Tag: flooding

A Look at the January 9-10th Storm and some impacts

This storm brought heavy snow to the Midwest and parts of the Great Lakes, then there were damaging winds over the eastern Seaboard, as well as flooding. Severe storms and over a dozen tornadoes occurred over the Southeast sections.

Severe Storms, on Thursday night (8-24-23) cause power outages, flooding and an EF1 tornado over Lower Michigan. This shows some preliminary reports from the storm last night.

Heavy Rain was forecast for yesterday afternoon into mid morning today. The slides below show the what actually happened.

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 Rainfall is expected over most of Lower Michigan from Monday Afternoon into Tuesday Morning

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.

I had my all time record one hour Rainfall rate Saturday Morning, at my Grandville Weather Station.

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.

Heavy Rain and Risk for Severe Storms Today

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.

I have updated my storm review of the 12th of July to include the information released by North Webster Indian (IWX) on the Colon EF-1 Tornado.

I added the Colon EF-1 Tornado to the storm summary plus the CoCoRaHS rainfall reports for the storm.

Yesterday We Expected Widespread Heavy Rainfall During the Late Afternoon and into Early This Morning. We also expected a slight chance of severe storms. As it turned out the rainfall forecast was very much on track as most of southern and central Lower Michigan had 2 to 4 inches of rain. There was a report of tornado near Colon Michigan at 11:06 pm. There were also several reports of wind damage, mostly south of I-96.

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.

We are expecting heavy rain late this afternoon into early tonight across the southern half of Lower Michigan.

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.