Very active last night after 8pm. I shot some video of the storm approaching Otsego – lots of lighting mostly cloud to cloud. I will see if I can get the video up as soon as I dig up my USB cord. My lightning detector was showing cloud to ground about every couple minutes. We received .42 inches of rain from the storm system. Hard to measure wind speed down here in the woods but I could see the tree tops swaying. I was outside until the rain started falling (NOT RECOMMENDED) – one off my cats was out with me. When the rain started it came down heavy and cold – both cat and I quickly went back inside.
Mostly cloudy today with some patchy drizzle this morning. It will be cooler today with highs only from the mid to upper 50s north to mid 60s south. A freeze is expected north of Big Rapids early Friday morning. Rain will become widespread across Southwest Michigan by midday Friday and continue into Saturday afternoon. Thunderstorms are possible too. Rainfall may be locally heavy.
2018 cold…not news…simply another waste of prescious time for MI residents. Keep the furnace tuned and running, and the winter coat by your side. The snow returns this year before “peak color” does.
Get ready for a nice Fall day tomorrow and Saturday! INCREDIBLE May cold is on the way! Who would have thought?
Ehh….Saturday isn’t going to be that bad, high in the 60’s is fine!
Saturday
Showers and thunderstorms likely before 5pm, then a chance of showers. Cloudy, with a high near 60. East northeast wind 9 to 11 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New rainfall amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms.
https://weather.com/weather/tenday/l/USMI0344:1:US
MLive’s summer forecast: HOT HOT HOT
http://www.mlive.com/weather/index.ssf/2018/05/michigans_summer_forecast_will.html
This might end up being a Saturday post later in May (if May ends up being as warm as it looks at this point) while not my guess for the summer of 2018 yet (may or may not have one) but past cold April’s would lean towards a cooler then average summer. In fact I only found 4 years in that May was warmer than average after a cold April (top 20 at Detroit, Flint and Saginaw)
In looking at doing a summer 2018 long range guess one of the items I looked was finding a year where a cold April was followed by a warmer than average May. In looking at the top 20 coldest April’s I found only 4 Cold Aprils that were followed by a warmer than average May. That only happened in 1936. 1944, 1965 and 1982. Here is a month by month break down of the summers that had a much colder then average April followed by a warmer then average May(note most cold Aprils were followed by a colder then average May as well) note the departure for April 2018 at Grand Rapids was -7.9°
1936
April -5.7°
May +4.2°
June -1.2°
July +4.8°
August +3.1°
1944
April -6.0°
May +2.2°
June +0.5°
July -1.5°
August +0.9°
1965
April -5.2°
May +3.5°
June -2.5°
July -2.5°
August -2.9°
1982
April -6.2°
May +6.3°
June -5.6°
July +0.6°
August -2.2°
In looking at all past cold April’s the summer that followed 1936 was by far the warmest. In fact July of that year was very hot! This would indicate that this summer will be overall cooler than average’
slim
Only if you believe in that. That’s like saying a coin flipped heads is more likely to be tails the next time. To me, this is pure manipulation of statistics without correlation or causation.
Wow!
Brett Anderson has issued his summer guess for Canada and when extended into Michigan his summer guess is for cooler and wetter than average this summer. Could May end up being one of the warmer months this summer???
Slim
I see the Weather Channel is using some video of the storm passing through Cedar Springs offered by our own Charles Russell! 🙂 My rain gauge says .45″ of rain yesterday – not much close lightning nor overly-strong winds, in spite of the large shelf cloud that went overhead, (usually signalling a blast of wind to follow). I like storms like that….LOL! I’d post what the peak winds were (guessing in the high-20’s) but my AcuRite dashboard is down. They were threatening a changeover (again) and I’m pretty much done using them.
Here at my house it was windy before the rain but no wind with the rain and while there was a lot of lightning for some reason much of it seemed weak or maybe just far off.
Slim
May is running +9.7 degrees above average so far. In other words, we’ve been having June weather in May.
That will go flat the next couple days with highs in the 40’s INDYDOG14!
False.
Indy, at this time May looks to be warmer to much warmer then average. It would take a major coll down in the 2nd half of May to change that.But that does not mean the summer of 2018 will be warmer than average in fact the past would indicate otherwise.
Slim
Looking like highs in the 40’s with rain tomorrow time to shut all the windows! INDYDOG14!!
The thunderstorms here at my house last night had a good amount of lightning a few good claps of thunder, no wind during the storms, (there was some wind about one hour before the storms) and only 0.32” of rain. So while a nice little thunderstorm not much for having a “severe thunderstorm warning”
Slim