DETROIT – Steady overnight rain becomes scattered rain by mid-morning Saturday, and our high temp will happen early in the day.
We'll have temps initially near 40 degrees, dropping into the mid 30s through the afternoon. Breezy, with light rain showers changing to scattered snow showers by the end of the afternoon. If you have storm drains on your street, see if you and your neighbors can help clear the snow off of them and create a path for water to drain into them, as we'll likely see 1/2 inch of rain combined with melting snow, and that water needs a place to drain away or, well, you know what'll happen if it can't.
My big concern for Saturday night is how quickly temps will fall to freezing. Our Saturday rain will wash away all residual salt, so wet surfaces will freeze into a sheet of ice if that temp hits freezing before the surface water evaporates.
Be very careful if you're out driving Saturday evening, and I'm not hyping anything here: I've seen this happen before (ironically, on a Saturday night a number of years ago). It's basically a race against time between the falling temps and evaporating surface moisture. Whichever wins will dictate how your roads are Saturday night, until they're salted, of course. Overnight lows dropping into the mid 20s by Sunday morning.
We finally get a reprieve on Sunday, with mostly sunny skies becoming partly cloudy, with highs in the mid 30s, and it's going to still be a bit breezy.
There's a chance for some light snow on Monday, but Tuesday has now become a very intriguing forecast. A majority of my computer models (the UKMET, GFS, CMC and DGEX) all bring an Alberta Clipper across Michigan, which would give us a light accumulation of snow (1 to 3 inches, depending upon whether the clipper passes north or south of us), and highs near 30. HOWEVER, the ECMWF model (which is normally a reliable model) is bringing a stronger storm system up from the southwest, which would be a much more significant snow.
I wouldn't get worried about this yet, but this scenario is something I'll be keeping a close eye on. Something else I'm watching is our January snow total: thus far, we've had 22.5 inches, which makes this month Detroit's 7th snowiest January on record, and we're only one week into the month!
Enjoy the milder temperatures this weekend, and don't forget to download our FREE weather app. It has an uber-cool radar display to follow tonight's rain. Just search for WDIV in the app store, and our app is right there.
Also remember that you can follow me on Twitter at @PaulGrossLocal4. I don't tweet unnecessary stuff, just important information that I think you want to know. So don't expect dozens of tweets every day. On some days, I won't tweet anything!