Continued Calm Here

High pressure will control our weather into Friday providing the region with mostly clear conditions. A widespread frost and some freezing temperatures are looking likely tonight. A cold front will approach the area Friday, which will support moderating temperatures ahead of the front. The front tracks through Friday night which will start a cooling trend that will last into early next week.

We have 36° at 5:30 this morning.  Yesterday’s high was 71° and the low was 39°.

Milton Update

Satellite images show a virtually clear weather pattern across most of the U.S.  Florida is the only exception with Hurricane Milton moving in as a major cat 4 or 5 hurricane.

Weather History

1989: Record cold temperatures put the freeze on southwest Lower Michigan for the second day in a row. Records include 23 degrees at Grand Rapids and Lansing and 24 degrees at Muskegon. The record cold is accompanied by scattered snow flurries.

On October 9, 1949, two days of record highs occurred in Detroit with temperatures at 86 degrees on the 9th and 84 degrees on the 10th.

NWS Forecast

Forecast Discussion

- Another frosty night expected tonight

High pressure at the surface remains in control of the area as we
remain under the influence of stronger subsidence in the upper
confluence zone downstream of the upper ridge over the upper Midwest.
This will continue to bring mostly clear skies and dry conditions
with dew points in the 30s for the most part.

The dry air, combined with the mostly clear skies and lighter winds
will set up the area for another frost and even freeze for tonight.
Temperatures are running under a couple of degrees under guidance
with the nearly ideal radiational cooling conditions. This will be
the case again tonight with lower dew points.

Freezing conditions are likely NE of Grand Rapids in the normally
colder locations. This area will also see the lightest winds at the
sfc and aloft. Frost conditions will be likely for all other areas,
except maybe along the immediate lakeshore. Frost/freeze headlines
are likely, but we will hold off for now to allow the current frost
headlines to play out. The day shift can issue after the current
event is complete.

- Turning cooler through the weekend with a risk for showers

A strong 300-250 mb jet digs down from the Canadian Prairies and
into the southern Great Lakes Region Sunday and into Monday.  Steady
height falls occur here in MI through the period with a mid to upper
level low shown to be situated just northeast of Lake Huron by
Sunday night.   The DGZ moistens up, especially Sunday which will
support an increasing risk for showers over the CWA then.  Cold air
advection strengthens on Sunday and temps at that level fall to -2
to -4 deg C by Monday.  With water temps in the 60`s, we will see
lake effect precipitation persisting even after the wave starts to
pull away. Thus we will keep the potential for showers fairly high
in the Sunday to Monday period.

We will need to monitor the rain potential Saturday.  Models are not
in good agreement with the precipitation potential then. The 00z
deterministic ECMWF is wet, especially southwest of Grand Rapids.
This model shows some areas potentially seeing rainfall amounts of
around an inch. Basically this model has a stronger wave further
north than either the Canadian or GFS.  Both those models suggest
little or no rain on Saturday here in MI, although the Canadian does
show a band of rain just south of the MI border Saturday.  There`s a
lot of spread in ECMWF ensemble qpf values for Saturday into
Saturday night for Kalamazoo. The Canadian is showing some members
with QPF then, while virtually no members from the GFS have
precipitation Saturday. The ECMWF ensemble QPF values are trending
steadily up for Kalamazoo Saturday.  We will feature a low POP for
southern parts of the CWA for Saturday and I did bump up the cloud
cover then, but considerable adjustments might be needed depending
on how the models trend.