Light accumulating snow moves through Friday
SAGINAW, Mich. (WNEM) - We’re continuing to track a cold front arriving today which will bring a round of light snow along with it. While today’s snow is more “routine” for this time of year, we want to First Alert you that pavement temperatures are not a factor this time around, so all snow that falls will be able to stick on untreated roads. There will be some slick areas, drive with care! Snowfall rates remain lower during this event though, so road crews should have an easier time keeping up.
The National Weather Service has issued a Winter Weather Advisory for the southern half of mid-Michigan and the Thumb. More details are available on the Weather Alerts section of our website.
Also, don’t miss the ice update towards the bottom of this write-up!
Today & Tonight
Overall, the forecast for today’s snow has been holding well, the latest update this morning is the start time delaying about an hour or two. Yesterday, it was appearing to be a 9 to 10 AM start, but as of this morning the most recent high-resolution data suggests an 11 AM to 12 PM start time.
From here though, the rest of the afternoon and evening remain the same from yesterday’s forecasts. By 3 to 4 PM for the bus stops, snow will be widespread across all of our area. Bear in mind any untreated roads and sidewalks will be slick at this time. With snow falling at about 0.25″ per hour, this means up to this point in time accumulations would be around 1″. Getting towards 5 and 6 PM for the evening commute, snow will still be steadily falling too. With those snowfall rates staying on the slower/steady-side, road crews should have an easier time keeping up with this system. This will especially be the case for any high-traffic/main roads, where with continued traffic we’ll likely just see more slush. It’s secondary, less traveled, and untreated roads which see snow accumulating normally as pavement temperatures are below freezing.
Going into the evening we’ll continue to have system snow falling, though the coverage may start to break up a little bit an become more intermittent. After roughly 2 AM is when the system snow leaves completely to the east, and just a few lingering lake-effect snow showers take over for the rest of the night and into Saturday.
Snow totals from this system will be uniform across our area at 1″ to 3″. The areas south of the dashed yellow line on the map below, including the Thumb, have the potential for isolated totals of 4″. However, the probability of totals up to that level is very low (only 1-5%). We haven’t seen much support from our data at all for 4″, really only on a spotty basis at-best. This will be enough snow to shovel by Saturday morning, but this won’t be any sort of major storm today. We just want to remind you again that there will be slick areas later today and your afternoon or evening drive will take a little longer than normal, but we don’t expect a situation say where commutes are twice as long, for example.
Highs reach 27 degrees with a south southwest wind at 5 to 10 mph, gusting to 20 mph. The normal high for January 10th is 30 degrees. Wind chills will be in the upper teens this afternoon with winds of that speed. Lows fall to 21 degrees tonight.
Weekend Forecast
This weekend sees “warmer” weather, but that’s only relative to where temperatures have been the last few days. Highs will reach 31 degrees on Saturday, then 30 degrees on Sunday. Lows on Saturday night will level-out around 21 degrees.
Saturday morning’s weather will be relatively quiet with a light wind for snow cleanup! Wind chills will run just a few degrees behind the actual air temperature. Temperatures will make their way in the upper 20s by noon.
On Sunday, we’re continuing to see a weak clipper move in during the afternoon and evening which could bring more light snow with it, but like today (Friday) this also doesn’t appear to be any major amount of snow. As of right now, this snow carries into Sunday night and could bring an additional inch or two, but stay tuned as more refinement will be needed to this part of the forecast.
After the slightly warmer temperatures this weekend, we’re falling back down to the upper teens and lower 20s in the middle of next week. Take a peek in full TV5 First Alert 7-Day Forecast!
Ice Update
With all of the cold weather this week, we’ve seen ice coverage improving day-after-day. If you’re an ice fisher, it’s definitely been long-awaited after what was mostly a dud winter last year. However, we want to urge extreme caution for the Saginaw Bay this weekend as there are still areas of open water. We want to thank anyone who has sent in photos or reports the last few days as this helps give us a better idea of where things currently stand. The map below gives a general approximation of 90-100% ice concentration, but we have confirmation of some of those areas of open water which is why we greatly appreciate your reports!
The Great Lakes as a whole, particularly on St. Clair and Erie, have seen more coverage building the last few days too. It’s gone up about 1% per day this week so as of this Friday morning update, we’re now up to 7.8% coverage for the entire Great Lakes. On this same day last year, ice coverage was only 1.07% so needless to say, we’re in a much better spot than this same time last year! Again, we just want to urge caution on any ice in the coming days, but continued cold in the forecast next week will help improve ice conditions even more. Please be safe!
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