We are now entering the middle of summer with warm and humid air in place and the chance of storms over the next several days. Yesterday’s high was 76° and the low was 64°. We received 1.46 inches of rain from Beryl which is now drifting off to the east.
Beryl Location
NWS Forecast
Weather History
1945: Muskegon falls to 40 degrees, setting a record low for the date. This is also the second coldest temperature for the month of July at Muskegon, just a degree warmer than the 39 degrees on July 2, 2001.
1957: Thunderstorms struck West Michigan with heavy rain and high winds. There was widespread flooding of streets, with some road washouts. The 3.19 inches of rain at Lansing made this the wettest July day of the 20th century there. Many trees were blown over by thunderstorm winds and lightning struck a TV antenna in Grand Rapids, burning out the transmission line.
1967: A tornado damaged a trailer, garage, and silo about two miles west of Ferry in Oceana County.
On July 11, 2022, a weak EF0 tornado formed near Lake Fenton and tracked east-southeast to Holly State Recreation Area from 11:33 pm to 11:42 pm.
On July 11, 1964, Genesee County experienced 1.75-inch hail and winds up to 58 mph around 5:50 pm.
Forecast Discussion
- Chances for showers and storms today and again Friday An upper low can be seen this morning spinning our direction from Eastern Iowa. This upper low will be absorbed into a trough over Lower Michigan today. The evolution of these features aloft will aid in the development of showers and storms this afternoon via cooling aloft at the same time destabilization occurs from below through sunshine (once the morning fog burns off). Scattered showers and storms are expected across the entire forecast area per the 00Z HREF. Convection should start around 100pm and continue well into the evening. Deep layer shear is on the weak side (20 knots of less) so we are not expecting severe weather. MUCAPE values will likely reach the 1000-1500 j/kg range so the convection will be formidable, just likely not severe. The trough will likely keep some showers going through the night with the HREF indicating a push of showers out of the south into the forecast area after 06Z. As for the morning fog, it looks to be shallow on the nighttime microphysics product in satellite data. Not anticipating a Dense Fog Advisory at this point, but we will be monitoring. Given the shallow nature it should burn off fairly quick in the 800am to 1000am time frame. Another round of showers and some isolated storms are possible on Friday, but we are trending more zonal aloft which should lead to less in the way of coverage and intensity. - Deep summer like storm pattern for Saturday thru Monday We very much head into a deep summer like pattern over the weekend and into Monday. We often refer to this setup as a ridge rider pattern. Meaning, we have storm Western U.S. ridge and a west- northwest flow aloft downstream of the ridge from the Northern Plains into the Great Lakes. Convective systems are usually touched off upstream by the nocturnal low level jet and they roll southeast into the Great Lakes. We see this in weak 500mb shortwaves almost every forecast period which are likely convective systems. The main period where precipitation stands a better chance is Sunday night into Monday night when we have a boundary settling into the area. 40 knots of deep layer shear and a reservoir of MUCAPE nearby and upstream of 3000-5000 j/kg make severe weather a concern. This will be a time frame we will be monitoring as we move forward. Highs during this time frame will push to near 90 with 850mb temperatures around +20C. - Trending towards upper troughing next week Precipitation chances will continue into mid next week as we see a pattern change to possibly deep upper troughing. The operational GFS is about 12 hours quicker with the pattern change, but both the GFS and the ECMWF have it. By Wednesday night 850mb temperatures are dropping to +10C.
Hearing “rumbles” North of Ada…interesting pop ups
Had a derecho blow through on this date in 2011. Here’s the storm reports from that day. I lived in Byron Center (Kent County) at the time and I’ll never forget it.
Here is an image from my Radarscope archive:

Here are some storm totals for rainfall. Here in MBY I missed much of the heaver rainfall with a two day total of just 0.92” the official amount at GRR was 1.80” at Lansing they set a new record for yesterday with 2.10” and a storm total of 2.22” Muskegon had a two day total of 0.64” Kalamazoo had a storm total of 3.24” and Holland had 0.55”
Slim
There were multiple rainfall reports in this area and down towards Jackson at 5″+ and even one at 6″. That’s a lot of water.
The official H/L yesterday was 76/65 there was 0.88” of rainfall the sun was out just 13% of the time. For today the average H/L is 83/63 the record high of 99 was set in 1936 the coldest high was 66 in 2003 the record low of 43 was set in 1945 the warmest low of 78 was set in 1936. The most rainfall of 2.72” fell in 1922.
Slim