After a beautiful Thanksgiving day, weather around West Michigan quickly turned windy and colder Friday morning.
Temperatures started the morning still in the mid 50s around much of the area, but quickly dropped to around 40° at daybreak as a cold front pushed through the Great Lakes. Winds picked up as well overnight, with gusts as high as 47 mph recorded at the Gerald R. Ford International Airport.
Winds will continue to gust 30 to 40 mph for much of the area Friday, with the highest gusts expected along the lakeshore. Temperatures will slip into the mid 30s in the afternoon, dropping wind chill readings into the 20s.
As the cold air arrives, lake-effect snow showers will fall around much of West Michigan. Most of these will be light, leaving accumulations of up to an inch on grass or raised surfaces. However, winds shifting to the northwest late in the day will focus snow bands south of I-96 into tonight. This may create pockets of one- to two-inch snowfalls south of Grand Rapids and west of U.S.-131. The image above is a computer forecast from Future Track HD of projected snow amounts through midday Saturday.
Snow will diminish during the day Saturday, with another brief shot of light snow Saturday night or early Sunday morning mainly north of Grand Rapids.
The best weather in the next week will come Sunday afternoon into Monday, before another system likely brings some snow on Tuesday. Computer forecast models disagree widely with the track of that system, so the details will take a while to work out.
You can check out the updated forecast on the Weather page.
