Great change to Saturday snow expectations as moisture is tied south

The weather system that enters Lower Michigan seems to have some of its moisture feed chewed up in Ohio. This causes a fairly important fine tuning to the snow forecast of the southern half of the lower Michigan.

We often see this when convection or thunderstorm activity just south of Michigan occurs during a winter storm. Winter storms rely on a feed of moisture from the south. When thunderstorms in freezing rain in Ohio and Indiana are materialized, the humidity that feeds into the north side of the storm here in Michigan is weakened.

All the latest data coming in shows this lack of moisture over the southern half of the lower Michigan. From Saginaw to Big Rapids and South, still have some snow on Saturday afternoon and Saturday night, but I would call it very light snow.

If you are hoping for a solid, more inch of snow over southern Michigan, you will be very disappointed. If you do not want to run under snow -covered conditions over the southern Michigan on Saturday night, you need to be relieved. I would not say that we have no smoothness on the roads, but there will not be a more inch accumulation on the roads.

Here is the radar forecast. Note the heavier return in Indiana and Ohio and the lack of snow returns over the southern half of the lower Michigan.

The snow over the southern half of the lower Michigan will be off and turned on, not stable and rather light. This cuts the expected accumulations yesterday of two to three inches of snow to more as one to two inches of snow on Saturday night. It can even be a total accumulation less than an inch over the heavily populated areas of southern Michigan.

It’s not a blizzard over southern Michigan.

The northern half of the lower Michigan still gets a blanket of snow. It still looks like a two inch to five inch snow to the northern half of the lower Michigan.

Here is the latest model output showing the reduced sneak cumulations in the southern half and the stable snowfall forecast in the northern half. I actually show you the two best snow forecast models at this time.

This first model still pulls out five inches to even six and seven centimeters from Ludington to Standish and north through Cadillac, Traversse City, Houghton Lake and Alpena. This model shows the highest possible result. But note the important quick drop-off in snow amount from Bay City to Big Rapids and Southward. Much of the southern lower may not even have an empty snow.

This next model is what I would call the second best model in this situation. It has even lighter amounts of snow and even in northern Michigan. I would say that this model shows the lowest possible snow result. It is also less than an inch over the southern half of the lower Michigan. It pulls out three or four inches over the northern lower.

What is the bottom line of all this? Grand Rapids, Saginaw, Bay City, Muskegon, Kalamazoo, Lansing, Jackson, Ann Arbor, Flint and Detroit should probably expect an empty snow or less. We also do not expect much freezing rain to talk about in the south lower. The freezing rain should be towards our south in Ohio and Indiana.

In the northern half of the lower Michigan, including Traversse City, Cadillac, Clare, Houghton Lake and Tawas City, expect two inches for five inches of snow. There may be an isolated six -inch snow, but it will be hard to find.

The snow is still expected to start in the northern lower Michigan dinner on Saturday and late Saturday afternoon in southern Michigan.

Sorry Southern Michigan Snow lovers. You will need to continue waiting for our first winter storm. It should happen at some point soon in the next month.