Our wet October continues today with perhaps a break in the rain for a while this afternoon before returning late tonight into tomorrow afternoon. The rain should be ending around game time tomorrow for the Wolverine Spartan game (GO WOLVERINES)!!! Kickoff is at 7:30 p.m. at Spartan Stadium.
Lansing Forecast
U.S.A and Global Events for October 20th:
1770: An exceedingly great storm struck eastern New England causing extensive coastal damage from Massachusetts to Maine, and the highest tide in 47 years.
1956: While not a record, Esperanza Base in the Antarctic warmed to 57.2 degrees on this date. The all-time warmest day at this base occurred on March 24, 2015, when the temperature reached 63.5 degrees. As of now, the 63.5 degrees has not been verified to be the warmest temperature recorded on the continent of Antarctica.
1983: Remnants of Pacific Hurricane Tico caused extensive flooding in central and south central Oklahoma. Oklahoma City set daily rainfall records with 1.45 inches on the 19th and 6.28 inches on the 20th.
2004: Typhoon Tokage blasting across Japan triggers flash floods that wash away entire hillsides, killing 55 people and leaving at least 24 people missing.
Forecast Discussion
Our main focus in the short term portion of the forecast is once again on rain trends with rain tapering off today, then increasing in coverage tonight and into Saturday. Long wave upper low/trough is centered over the state this morning, with weak short waves and associated sfc lows moving through the area and touching off a few light rain showers with the help of Lake Michigan. One of the lows can be seen rotating on radar just NE of Grand Rapids as of around 3 am/07z this morning. Most of the shower activity is near the lakeshore, other than in close proximity of the weak sfc low rotating through. We should see an overall diminishing trend to the rain showers today as we will see some short wave upper ridging move into the area later in the day. This will limit the vertical extent of any lake effect showers that try to form to just some cumulus/ stratocumulus development. Showers should then increase in coverage and intensity overnight tonight and on Saturday. The feature of note causing this next round of rain will be a couple of fairly potent short waves that will dive into the area from the NW. A weaker wave will be the lead wave, while a stronger one follows quickly on its heels. The warm air advection ahead of the first wave will break out rain from NW to SE. Then as the sfc reflection moves through, areas on the pivot point will continue to see some rain. This will continue through much of Saturday afternoon, before the wave starts moving through and sweeps the better moisture out. For the most part, this precipitation will be just rain for most areas. Sfc based and elevated instability progs indicate a small pool of near zero LI`s passing along the I-94 corridor, closer to the cold pool aloft/and short wave. Lifted index values of just barely above zero support a very low chance of thunder, but not quite high enough to mention in the forecast so far. Upper trough moves out by Sunday with rising heights and surface ridging bringing fair weather into Monday, then southwest flow results in moisture return with light showers possible by Monday night. Deepening warm air advection/isentropic ascent on Tuesday and Wednesday brings increasing chances for rain as a baroclinic zone sets up across the Great Lakes. There is uncertainty of where the front stalls with some ensemble members showing it west of or over Lower Michigan while others have it pushing through and stalling off to the south. At this point it appears trends favor the front slowing down enough that high chance to likely POPs have to be included Wednesday through Thursday.
October now has 19 days in the record books. At Grand Rapids, MI the mean is 54.8 that is +1.1. The highest for the month was 86 on the 3rd the coldest low so far is 37 on the 8th There has been a total of 3.86” of precipitation that is +1.40 for the 1st 19 days of the month. There has been no snowfall yet. There have been 2 clear days 11 partly cloudy days and 2 cloudy days so far.
Slim
The official H/L yesterday was 57/52 there was 0.29” of rain fall. No snow fall. There were 10 HDD’s and 0% of sun. The highest wind gust was 20 MPH out of the S. For today the average H/L is 59/41 the record high of 83 was set in 1953 and the record low of 22 was set in 1952 and 1974. The record precip was 1.11” in 1916 and the record snow fall is 2.2” in 1992. Last year the H/L was 54/34 and there was a trace of rain fall.
Slim