A cut and paste forecast from last week continues into this week. It will be very warm and humid most of this week. Our high yesterday was 86.5° with a 76.7 dewpoint.
Occasional showers and thunderstorms will provide brief breaks in the heat from Tuesday onward. Showers and storms will not affect all places each day, but by Thursday, we think just about everyone will have received at least some rain. Right now we do not see a good set-up for severe weather, but we will keep assessing it each day.
It would be nice to see a brief respite with some rain to break the tediosity of the hot and humid air mass over our state. Otsego has seen only 1.43 inches this month the last being on the 12th. We do have a tolerable temp this morning at 60° with a 59° dewpoint which feels cool and comfortable, however, this will be short-lived.
I am sure you have noticed our daylight hours are decreasing rather quickly now – sunrise is 6:59, sunset is 8:31. This won’t have much of an effect on the heat though as our above normal temps are predicted to remain in the 80s through the first week of September.
Forecast Discussion
- Warm and humid into this coming weekend The short story is warm and humid till at least Sunday the 29th. This is the result of our subtropical high, currently centered in Texas, continuing to expand toward Michigan through the week. The ensemble 500 heights over our area, peak on Sunday the 29th. This weather pattern and the associated heat and humidity is supported by the ECMWF, GFS, Canadian, ECMWF ensembles, GFS ensembles and the Canadian assembles, run after run, for several days now. Yes, it does cool off toward Monday the 30th of August. Actually in the Friday, Saturday into Sunday time frame we are in the perfect place for our area to get has hot as it can typically can get. That is, the upper high is centered just to our southeast. We are on the northwest edge of the upper ridge. When we have this sort of pattern, it is typically our hottest weather. I am not saying record high temperature should be expected, but just that we are in a place where we could see highs well up into the 90s by Saturday. True, our actual forecast does not have highs forecast that warm, but we are being conservative for now since this a 5 days away and convection may impact just how warm it gets. The take away for you, from all this, is warm and humid conditions will last into Sunday. As for today, we have a surface high that moves across the area in combination with the ridge axis of that expanding upper level high, centered to our southwest. The result of that is a lot of sinking air. That will mean not to much in the way of clouds and as a result warm temperatures. Tonight will start out mostly clear but a shortwave moving along in the jet stream will touch off thunderstorms in the upper Mississippi Valley and they will head southeast spreading mid and high clouds into our area after midnight. - Warm front/cold front convection Tue/Wed We have two major frontal waves coming through this week. The first such event is Tuesday into Wednesday. We get the warm front convection on Tuesday during the day. The precipitable water on both the GFS and NAM rise to 2.1 inches by midday Tuesday. The 1000/850 moisture transport is aimed near and south of I-96 Tuesday during the day. There is low level jet shown on both the GFS and NAM Tuesday. We are in the speed convergence area of that low level jet during the mid to late morning hours of Tuesday. So, given the EL is near 200 mb and the model sounding nearly saturated from the surface to 250 mb, I would say heavy rain would be the greatest threat. Since the polar jet is in Canada, we have very little deep layer shear so severe storms are not likely. The warm front convection should move east of our CWA by late afternoon. Then we have the cold front convection Wednesday morning. These storms will develop farther north over MN/WS and then head toward our area during the early morning hours of Wednesday. There is a decent low level jet but this time the moisture transport vectors are much stronger. Thus we get another period of thunderstorms from that. As typical of these sorts of events, trying to figure out where the strongest storms Tue or Wed, will be, at this point is hard to do. Nonetheless, you should know thunderstorms with locally heavy rainfall are possible both times. It would seem the Wednesday morning event will impact a larger part of area. How the convection actually plays out may impact our forecast high temperatures. Seems no matter what we should get to the mid 80s at least on both days, even with the storms. - Another frontal wave toward end of week Our upper high will continue to expand toward Michigan as we go through the week. As always, more North Pacific shortwaves will continue to track along the polar jet. So the next such event will be in the Fri/Saturday time frame. This will be a similar thing to the Tue/Wed event. Convection on the warm push and convection on the cold front. It does seem through that on Saturday we could be deep in the warm air, if so we could have highs well into the 90s even through that is not currently in our actual forecast for reasons noted above.
So much for the rain missing GR. Get ready GR to get hammered!
Still no heat waves in sight! I love summers with no heat waves and minimal days above 90 degrees! Fantastic!
Thank goodness it’s Summer…
Enjoy, because soon we will be getting hammered with cold and snow! I love winters!
More sustained warmth. GR has only had 7 below average temp days for the 23 days in August so far (including today).
Compared to most of the country Michigan has pleasant summers and most would say Michigan has cold and snowy winters. Remember Grand Rapids had 46.1″ of snow last winter and in many locations that would be considered a lot of snow. As close as Chicago a location that many consider a “cold and snowy place” in the last 30 years only 9 winters had more that that 46.1″ and in Indianapolis only 3 winters in the last 30 have had more that that 46.1″ with the most in that time there being just 55.7″. So I will rest my point… Read more »
West Michigan winters: Cold, snowy, and cloudy. It’s quite a difference from northern Indiana or even eastern Lower Michigan.
I have to say this August has had some great summer weather. And with it being late August now we only have a few weeks of warm weather before the cooler days of fall set in. In less than 4 weeks the average high will be in the upper 60’s and the lows in the upper 40’s While I do not mind fall weather I do not look forward to the snow and cold of winter. Even a “mild” winter will have cold and snow and I am not so sure this upcoming winter will be a “mild” one.
Slim
Looks like another brutal week ahead, and then by the weekend just ridiculously hot. Booo!