Storm update: Wind chill advisory in effect across Lansing area
LANSING — The National Weather Service has issued a wind chill advisory for Sunday and Monday while a winter weather advisory is expected to expire soon.
The winter weather advisory for the most significant winter storm of the year expires at noon Sunday, but bitter cold temperatures and windy conditions are setting in, prompting warnings from the weather service and local emergency management agencies.
The NWS said gusting winds up to 40 miles per hour could create wind chill conditions of 20 degrees below zero.
The temperature Sunday at 9 a.m. in the Lansing area was 3 degrees as lake effect snow added to 4-6 inches of white stuff that fell overnight Friday into Saturday.
With the continued snowfall and blowing and drifting, there's expected to be plenty of shoveling left to do. Ingham and Eaton counties were expected to get as much as 3 inches Saturday night and as much as another 2 inches today, the NWS said. Clinton County could accumulate another 6 inches by Sunday night.
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Overnight wind chills could drop to 15 degrees below zero overnight into Monday. The whole work week is expected to be below freezing, with Monday and Tuesday temperatures in the single digits, warming a bit mid-week and dropping back to the high teens by Friday.
The cold and the snow came abruptly, after a fairly mild winter so far and people should expect to have a full week of cold air and occasional flurries, along with ice patches and risky roads, said Bob Dukesherer, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service's Grand Rapids office.
"It's going to be a cold week, he said, "this has been shock to the system, given what it has been."
Clinton County Emergency Management warned that high winds were causing drifting and reducing visibility for drivers, and that the wind chill temperatures were dangerous for those remaining outdoors for extended periods.
Sunday marks the third day of a storm that has dumped as much as 2 feet of snow in areas of the Upper Peninsula.
While some flights were delayed at the Capital Region International Airport over the weekend, Sunday departures and arrivals were running on time, according to flylansing.com.
More than 100,000 Michigan residents and businesses lost power during the storm, but most of those outages have been restored. At one point Saturday, more than 5,000 Lansing area residents were among those affected, but by Sunday morning outages were largely resolved. About 300 Consumers Energy customers near Laingsburg where without electricity, and a handful of other outages to small number of homes were reported, according to the company's online outage map. DTE had several dozen customers in southeastern Ingham County without power, while the Lansing Board of Water & Light was not reporting any issues.
On Saturday, the city of Lansing declared a snow emergency, level 2, prohibiting parking until streets are fully plowed.
Lansing also declared a "Code Blue" emergency plan, which gives shelters more leeway in accepting people and opens some buildings as temporary shelters.
Contact Mike Ellis at mellis@lsj.com or 517-267-0415
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Storm update: Wind chill advisory in effect across Lansing area
