Day 1 School Closing Outlook
Valid: Thursday, February 13, 2025
Issued: Wednesday, February 13, 2025 3:51 PM
Summary:
Widely scattered to perhaps widespread snow days are expected on Thursday as a bout of snow moves through West Michigan Wednesday afternoon into Thursday morning.
Discussion:
As aforementioned, a winter storm system will bring a bout of snow through much of West Michigan this evening and through about midnight tonight. This would normally be a highly favorable setup for snow days across the area, however, in typical Michigan forecast fashion, a few factors are throwing a bit of a curveball into our forecast this evening.
Snow Threat | Level 4/6:
Widespread snow accumulations of 3-5 inches with locally higher amounts are expected with amounts East of US-131 and South of I-96 expected to top 6 inches thanks to the lake-effect caused by the influence of Lake Huron. The first caveat to this forecast is the timing of the snow, earlier this week this looked to be a late evening into early morning event but now, the latest forecast trends suggest that snow will begin to taper across parts of the area by 1:00 AM Thursday morning. This will allow road crews to get out and clear roadways ahead of the early morning commute on Thursday so we do expect that most major US Routes, M-Roads, and Interstates should be fairly clear. Still, especially in rural areas, we do expect that roads will remain snow-covered and treacherous and this will likely prompt school closings but confidence is not as high as it would be if the timing was slightly more favorable. Hence, we have opted to generally highlight the bulk of our area in a Dark Blue (31-50% chance) delineation.
Across the smaller Purple (51-70% chance) along and West of the US-127 corridor North of I-96, we chose to increase probabilities because of the increased confidence in seeing slightly higher totals and snow persisting closer to the morning commute time frame.
North of US-10 between Ludington and Reed City, within the area between Benton Harbor to Grand Haven to Rockford, and Southeast of a Sturgis to Webberville line totals are only expected to reach as high as 4 inches so probabilities here have been reduced accordingly to a Light Blue (15-30% chance) in these areas.
Ice Threat | Level 1/6: Freezing rain and sleet may mix in and cause some very minor and largely negligible ice accretion this evening across far Southeastern parts of Branch, Hillsdale, and Jackson Counties. This scenario is not likely, however, and again, even if this does occur, any ice accretion should be largely negligible. Wind Threat | Level 1/6: Winds could gust up to 30 MPH overnight tonight which could promote some isolated areas of blowing/drifting snow. Impacts from any blowing/drifting snow and resulting reduced visibility should be confined to open areas and be largely negligible. Blowing snow and reduced visibility will be an increasing threat throughout the day on Thursday as winds gust up to 35 MPH at times with areas of blowing snow becoming more prevalent as the lake-effect ramps up during the day. While this will not have a direct impact on snow day decisions tomorrow morning. This will inhibit the ability of school administrators to opt for delayed starts.
Graphical Forecast:
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