Day 1 School Closing Outlook
Valid: Monday, January 13, 2025
Issued: Sunday, January 12, 2025 3:26 PM
Summary: Lake-effect snow showers continue across the region this evening with additional accumulations of less than 1 inch to as much as 3 inches possible through 7:00 AM Monday morning. Snow day chances, however, remain on the lower side.
Special Note:
To encourage a full understanding of these outlooks from our readers we are now placing the graphic at the bottom of the forecast discussion article. We strongly suggest reading the detailed discussion with our forecasts so that you can understand our mentality and any underlying details we have concerning our forecast that the visual graphic may not depict well.
Discussion:
Ongoing lake-effect snow showers across the area this afternoon continue to cause minor travel impacts and areas of reduced visibility across much of the region. We're also watching the potential for freezing drizzle/rain to develop late this afternoon and into the early evening. Strong winds are further contributing to areas of low visibility.
Ordinarily, all of these factors would normally come together to result in some isolated, to perhaps widely scattered, school closures. However, a few factors will come together tonight to mitigate the overall risk for snow days on Monday morning. First and foremost, snowfall is expected to become more localized overnight as colder air moves into the region promoting more narrow/small snow bands which should serve to limit the widespread nature of notable snow accumulations.
Additionally, a look at the MDOT MiDrive traffic cameras reveals that primary road conditions as they stand, despite ongoing scattered wintry precipitation, are generally clear, travel speeds are only slightly reduced at most, and very few traffic incidents exist. This means that road crews are able to keep up with the snow and this will allow them to generally stay ahead of the snow and prevent road conditions from deteriorating in any significant way.
These factors obviously inhibit our ability to accurately delineate higher probabilities for specific areas so we are forced to use a blanket of much lower probabilities over a large area.
I would be remiss however if I failed to note the low potential for clusters of snow days and delays wherever those more narrow bands of lake effect snow do eventually set up. Current computer weather model data from both the 12z (7:00 AM) and 18z (1:00 PM) suites suggests that the most likely region for this scenario to unfold would be across our Northwest zones where we have opted to introduce slightly higher 15%-30% (level 2/6) probabilities.
One other thing we will need to continue to monitor is the freezing drizzle/rain potential this evening. Currently, we don't foresee any significant impacts to the area, but as we know, freezing rain is the worst and can easily start to cause impacts.
Graphical Forecast:
Additional snow showers, strong winds, and cold temperatures will continue to impact the potential for a snow day on Tuesday. Help support West Michigan Weather and become a site member below to get special early access to tomorrow's preliminary prediction. Starting as low as $0.99/month.
Day 2 School Closing Outlook
Valid: Tuesday, January 14, 2025
Issued: Sunday, January 12, 2025 3:26 PM
Summary:
Additional winter weather impacts are expected Monday afternoon and into Tuesday morning. Currently, it appears that this timeframe will support more significant impacts than the impacts we are currently seeing from the ongoing lake-effect snow showers. Therefore, snow days are more likely for Tuesday morning.