Everything strips for a deep snow over the southeastern half of Lower Michigan. In fact, the highest snow area extends slightly north and west.
Two weather conditions are going to help really pile up the snow. We expect a period of three to six hours tonight when large, soft flakes fall. The lightweight and fluffy flakes can pick up more easily than small, heavy wet flakes.
The second weather condition that is now clear is a perfect wind flow direction for moisture from Lake Huron. This is not a common situation, which may occur once every year or two. Check out the wind current forecast below. The wind blows straight from Huron Lake. Although Western Michigan is known for snow in the lake effect, it is the eastern side of Lower Michigan that gets more snow due to a Great Lake.
The forecast of the wind flow on Tuesday, Feb. 16 at 3 a.m. is blowing across Lake Huron and to Lower Michigan.
This morning, it looks like an amount of six and seven inches in southeastern Lower Michigan. The top looks like insulated amounts of nine inches. Now I would say there will be a lot of snow totals of seven and eight inches, with some isolated amounts of 10 inches.
Here is the latest prediction of the best model in this situation, called the High Resolution Rapid Refresh.
Total snow forecast from one of the best models.
One big reason why the model above is the best is that it can accurately predict the snow-to-liquid ratio of a certain snow. In this case we have a cold snowstorm. When it gets very cold, the air usually does not have enough moisture for heavy snow. But remember, this time the air will be constantly fed by moisture evaporating at Lake Huron. An average snow-to-liquid ratio is 10 centimeters of snow to one centimeter of water. This storm will be 15 inches of snow to one inch of water.
The Lansing area and Jackson area have been added to the Winter Storm Warning. This is the sign that the snow is spreading six centimeters further north and west.
So call it a total snowfall of eight to ten inches in the Ann Arbor area, Detroit area and now the whole inch. Flint, Lansing, Jackson and Kalamazoo should get between six and eight inches of snow on Tuesday afternoon. Saginaw and Bay City should expect five to seven inches of snow. The Grand Rapids area is still in the range of four to six inches. Muskegon is probably in the range of three to five inches.
I hesitate to call it a heavy snow because the snow will be really fluffy and lightweight. I think it’s better to call it a deep snow.
Another weather condition to make dangerous driving is blowing snow. The soft snow blows easily. Below is the surface gust that is forecast for Tuesday at 6 p.m.
Forecast of gust of wind at 06:00 on Tuesday 16 February 2021
The yellow and orange areas have gusts of more than 30 km / h, which produce moderate to severe power. The Torregrossa Drifting Index calculates Tuesday at 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. 55 in Oakland County. A value of 55 on my drift index is in the category I call Severe drift, although it is on the low side of severe drift.
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RELATED READING:
Timeline for bad travel conditions Monday night, Tuesday as snow increases over Michigan
48-hour forecast map shows how much snow will fall where you live
More weather updates by Mark Torregrossa