There will be three different zones of weather across Michigan with the coming powerful storm system. Let’s see what zone your city will be situated in.
We all get a six-hour burst of light-to-moderate snow tonight or Sunday morning. This burst of snow should mount up to two to five inches of snow.
The zone of winter weather then shifts north into the northern third of Lower Michigan and the Upper Peninsula. At the same time, warm air will surge northward to around Cadillac, Clare and the northeast shoreline. Of course it will be much warmer as we go south into southern Michigan.
This scenario sets up the three zones of different weather for Sunday and Sunday night: Rain and thunderstorms, wintry mixed precipitation and heavy snow with blizzard conditions.
I like these two forecast maps at 10 p.m. Sunday as the best snapshot for you to see your weather zone. The radar forecast below has purple as freezing rain, salmon as sleet and blue as heavy snow.
Radar forecast at 10 p.m. Sunday, March 15.NOAA
To compliment the radar forecast, here are the temperatures expected at 10 p.m. Sunday.
Temperature forecast at 10 p.m. Sunday, March 15.NOAA
The rain zone for Sunday and Sunday night will extend from Manistee to Cadillac to Houghton Lake to Alpena and all points southward. This means the big cities of southern Michigan, like Ann Arbor, Detroit, Jackson, Flint, Saginaw, Lansing, Kalamazoo, Battle Creek, Grand Rapids and Muskegon will all have rain showers and thunderstorms. The thunderstorms could easily produce “severe wind gusts” of 58 mph or faster.
The next zone is the hard forecast. The next zone is a mix of freezing rain, sleet, snow and rain. The northern edge of this zone will be more freezing rain, and probably what most would call an ice storm. The cities in this icy mixed zone are: Frankfort, Traverse City, Mancelona, Charlevoix, Petoskey, Gaylord, Pellston, Mackinaw City, Cheboygan, Rogers City and Sault Ste. Marie.
Traverse City will get into a few hours of just plain rain late Sunday. This should help reduce some of the ice accumulation there. Traverse City could have up to one-quarter of an inch of ice accumulation at times. Petoskey, Pellston, Cheboygan and Rogers City unfortunately could be in the damaging ice storm, with one-quarter to three-quarters of an inch of ice.
Finally, the last zone is easy. The last zone will have a ton of heavy snow and extreme blowing snow. This zone is the Upper Peninsula, where up to 36 inches of snow could pile up. Blizzard warnings cover the entire Upper Peninsula.
Eventually, by Monday morning, we all get back into colder air and have off-and-on snow showers. There could be three to six inches of additional snow in the lake-effect snowbelts of western Lower Michigan. The east side of Lower Michigan would likely only have an inch or two of snow Monday.
Temperatures will rise above freezing midday Wednesday, and the melting will start.
