. Only 3% of Lake Michigan is ice covered and that’s mainly in Green Bay…and only 2% of Lake Superior. We should see a small gain in ice cover on the Great Lakes by next Monday.

Here’s a graph of ice on Lake Michigan. The red line is average ice extent and the black line is a record of ice extent this winter. We peaked on Jan. 21 with an 18.3% ice cover. The Great Lakes ice extent peaked a day later on Jan. 22 at 16.0%. The highest daily ice extent on Lake Superior has been 7.1%.

With more open water, that means a higher rate of evaporation on the lakes. However, the water level of Lake Michigan is unchanged in the last month (Grand Rapids had a lot of precipitation in January – 2nd highest ever. The lake is one inch higher than it was one year ago.

ALSO: The graph above is January temperature anomaly (difference from average) since 2005 from the US Climate Reference Network (NOAA). This January we had mild temperatures that were more than balanced out by the 8-10 day period of very cold Arctic air around the 14th-21st.

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