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Only A Little Snow Through End of Week

Posted at 9:25 AM, Jan 02, 2013
and last updated 2013-01-02 09:25:01-05

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich — The first few days of January will remain fairly quiet around West Michigan, with the only exception being some snow Thursday that may result in a couple of inches of accumulation.

Scattered lake-effect flurries will hang around throughout the day Wednesday, but result in minimal, if any, accumulation.  Temperatures will remain cold enough to continue lake-effect snow through early Friday morning, but most of the time, there won’t be enough moisture or additional energy in the atmosphere to generate much snowfall.

That changes, however, when a weak disturbance swings through the Great Lakes Thursday and creates scattered light snow showers.  That system itself will likely only cause around an inch of snow as it moves through.  The wild-card in the forecast is in how much additional lake-effect or lake-enhanced snow it helps to generate Thursday into Thursday night.

The end result will be snow totals that favor areas west of U.S. 131; however, lake-effect snow showers will likely spread inland even into areas like Battle Creek as well.  Most inland places will pick up an inch or two of snow, with as much as two to four inches possible in the lake-effect snow bands that set up Thursday afternoon.

The attached forecast image from FOX 17’s Future Track HD computer model is likely a little too low with snow amounts given the lake-effect contribution; but, it does show well how the pattern may line up with the higher totals near the lakeshore.

Snow will likely slow the Thursday afternoon commute to some extent.  You can find the latest forecast and interactive radar on the Weather page.