Twice as long morning commutes and school closures

SAGINAW, Mich. (WNEM) – Road conditions in central Michigan are severely deteriorated following heavy snow squalls late Wednesday evening and overnight. The list of school closures also continues to grow. Click here to check. Allow twice the time it would normally take you to get to work. Extreme caution and distance are required this morning.

We can expect more isolated snow showers today and tomorrow, but snow squalls will not be among them until tomorrow.

Today – FIRST WEATHER WARNING DAY EXTENDED

The roads were quite treacherous this morning as snow and ice had formed from yesterday’s freezing drizzle and snow squalls. Whiteout conditions occurred across much of our area at times during the late evening and early night hours. As mentioned above, your commute this morning will take twice as long as normal and many counties are closed for the day.

Strong wind gusts of up to 40 miles per hour from the northwest will result in more blowing and drifting snow on the roads this morning, making cleanup efforts even more difficult. This wind also gives us a freezing cold start to the day, with wind chills dipping into the single digits. As you clean up and shovel, please keep in mind that it is very cold and stormy so you will need to take extra measures to stay warm. Extra layers, scarves, hats and thick gloves are a must. Also, don’t be afraid to take breaks to warm up indoors with a coffee or hot chocolate! The wind temperatures today are only 10 to 15 degrees.

Highs will reach 28 degrees so the road salt will be more effective in the afternoon, but this morning it will be a slow process getting the salt to work as we dip into the upper teens. At these temperatures, road salt is far less effective than normal. The normal high temperature for December 5th is 38 degrees.

Scattered lake effect snow showers will continue this morning, heavy at times, but snow showers will become significantly less numerous this afternoon. However, there is still an isolated chance in the lake effect belts during the evening.

Tonight

The same isolated chance of a lake effect also exists at night with low temperatures of up to 18 degrees. Tomorrow will be stormy again as the northwesterly wind continues. While we will see some slowing in speeds, we expect sustained winds of 10 to 15 mph with some gusts over 20 mph. Wind chills are expected to fall back into the single digits.

Friday

After the cold start, we have another day ahead of us with maximum temperatures of 28 degrees. Winds will be west-southwest at 10 to 15 miles per hour, with gusts up to 25 miles per hour.

We also saw the possibility of snow forming again. Prior to this update, our data suggested a mostly dry day, but now a weak disturbance from the north should cause scattered, light snow to form, moving north to south. These snow showers would begin midday and continue into the afternoon. However, squalls are not expected and the additional amount of snow would only be about 1 inch.

There will still be a short warm-up period at the end of the weekend. Check out TV5 First Alert’s 7-day forecast!

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