DETROIT – Today was our coldest day of this week, by far, but the sunshine certainly helped temper some of the chill.
Don’t get used to the cold, though, as yet another warm-up in this El Nino Winter of 2015-16 is on the way!
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Tonight will be dry, with varying amounts of cloud cover as that initial push of warmer air approaches. Temps will initially only fall a few degrees into the mid 20s (-4° Celsius for our Canadian neighbors), then rise into the upper 20s (-2° Celsius) later tonight. South wind at 8 to 13 mph.
Saturday now looks dry for all of us, with mostly cloudy skies -- but a few peeks of sun aren’t out of the question. Highs in the low 40s (5° Celsius), with a southwest wind at 10 to 15 mph. If you still haven’t taken down those Christmas lights (and trust me -- I still see plenty of them up around town), this would be a great day to finally get that done.
Saturday’s sunrise is at 7:49 AM, and Saturday’s sunset is at 5:45 PM.
Mostly cloudy Saturday night -- it looks great for your date-night evening plans -- with lows in the mid 30s (2° Celsius).
Mostly cloudy on Sunday, with a few light rain showers possible by mid-to-late afternoon. Highs in the upper 40s (9° Celsius). Some of us won’t see much rain at all, so if want to take advantage of this exceptionally mild mid-winter day, make sure to check the radar on our free Local4Casters weather app -- you can zoom and pan the radar display with the touch of a finger, which allows you to focus on any location you want -- here in southeast Michigan, or around the nation. When you open the app, it opens right on the radar map, so it doesn’t waste your time, either. Just search in the app store under WDIV…it’s right there along with Storm Pins. You might as well kill two birds with one stone and download that at the same time -- both are free!
There’s a better chance of rain showers Sunday night, with lows in the mid 30s (2° Celsius).
Mostly cloudy and breezy on Monday (small chance for a flurry or light snow shower), with highs near 40° (4° Celsius).
Mostly cloudy (possibly even partly cloudy) Monday night, with lows in the upper 20s.
Alright, here’s today’s update on next week’s big storm:
Today’s computer models continue in relative agreement on the storm’s track to our west. One thing to remember is that the upper air disturbance that will generate this storm is still out over the Pacific so, while the models have been in agreement all week long, we meteorologists won’t get real comfortable until it crosses the coast and its physics can be sampled by our upper air weather balloon (radiosonde) network. That being said, we are still projected to be on the storm’s warm side, which means mostly rain for us.
Here’s the computer model for Tuesday morning. The low is over the Missouri/Kansas/Oklahoma border, with snow breaking out on its northwest flank. Here in southeast Michigan, we’ll start the day dry, and that’s good news for those furry little rodents (also known as groundhogs) that will be woken up and dragged out of their condos early Tuesday morning…at least they won’t need umbrellas as they check their shadows at a time of day when the sun is so low in the sky that you don’t have shadows, anyway.
By midnight Wednesday, the low has tracked into central Illinois, and several things have materialized during the day Tuesday. First, increasing moisture transport in the warm air mass ahead of the strong cold front will likely trigger a potent severe weather outbreak.
While specifics won’t be determined for a few days, right now it appears that ground zero will generally be in the Mississippi/Arkansas/Tennessee/Kentucky area. Northwest of the surface low, heavy snow combined with strengthening wind will create near-blizzard conditions -- and this will develop over Iowa and Wisconsin, and then move into far northern Michigan. For us, rain will develop sometime Tuesday afternoon and continue into Tuesday night. The rain could become heavy, and this rain won’t soak into a frozen ground surface, which means additional runoff than normal and some flooding concerns. Stay tuned about this.
By Wednesday afternoon, the low has tracked east of Lake Huron. The thunderstorms will have moved east, but I think the severe threat will be lower than it was on Tuesday, and the snow will have moved north of the border. For us, the cold front will cross our area sometime between midnight and dawn, so we’ll wake up to very windy (but dry) conditions on Wednesday. Snow showers will develop, however, and temperatures will fall. You’ll certainly be talking about the weather on Wednesday, and also about the weather we missed out on!
If you haven’t already, don’t forget to follow me (@PGLocal4) and the Local4Casters (@Local4Casters) on Twitter, as I’ll tweet updates this weekend if any important changes materialize.