WEST MICHIGAN — The first major snowfall of the season is wrapping up across most of the FOX 17 viewing area, but lake effect snow will continue to get more organized later Monday afternoon and Monday night.
Snowfall totals will continue to trickle in this afternoon, but we have a pretty good idea of how much snow fell across the area based on some of the official NWS observations and co-op reports that came in. Here is a sampling of some of those reports. The highest total we’ve seen so far was 9″ of snow in Hastings:
Now that the area of low pressure that bought the system snow to the entire area is moving off to the east, cold air is moving in behind it with north to northwesterly winds. As one might expect, this means another round of snow for some of our lake effect snow belts. This is already showing up in sections of Berrien County as of this writing:
As winds switch more to the northwest tonight, and west/northwest Tuesday and Wednesday, this band of snow will shift inland. And more bands of lake effect snow will organize with the new wind orientation. Here is the way Future Track HD sees things tonight:
The above model doesn’t show a lot of snow occurring, but estimated snow totals according to the European model suggest some of our favorite lake effect spots could see another 2 or 3 inches of accumulation by midweek:
Locally higher amounts of 4 to 5 inches will be possible in isolated cases.
The lake effect snow should be over with by Thursday, with warmer temperatures on tap for the end of the week and this coming weekend. In fact, rain with temperatures in the 40s by Sunday should melt most (if not all) of the snow away. Be sure to keep it tuned to FOX 17 for further updates!
