Tagged: weather

Snow is likely to hit northern and possibly west Michigan starting tomorrow and through Friday morning.

The National Weather Service says the first major winter storm of the season is over the middle of the country and is expected to track northeast.

Shortwave energy triggering widespread showers across the four corner states at the start of the forecast period will swing out into the plains and help intensify a surface low in the lee of the Central Rockies by Wednesday afternoon.  The strengthening cyclone will quickly track northeastward towards the middle Mississippi valley Wednesday night and is expected to reach southern Michigan by early Friday.

Snow is expected to start in Kalkaska, for example, after 4 a.m. tomorrow. Accumulations are expected to be 6 to 12 inches.

Check out the forecast for your area from the NWS.

It's December and joggers' shorts are still short.

Atypical high temperatures continue throughout the state, something Dr. Jeff Masters says is in line with a warming climate.

Masters, who co-founded the Weather Underground, is reasonably concerned.

"It doesn't feel very right. We have seen a number of winter-time thunderstorms and it's definitely not right. The climate has shifted to a warmer state," said Masters.

Here's one of those headlines that'll probably confirm your hunch:

Weather-wise, this January through September was the most extreme the country’s ever experienced, ever since we started keeping records. 

Let's just flip back through the 2012 calendar, shall we?

First, there was the winter-that-wasn't. Meteorologist Jeff Masters is based in Ann Arbor and is a big name in the weather-blog world.

"It started with the non-winter of 2012. It was one of the warmest Januarys and Februarys on record."

He says that warm winter led into a stormy spring, with a big tornado in March.

"Which ripped through Dexter, Michigan, causing a lot of damage there. And in addition, in March we had summer in March."

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center reported today that the summer of 2012 "was the third hottest summer on record for the contiguous United States since recordkeeping began in 1895."

They looked at records from June through August of 2012 (summer is technically over on the morning of September 22).

...the average temperature for the contiguous United States between June and August was over 74° Fahrenheit, which is more than 2° F above the twentieth-century average. Only the summers of 2011 and 1936 have had higher summer temperatures for the Lower 48.

The online weather service, the Weather Underground, has compiled data that allows users to look at how their local climate has changed over the years.

It also allows users to see how local the climate is expected to change in the coming years using two different IPCC greenhouse gas emissions models.

Overnight storms have left about 37,000 Michigan utility customers without power.

DTE Energy spokesman Scott Simons says Thursday that 16,000 outages include 13,000 scattered customers and 3,000 in South Lyon and Lyon Township.

Consumers Energy spokeswoman Debra Dodd tells MLive.com that nearly 21,000 of the Jackson-based company's statewide customers are blacked out. County outages include 2,900 in Bay, 3,300 in Genesee, nearly 2,700 in Gladwin, and more than 1,200 in Montcalm.

Today, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack declared four additional Michigan counties natural disaster areas due to continuing dry conditions.

Branch, Cass, Hillsdale, and St. Joseph counties have all joined the list.

This brings the number of counties experiencing drought up to 38 in Michigan, and 1,234 nationally, as counted during the 2012 crop year.