Another Sunny Day – The Michigan Weather Center

Those sunny, dry days are nice, except for all the pollen in the air, they’re tolerable if you don’t mind puffy eyes and a runny nose. The last few days have been terrible for allergy sufferers like me. Antihistamines are the drug of choice pretty much all season long. It is also nearly impossible to keep a car clean. Tomorrow we should see an improvement with a chance of rain to wash it all away.


Yesterday we had a maximum of 73° and a minimum of 50°.

Today’s dry weather will give way to showers on Wednesday. After a mostly sunny day today, the clouds will increase this evening and we will see some rain coming in from the west on Wednesday morning. Daytime temperatures will also end up a few degrees below normal for this time of year.


-- Today --

Northwest low-level flow is bringing 0 to 5 C 850 mb temperatures
through today. Mostly sunny skies amid upper level ridging and
surface high pressure will deepen boundary layer mixing during the
day up to the cap around 5,000 feet, where winds to about 20 mph
will be mixed down as gusts, less than yesterday. Highs in the 60s
are expected, cooler than yesterday also. Fire weather concerns
remain elevated given persistent dry conditions in quite a number
of locations, afternoon relative humidity percentage dropping into
the 30s, and the moderate breeze. Conifer forests in central /
west-central Lower Michigan and into northern Lower are most
susceptible to fire spread.

-- Wednesday --

Shortwave trough(s) moving through quasi-zonal flow and a right
entrance region of the upper level jet will make rain likely on
Wednesday. The shortwaves at 500 mb appear rather subdued and not
well phased, and the models differ in how well developed a surface
low becomes as it treks just south of Michigan. However, enough
moisture and mid-level frontogenesis should be present for light
to moderate rain over much of the area. The HREF, GFS, and ECMWF
ensemble members offer a wide range of potential rain amounts for
any given location depending on all these factors. Could be a
west to east swath of 0.5 to 1 inch of rain somewhere in the lower
two-thirds of Michigan, right now the most likely zone would be
between I-96 and M-20, but don`t feel very confident in this yet.
Dry air in the low levels preceding the arrival of this rain will
keep the areas that do receive steadier rain quite chilly, in the
upper 40s to mid 50s, while without the rain the temperatures
could climb into the 60s.

-- Thursday to Friday --

Not wanting to get too confident in the synoptic pattern yet for
Thursday to Friday as the 00Z GFS and some of its ensembles have
trended toward a less amplified ridge over the Northeast US and
Quebec, with the EML plume and greatest instability shifting a
little to the south of Michigan and the cold front arriving
sooner. Unsure if this is the start of a trend just yet.
Nonetheless, the mean solution among the ensembles of the GFS,
ECMWF, and Canadian has been for the advection of a high plains
elevated mixed layer over Michigan on Friday ahead of a
southwesterly upper level jet nudging in and a surface cold front
sagging through. Near the surface, Gulf moisture should advect in
and MLCAPE could build to 1500-3000 J/kg. The strength of the cap
would also be a significant factor that would modify the timing
and extent of convection. Can`t rule out some convection Thursday
night or Friday morning with the warm front. If we stay in the
warm sector through Friday afternoon, southwest winds would be
rather breezy regardless of convection, and any convective cells
or clusters that develop would create locally severe wind gusts
and large hail given the strong but fairly unidirectional 0-3 km
and 0-6 km shear. If convection develops above the cold front
instead, there may still be enough instability for elevated
parcels to keep hail as a threat.

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