By waiting until the 8th, I can get the maps from NCEI (National Center for Environmental Information). I have added graphs from xmACIS for the daily temperature and precipitation plus I have the monthly climate summary from Grand Rapids and Gaylord.
This shows our transition point from warmer to cooler weather.
It will fell like fall by Friday morning and that chilly and showery weather my last into Tuesday morning before the system is far enough to east to allow for some clearing. It will remain chilly Tuesday into Wednesday before a warm up starts by Thursday of next week.
I through it would be fun and informative to see the frequency for hot days across our Nation.
Here I have the frequency for highs in the 90s across the CONUS (Continental United States), the longest streak across the CONUS, the frequency of lows of 70 or more and I few more NCEI charts to show how hot of a summer this was both nationally and regionally. I also have a few precipitation maps so you can see that the great frequency for hot weather was were it rained less, relative to normal for that area.
I have added 2 slides to this presentation ( 8 and 9). These two slides show that what one uses for the “normal”, greatly impacts what the departure from normal looks like. I used 1991 to 2020, the official NWS normal period for the image on the top left, then 1895 to 2000 for the image on the top right, not the area of below normal is significantly less. That is because the period 1991 to 2020 was warmer than the 1895 to 2000 period. On the bottom left the mean is 1895 to 2020, that has no below normal areas. This seems questionable to me since the ranked normal’s on the next slide look a lot like the 1895 to 2000 on slide 8. I added this because I was getting some questions on this matter. I hope this helps.
I am expecting warm and dry weather this week over Michigan but warm and wet over the east coat, and cool and wet over the west coast.
This was a summer that featured persistent weather patterns over most of North America and lead to one of the most active Canadian wildfire seasons on record. It also lead the the 15th warmest summer on record (back to 1895) over the CONUS.
While it was the 15th warmest summer on record nationally, not all of the CONUS had a warm summer. You may want to find out how your area did relative to normal for this summer.
Expect the next 3 weeks to be cooler than normal over most of the eastern United States. It will be dry over the Great Lakes but very wet over the eastern seaboard.
Warmer temperatures are expected from Labor Day into the middle of the week. A cold front coming through the area in late Wednesday/Thursday time frame may bring showers and slightly cooler weather .
I updated my story about the severe storms since the NWS has now reported 8 tornadoes in Michigan on the 24th of August. The strongest was an EF-2 near Webbrvillle
As promised I have posted the national images of July 2023. The short story is it was the 7th warmest and 45th wettest for the CONUS. In Michigan it was the 58th warmest and 5th wettest on record.
We forecast heavy rain between I-94 and I-96 and that is exactly what did happen. The heaviest rainfall report showed 4.50 inches in Middleville, most of that area had between 1″ and 3″ of rain from the event.
Heavy Rain is expected over most of the southern half of Lower Michigan between 2 pm Monday and 8 am Tuesday morning.
An unusually strong storm system for this time of year is expected to track east across Lower Michigan from Monday into Tuesday morning. This will be an occluded system, with the track of the surface low near I-94. It is typical for the heaviest precipitation to be within 100 miles of track of the surface low, but on the north it’s track. This system as a closed upper low with it and a coupled jet with it. The precipitable water reaches above 1.5 inches Monday afternoon over the southern 1/3 of Lower Michigan as this system tracks through the area. There is also good model continuity with this system so it gives me confidence that the heavy rainfall will happen. Just exactly were is questionable but I would have to believe between I-94 and Route 10, between Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning a large part of that area should see more than an inch of rainfall.
Cooler than normal temperatures are expected to prevail over a large part of the northern CONUS into mid August.
We continue to see an overall eastern North American trough and western upper level ridge prevailing through the 3rd week of August. It does however look like a case of discontinuous retrogression by the later part of August as the models show a large upper ridge developing late in the month over most of the Continental United States (CONUS).
Exceptional rainfall occurred during the early morning hours at Grandville between 1 am and 2 am. This storm broke my all time 5 minute rainfall rate record and 1 hour rainfall rate record.
With Grandville Weather Data at my house having records back to the fall of 1995, the 2.95″ of rain that was recorded in both my 4″ rain gauge and my Davis Weather Station (nice that they agreed) , is my all time record rainfall in one hour. The previous record was 2.30″ during a thunderstorm during the evening of July 17 2oo6 between 9:45 pm and 10:45 pm. The 0.50″ in 5 minutes is also a new record for 5 minute rainfall, exceeding the 0.41″ on June 18th 2021.
The pictures above are from our home, looking north out of what is my son John’s bedroom window. The time posted on the pictures are EST, so you have have to add one hour to get the correct time for these images.
The Storm Prediction Center has put most of the southern 1/3 of Lower Michigan an enhanced risk for severe storms today (mostly late morning into mid afternoon). Locally heavy rainfall is expected too.
Most of the rainfall today will be from late morning into mid afternoon.
My experience in forecasting over the past 46 years tell me that for Southwest Michigan convection during the spring and summer months, warm fronts, stationary fronts and surface waves bring this area the most rainfall. Cold fronts bring us the least (typically). This event is warm front with a surface wave that develops into a surface low. This tells me most area should see meaningful rainfall today.
Area wide rainfall of 3 to 8 inches in July has helped reduce drought impacts but even so, the 90 day precipitation anomalies are still near 5 inches.
It’s been cool for the 2nd and 3rd week of July, however a dramatic change to hot weather is expected from Wednesday through Saturday.
Drought continues
I added the Colon EF-1 Tornado to the storm summary plus the CoCoRaHS rainfall reports for the storm.
Heavy rain with localized flooding occurred over southern and central Lower Michigan on the evening of the 12th of July. There were also reports of damaging winds, a tornado near Colon and a few funnel cloud reports.
Heavy rain with a few thunderstorms is expected over the southern 1/3 of Lower Michigan from late afternoon until early Thursday morning. Rainfall amounts of 2″ to 4″ is expected over a large area, so that may cause some urban and small stream flooding.
The heaviest rainfall is expected between 5 pm and 9 pm this evening. Rainfall of 2 inches to 4 inches is expected with local amounts over 5 inches possible. As a result, The National Weather Service has issued a Flood Watch for the southern 1/3 of Lower Michigan until 2 am Thursday. This amount of rain will have an impact on reducing the on-going drought if in fact we actually do that that much rain over a large area.
Recent rainfall has helped our drought improve some, but with rainfall anomalies being between 4 and 7 inches over the past 3 months, that has not come close to ending our current drought.
Severe storms during the evening of June 29th 2023 brought down trees and wires. Locally heavy rain causes some roads to be closed for a while.
To end our current drought over southern Michigan we would need around 6 inches of rain by the end of July. This is near record totals for July at most of our climate sites. It would seem unlikely given our current weather pattern we would get that much widespread rainfall. So while we do expect more rain in the next month than the previous month, the expected rainfall will likely fall short of ending this drought.
Our current drought and it’s impacts continue across Michigan, this blog looks at what is happening now and then what we should expect going forward into mid July.
Spring started out in March, warmer than normal, snowy and wet but ended in May still warmer than normal but very dry over Lower Michigan.
It’s been unusually dry is Lower Michigan since early May, this is expected to change by Sunday.
May in Southwest Michigan was one of the top 10 driest on Record, the fist half of June is not expected to be all that much wetter.
Upper air pattern will support dry and warmer than normal conditions through most of next week.
The smoke in the sky the past few days is coming from western and central Canada due to wildfires there.
Over Southwest Michigan, May has largely been drier than normal and cooler than normal Overall the next two weeks will mostly be that way.
Warmer Temperatures are expected for the Great Lakes area through Mother’s Day
It may be cool today and tomorrow but warmer than normal temperatures are expected from this coming weekend through the 3rd week in May.
Here are the last freeze dates for several locations in Southwest Michigan
Freezing low temperatures should be expected over Lower Michigan next week (first week of May)
I am expecting this summer, in Southwest Michigan to be near normal to slightly warmer than normal in the mean temperature but the frequency of very hot days, highs of 90F or more is likely to be less than normal.
Cooler temperatures are expected to prevail over southwest Michigan into through the first week of May. Milder conditions are expected to follow by mid month.
Why May This Change Be Happening?
As for why this may be happening I will look at the how the water temperatures in the Tropical Pacific have recently changed. Typically this sort of change forces large scale changes in the northern hemisphere wave pattern.
I am expecting the summer of 2023, over southwest west Michigan to feature near normal temperatures when June, July and August’s mean temperatures are averaged together. I am also expecting this summer to be wetter than normal across all of Southwest Michigan
I have updated my summer forecast for southwest Michigan based on the impact of warmer sea surface temperature over most of oceans in the more recent 30 years. Curiously the outcome, from my updated analogs would suggest a near normal temperature outcome and but a continued wet weather pattern into the summer months.
There are no clouds over Lower Michigan in this picture, this is just the snow on the ground.
Below is the snow depth map from National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center.
themarinocast 