We have a warm and humid morning with 65° at 5 am. It will be a hot Independence Day except near Lake Michigan where water temperatures are still a bit cool. A haze in the sky from forest fire smoke will linger while a few clouds develop. Scattered showers or storms on Monday are most likely near and north of Silver Lake, Big Rapids, and Clare. The threat of rain today will be in the U.P.
A slight chance of a shower or storm on Tuesday will be followed by greater chances on Wednesday. The threat of severe thunderstorms, including large hail and damaging wind gusts, is fairly low. Lightning is dangerous in any thunderstorm.
A lot of areas had fireworks last night. It sounded like a war going on here in Otsego with continuous fireworks going off around town. My two dogs and the cats were freaking out and needed a lot of reassurance that all was well and dad would protect them.
Forecast discussion
- Warm and dry today with smoke aloft Today and possibly tomorrow will be the warmest day of the next week or really till mid July actually. The monster upper high that gave record temperatures to the Pacific Northwest and Parts of central Canada, is moving our the western Great Lakes today. It is continuing to be sheared out by a series of Pacific Ocean shortwaves. Since the upper ridge axis will be over us today, this will mean a lot of sinking motion through a deep layer of air above us. That will result in minimal cloud cover (it`s to dry for cumulus clouds actually). My 1000/925 mb thickness tool suggests highs in the upper 80s to near 90 inland of Lake Michigan. There is a one last shortwave the tracks southward, on the west side of the large storm system, centered well to our east, that the eastern part of Lower Michigan is still on the outer edge of, today. This could result in an isolate shower or thunderstorm this afternoon but while the surface based cape is over 3000 j/kg the air is very dry through a deep layer so it is unlikely we`d get much out of that. Still, it is not out of the question. The smoke aloft (as seen by the NCEP HRRR smoke model), which has come to us from wild fires in western Canada, will remain around the area into Wednesday. Today the smoke will be thickest over central and eastern parts of Lower Michigan. - Periods of convection Monday into Wednesday The greatest risk of thunderstorms, some could be strong and even an isolated severe storm will be later Monday into Monday evening, north of a Muskegon to Alma line. Surface based cape could exceed 2500 j/kg Monday afternoon and with the front sagging into the area, that may be just enough to cause a few strong storms. The problem with that is there is very little deep layer shear (polar jet is in Canada). Also the low level jet core during the mid afternoon will be north and east of HTL. That puts all of our CWA in a speed divergence area behind the jet. That is not something that would support strong to severe storms. With the polar jet being so far north and the low level jet axis mostly north of I-96, the greatest rainfall will be north of Route 10 Monday into Monday evening. Still a few showers may slowly linger southward overnight just ahead of the surface cold front but I could see many locations south of Route 20 not getting much if any precipitation then. The polar jet is realigning itself over southern Canada early this week. The lead shortwave, the one that sheared out the western upper ridge, will drive a cold front south tonight into Tuesday morning. With the polar jet over southern Canada the trailing front will not have much drive to get to far south and it will likely stall near I-96 during the day on Tuesday. That will result in a lingering threat for scattered showers and thunderstorm. The main shortwave actually comes across southern Ontario Tuesday night. That will be when we get a better organized wave on the stalled frontal system. However, once again the jet core is over Ontario once again. That means most of the rainfall will be over central and northern Lower Michigan. This would be in the Tuesday night into Wednesday morning time frame. We get into the cold air behind that system and we could see high temperatures falling back into the 70s for Thursday. Which at this point looks to be a dry day. - A more significant storm Friday into Saturday At this point the more impactful system for this area looks to be in the late Friday to Saturday time frame. This is one of those deep trough developing over the North Pacific building an upstream ridge that deepens the down stream trough. We will be where that downstream trough deepens. The ECMWF actually closes off an upper low over us by Sunday. Both the GFS and ECMWF suggest this will be a very dynamic system would good upper jet support and a strong low level jet, both in the correct place for Michigan to see some strong to severe storms. This is nearly a week out but we will have to watch this one the closest.
It was a fabulous night on the Grand the band was great ice cold Sprites to go around fireworks loud but most importants seeing good people loving living a normal life having fun again as much as our state has been screwed over from the pendemic and our government let the normalcy get back and the rebuild of our economy happen always prayers for the love ones life’s that has been taken from us Happy 245th Merica old glory we love forever!! Keep the sun shining down on all of us …INDY
After a few very warm days this week it looks to cool down for a while and in fact the 1st half of July looks to be below average temperature wise. At this time it is mostly sunny (there is some smoke causing a milky color sky) and it is now 83 here now. The DP here at my house is not at 72. So it is rather humid.
Slim
Get ready for another big cool down by mid week! I love it!
Happy 4th!!! Thanks to those have fought and those still fighting to protect our freedoms!!!
Rock on SS! Especially thank you to the Capital police for stopping an insurrection of maniacs! Thank God!