We saw snow over the weekend and now we’ll see some cold temperatures arrive. Highs will be near 18 today and near 16 on Tuesday. Low temperatures Tuesday and Wednesday morning will be in the single digits. For the mid-week timeframe, slightly milder air will arrive with high temperatures reaching the 25 to 30 degree range Wednesday and Thursday. But the cold is not done yet! An arctic cold front is anticipated to move through early Thursday night, which should result in temperatures dropping into the 0 to 5 above degree range by Friday morning. This sets up a cold day on Friday with highs of only 10 to 15 degrees at best.
Now, here is the most interesting part of the forecast this week. Most of the time, it will be a Mostly Cloudy to Cloudy setting, which I’m sure is no surprise, but clouds should be able to break apart for at least a few hours at some point Friday night into Saturday morning. This is due to an arctic high pressure system strengthening to 1035-1040mb as it advances through the northern Great Lakes. Some data suggests it could strengthen to 1045mb. High Pressure means sinking air, which favors skies to clear out since sinking motion works against cloud formation. At this time, the High Pressure center is forecast to stay North and East of the lower Peninsula; moving over Lake Superior and into Ontario east of Lake Huron. This would favor clear skies Friday evening with clouds thickening back up by Saturday morning, which means temperatures would drop below zero Friday evening before warming back up a few degrees by morning. If we stay clear all night, we could drop to near -10 or colder Saturday morning, which is a risk worth watching for in the trends this week, but it seems more likely we’ll see lows 0 to 5 below Friday night. This weekend is when warmer air begins to return to mid-MI as we’ll see temperatures warm back above freezing by Sunday. Figure 1 shows the 7-day forecast, which features a mostly cloudy, cold, and dry week ahead. This is the coldest air we have seen so far in 2023.
Figure 2 shows where the arctic high pressure system is likely to be Friday night. Given it’s position north and east of mid-MI, this will likely keep the -10 to -20 degree temperatures away from us, although we’ll still likely see readings of 0 to 5 below. If the high pressure trends closer to us over the coming days, we could see some of the colder air come our way. There is time to watch this for the specifics, but it will feel bitter cold outside either way. Right now, favoring a low near -4 for our deterministic number Friday night.
January Snow Event
January has been a mild month with very little snow, although this past Saturday night brought accumulating snow to central Michigan. This will go down as the largest snowfall event locally during the month of January 2023. Most areas within the counties of Clare, Isabella, and Gratiot measured between 4 and 8 inches of snow from Saturday evening through Sunday morning. Due to this amount of snow coming down during a 12 to 18 hour window, the National Weather Service issued a Winter Storm Warning for Isabella and Gratiot counties and a Winter Weather Advisory for Clare county. This is because snowfall amounts were forecast to be just a little bit higher in the warning than the advisory, but we all received measurable and plowable snow, which slowed down travel and gave us some cleanup work on Sunday morning. At the CMU Weather Station on campus, 4.2 inches of snow was measured, while elsewhere in Mount Pleasant, 6 inches was reported. On the south side of Shepherd, 7.9 inches of snow was measured. Figure 3 shows a list of snowfall totals on January 28th-29th not only locally, but also elsewhere in the state.
Mt. Pleasant Almanac for This Week:
Almanac Information is a way to look at normal and record high and low temperatures for this time of year. The normal temperatures are based on the 30-year average high and low for that date between 1991 and 2020. For example, if you take the high temperature for every October 24th between 1991 and 2020 and calculate the average of all 30 values, the result would be 56. Therefore, the normal high for today is 56°. Record high and low temperature data goes back to 1895. Sunrise and sunset data is also provided. All information is valid for Mount Pleasant.
January 30th
Normal High/Low: 29°/15°
Record High: 53° 2013
Record Low: -23° 1951
Sunrise: 7:58AM
Sunset: 5:48PM
January 31st
Normal High/Low: 29°/15°
Record High: 51° 1988
Record Low: -17° 1918
Sunrise: 7:57AM
Sunset: 5:49PM
February 1st
Normal High/Low: 29°/15°
Record High: 53° 2012
Record Low: -25° 1918
Sunrise: 7:56AM
Sunset: 5:50PM
February 2nd
Normal High/Low: 29°/15°
Record High: 49° 1973
Record Low: -18° 1959
Sunrise: 7:55AM
Sunset: 5:52PM
February 3rd
Normal High/Low: 30°/15°
Record High: 46° 2020
Record Low: -25° 1912
Sunrise: 7:53AM
Sunset: 5:53PM
February 4th
Normal High/Low: 30°/15°
Record High: 53° 1991
Record Low: -18° 1918
Sunrise: 7:52AM
Sunset: 5:54PM
February 5th
Normal High/Low: 30°/15°
Record High: 52° 1991
Record Low: -30° 1918
Sunrise: 7:51AM
Sunset: 5:56PM
Mid-Mitten Weather View’s Mission is to serve people by providing timely information to help keep you safe and make decisions based on the weather. We are passionate about educating both our forecasters and our followers about how weather forecasting works and how we can be best prepared when impactful weather threatens. Our team consists of both CMU alumni degreed meteorologists and current student forecasters from the University. For daily updates, we welcome you to check out our Facebook Page! We look forward to catching you back here next week for another weekly 7-Day forecast update.
-Weather Forecast by CMU Student Forecaster Isaac Cleland
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