The feature image is a screen capture from the Houghton webcam yesterday morning, Below is the current snow cover map. Snow isn’t far from south Michigan as it slowly creeps its way southward. With temperatures forecasted to trend from the 20s to the forties over the next couple weeks I believe we will be hard pressed to keep any snow-cover on the ground south of Grand Rapids for an extended time through the rest of the month. Anything we do get will melt off within a day or two. We may hold in this pattern until around Christmas. I still believe our coldest snowiest period will be in the January/February time-frame.
Tuesday and Thursday may be our best days of the week with some sun – the rest of the week looks unsettled.
It will be a rather active pattern for the mid to late week period. Two systems will impact the region, starting on late Tuesday night through Wednesday, and a second more powerful system arriving for Friday and Saturday. The first system will be a cold front that will pass through the area Wednesday afternoon.
Surface low pressure will track across Southern Canada keeping us well into the warm side of the system. So this will bring mostly rain to the area, probably steadiest Wednesday morning. A few flurries may come on the back side of the system Wednesday night across Central Lower. We will see a briefly cooler period Wednesday night and Thursday, with dry weather. But we will already be warm advecting by Thursday night ahead of the next system.
Still some timing differences with this one, but we should begin to see more pcpn late Thursday night into Friday. All models show an intensifying southern stream surface low that tracks from roughly SE Iowa into Lower Michigan Friday evening. Outside chance we could even see some lightning Friday evening.
The low continues to intensify once it has passed the region on Saturday making for a windy day. As far as pcpn it should begin late Thursday night. A mixture will be possible in the warm advection wing that may last into Friday morning. But then all rain should occur Friday afternoon and evening with the surface low expected to cross Central Lower.
On it`s current track and timing, much colder air should arrive late Friday night or Saturday morning, changing the rain to snow from west to east. H8 temps are progged to be around +4C Friday, then plunge to -8C by Saturday. Falling temps and lake enhanced snow should kick in by Saturday afternoon. Some light accums will be possible by Saturday evening.
There is some speculation of our first accumulating snow next weekend from lake effect. A blocking pattern in the jet stream could bring another round of cold air and snow to the Midwest and East by late in the week ahead, potentially lingering into Thanksgiving week.
I have been watching the models over the past week or so and temperature wise they have been all over the place. With this coming weekends system (first graphic) I believe we will start out as rain changing to snow Saturday night, Thanksgivings system (second graphic) may trend the same. You have to click on the images to make them animate. My main concern is the tightness of the isobars coming off Lake Michigan which would be sending a message of lake enhanced snow with the weekend system with perhaps 2 to 4 inches along the lakeshore counties.
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This pattern consists of relatively high pressure aloft strengthening and persisting near Greenland, forcing the polar jet stream to take a sharp, southward nosedive over the eastern U.S.. While the magnitude of the cold air remains uncertain this far out, this sharp of a jet-stream plunge would deliver colder air not just to the Northeast and Midwest, but also will send temperatures tumbling in the Deep South and Florida. The sharp jet-stream plunge may induce a low-pressure system to strengthen quickly over the Great Lakes and eastern Canada by next weekend, producing wind-whipped snow in the colder air and heavy rain in the warmer air ahead of the front.
While all the details on where, when and how much snow aren’t yet crystal clear, a swath from the Upper Midwest to the Great Lakes snowbelts may see heavy snow, and snow is also possible in parts of northern New England from this system Friday into next weekend.
Normal temperatures for Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo are around 50 for the high and 36 for the low, by the end of the month they will be 40 and 29.