WEST MICHIGAN – I wonder if most of our west Michiganders (or Michiganians if you prefer) are happy that most of the precipitation from this system was in liquid form?
A decent size low pressure system will track in to Michigan on Monday and eventually take the milder temperatures and most of the rain with it. But for those that were behind this system with the colder air in place, several locations from Colorado to Wisconsin to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula saw plenty of snow. However, with south and southwest winds West Michigan stayed on the front side (or warm side) of this system making all of our moisture rain. In fact, our southern counties had temps on Sunday between 55 and 60 degrees. Grand Rapids officially made 49! The attached picture is a snapshot from our FOX 17 FutureTrack computer forecast model valid for 6:00 AM Monday morning. You can see the location of the “L” or low over northern Illinois. It will track in to northern lower Michigan by Monday evening.
As this low pressure system tracks directly over Michigan on Monday, cooler air will eventually filter in with a west wind later Monday night and Tuesday. In fact, we may see a few wet snowflakes mixing in late Monday afternoon and evening as temps slowly fall behind the system. Spokes of energy will continue to pivot around this low on Tuesday bringing us the chance of some light snow showers with minor accumulations, especially along/west of U.S. 131. This will begin to taper off on Wednesday morning as the upper level energy starts to lift out of the Great Lakes later Wednesday.
While our temperatures are expected to cool down in to the 30s for much of this week, our forecast models are indicating there may be another warm-up coming in by next weekend with readings getting back in to the 40s again. Normal highs for this time of year have us at 42 degrees with lows around 25.
By the way, those of us that walk our kids to the bus stop in the morning can now expect darker conditions for kids at 7:00 AM because of the time change. The nice thing is the longer daylight hours we had on Sunday, even with the gloomy conditions, it stayed light until about 8:00 PM. Spring is officially a week and a half away on March 20. Sure is nice to know we’ll just be getting in to the warm season instead of saying goodbye to it. Recall last March that most of the month was in the 70s and 80s (pushing almost 90), which is what sent the fruit buds out early…only to be destroyed by frost later. Hopefully, we don’t see a repeat of that!
You can get all your forecast details at www.fox17online.com/weather.
