Winter weather advice with 2-4 inches of snow expected

DETROIT – We’ve been telling you all week to prepare for this, and today is the last day to do some shopping if you don’t like being outside in bitterly cold weather.

Here’s an overview of what’s coming our way:

Most daylight hours should be dry. Some snow might approach southern Lenawee and Monroe counties in the late afternoon, but again, the day should be mostly dry.

Most of the snow falls between 7pm and 1am, and it now looks like we’ll be seeing less of a switch to rain or a mix – the best chance of seeing this is south of Detroit and east of US-23. As such, most of the moisture available for this storm will fall as snow, and I’m now expecting an overall five to four inches of snow in southeast Michigan, dropping in a pretty solid clip tonight.

Accordingly, the National Weather Service issued a winter weather advisory from Thursday 4 p.m. to Friday 4 a.m.

The snow should stop in the middle of the night, and then we’ll be dry until Friday morning. Some of the lake effect snow tires will stretch across the state Friday afternoon and I think the best chance of seeing those will be north of 8 Mile.

Saturday looks dry, and then there is a chance of some light snow on Saturday evening, which ends first on Sunday morning. I don’t expect much accumulation from that.

It will get a bit windy by late afternoon, but the real wind will not get going until the Arctic front approaches later Thursday evening. Wind can come in between 30 and 40 mph from the south for the front and then, as the front crosses the area, the wind will shift southwest with gusts of about 40 mph possible. This wind will last until Friday.

Today temperatures will rise into the low to mid 30s (0 to 1 degree Celsius) this afternoon, and will rise a little more tonight to the mid 30s (2 degrees Celsius). Once that Arctic front comes through, temperatures will start to crash, and we’ll be in the low to mid-20s (-5 degrees Celsius) by dawn on Friday.

Temperatures during the day on Friday will continue to drop, and by late afternoon we will be in our upper teens (-8 degrees Celsius). Cold temperatures intensify this weekend, with peaks in the mid to higher teens (-9 to -8 degrees Celsius), and nighttime lows well below the single digits (-15 to -13 degrees Celsius).

Due to the aforementioned wind and arctic air, it will feel much colder outside than what the thermometer indicates. Friday afternoon the chills are around zero (-18 degrees Celsius).

The wind chill on Saturday is zero to 5 above zero (-18 to -15 degrees Celsius).

On Sunday the wind chill will be between zero and 5 below zero (-18 to -21 degrees Celsius).

The snow that falls Thursday night will be a sleet, and (especially if you get rain on top) that snow will freeze into a solid piece of dirt that will be very difficult to remove. If you have the option, I suggest getting there late in the evening to shovel that snow before the temperatures drop.

An added bonus is that it will be much warmer (albeit windy) than if you wait until Friday or the weekend. Keep an eye on the radar of the Local4Casters free weather app… you can easily see where the back of the snow is. Clicking the “FutureCast” button will give you the most recent high-resolution computer model projection of the end time of the snow – our app will really help you plan when to go out and shovel.

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