TRAVERSE CITY — The area’s recent freeze-thaw rollercoaster is expected to bottom out and remain there for a while.
National Weather Service Gaylord office meteorologists are forecasting a rapid temperature drop of about 20 degrees for early Wednesday that will bring lake-effect snow showers back to northern Lower Michigan, particularly along and southwest of Grand Traverse Bay. Gusts nearing 40 miles per hour are expected to force the wind chill down near zero in Traverse City and create whiteout conditions at times.
A Winter Weather Advisory issued by the weather service is in effect Wednesday from 4 a.m. to midnight for Benzie, Grand Traverse, Leelanau, Manistee and Wexford counties, with 3-7 inches of snow forecasted and locally higher amounts expected. The advisory cautions travelers to be ready “for rapid changes in weather, visibility, and road conditions,” including during the morning and evening commutes.
AccuWeather’s WinterCast shows Traverse City likely will see 2-4 inches of snow by early Thursday, but possibly up to 8 inches.
It’s the first day of a cold stretch expected to bring daytime highs in the teens and 20s for nearly all of the next week and a half, and possibly beyond. The six-to-10-day outlook calls for likely below normal temperatures and leaning above normal precipitation because of lake-effect snow, as reported in a Tuesday weather service briefing.
“If you’re one of those people who like cold you’re probably gonna love the next week or so,” AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Tom Kines said Tuesday. “(Those) days when we have temperatures into the 50s — we’re not seeing that again anytime soon.”
Seasonal snowfall
Northern Lower Michigan continues to feature snowfall totals above the season-to-date norm for the region. Traverse City has measured 58.6 inches of snow so far this winter, 15.5 inches more than normal, according to weather service reports. It’s also more than half the city’s normal for the entire season of 101 inches.
The city’s snow depth as of Tuesday was measured at 6 inches and there have been 31 days with more than 6 inches of snow depth this season. Snow depth in Grand Traverse County ranges from about 3 inches near the tip of Old Mission Peninsula to around 1 foot in the area of Whitewater and Union townships.
Parts of Kalkaska and Antrim counties had up to 20 inches of snow on the ground, while along the Lake Michigan shoreline through Benzie and Leelanau counties 2-8 inches of snow depth was reported, according to the weather service.
The Gaylord area has seen 90 inches of snowfall so far this winter and Petoskey 73.2 inches, both significantly more than normal at this point in the season (72.5 inches and 55.9 inches, respectively). Snow depth as of Tuesday in Gaylord is listed at 8 inches and in Petoskey at 2 inches.
Great Lakes ice coverage
Ice cover on Lake Michigan and the Great Lakes in general currently is behind the norm for the season. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory reported ice coverage between 5-10% on the Great Lakes as a whole and at the same percentage on Lake Michigan, as of Monday.
NOAA also reported Monday northern Lake Michigan surface temperatures in the upper 30s in Grand Traverse Bay and ranging from around 34 degrees on the shore of High Island to just under 42 degrees about halfway between Green Bay and the Leelanau Peninsula.