Windy Today 2/28

Yesterday’s high was 41° and the low was 29°.  Today is the last day of meteorological winter.  Winds will ramp up significantly after 900 am this morning. Expect wind gusts from the southwest today to reach 40-50 mph. Isolated power outages will be possible. Another surge of wind will occur late this afternoon and evening behind a cold frontal passage. The strongest wind gusts this evening will be in the lakeshore counties. Wind direction this evening will be northwest.

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Wind Advisory

 

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Weather History

1998: Record-warm temperatures include the high of 53 degrees at Muskegon and 54 at Grand Rapids, helping to make this the warmest February on record at those sites.

On February 28, 2024, a rare February tornado impacted Grand Blanc during the overnight hours. This EF2 tornado had max winds of 115 mph and max width of 450 yards as it tracked 5.7 miles through an industrial complex and several neighborhoods. This was the second tornado on record to hit Southeast Michigan during the month of February, occurring exactly 50 years after the first (see below).

On February 28, 2015, residents of Southeast Michigan woke up to low temperatures of -2 degrees in Detroit, -4 in Flint, and 3 in Saginaw. The low in Detroit was a record for the date, which also rounded out the coldest February on record for Flint (11.3 degree monthly average temperature) and Saginaw (11.5 degrees). The average in Detroit was 14.1, good enough for its 2nd coldest February on record behind 1875.

Also on February 28, 1974, a tornado hit Wayne County at 5:25 PM. Although the strength of the tornado was not recorded, this is still an impressive event to have happened in Michigan during the winter and is the earliest date of a recorded tornado in southeast Michigan.

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Forecast Discussion

- Windy Today into Tonight

A southwesterly jet 45-60 knots at 925-850 mb will translate
eastward over the southern half of Lower Michigan later this
morning to mid afternoon. Despite mid/high altitude cloud cover,
most models indicate a deepening mixed layer off the surface as
strong warm air advection at the surface occurs while the 900-850
layer cools. Gusts to 45 mph are possible through early/mid
afternoon, followed by a slight weakening in wind speeds before an
uptick in west-northwest winds behind a strong cold front this
evening into early tonight. The lakeshore counties better suited
to see both phases of 45 mph gusts today and tonight, while
farther inland it will still be quite breezy but perhaps not
enough to continue the advisory longer.

- Slick Roads Possible Tonight into Saturday Morning

Light snow amounts may fall in Central Michigan this morning from
the warm side of this Clipper system, as precipitation from
midlevel clouds falls into drier air, but not very confident in
this. The main concern for impacts to road surfaces will be
tonight into Saturday morning in West Michigan. Temperatures will
drop well into the 20s, and in some spots the teens, by Saturday
morning, and lake-enhanced snow showers produce a dusting to
locally 2 inch accumulation.

- Light Rain Tue, Then Heavier Rain or Snow with Wind on Wed

High confidence from strong ensemble system support of a large
midlatitude cyclone tracking from the Central Plains to the
Southern Great Lakes Tue-Wed. Light rain showers are possible on
Tuesday ahead of this low, but the main precipitation should
arrive Tue night into part of the day Wed. Interquartile range of
QPF from the ECE, GEFS, and CMC is 0.5 to 1 inch. Snow is possible
in the deformation zone on the northwest side of the low`s track,
and there is a non-majority constituency of members that produce
advisory-level snow in our CWA (better chance in areas northwest).
It follows that the high temperature forecast for Wed is quite
uncertain depending on where the low tracks. It also looks quite
windy on the back side of the low, with northwest gusts over 40
mph possible.