Wind switch brings classic heavy lake-effect snow. See how much will fall

The first half of this two-day storm was the warmer half with wetter snow. Now we get into a prolonged, colder west wind that will create a fairly widespread lake-effect snow. The wind will be strong enough to even bring additional snow to the east side of Michigan.

As our Saturday progresses, the lake-effect conditions become more widespread. By afternoon a mature lake-effect pattern will grip Lower Michigan. Here’s the radar forecast through Sunday showing how lake-effect expands today, continues tonight and gradually shrinks Sunday. By midday Sunday, the lake-effect snow will only be pounding the very typical snowbelts of limited area in southwest Lower Michigan, northwest Lower Michigan, and the U.P.

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Probably the most impactful oddity of today’s and tonight’s snow is the fact that the lake-effect snow band could stretch along I-94 all the way into Jackson, Ann Arbor and the west side of Detroit. We don’t normally see much accumulation that far east with lake-effect, but the winds will be strong enough to carry meaningful lake-effect into the Ann Arbor area.

We’ve had 8 to 12 inches in Northern Michigan overnight. Southwest Michigan looks like it is averaging 6 to 8 inches. Southeast Michigan and the Saginaw/Bay City areas had 4 to 6 inches overnight.

Now here is the additional snowfall through this evening and then all the way through Sunday afternoon.

The forecast above shows the expected additional snow today. I’d call it a solid 3 to 6 inches more snow today from Coldwater to Kalamazoo to the whole Grand Rapids, Holland, and Muskegon area. The 3 to 6 inch area will continue in a wide swath through the Traverse City area, Cadillac area and to the Mackinac Bridge. Most of the Upper Peninsula will have at least another 6 inches of snow today.

The snow forecast below is through tomorrow and shows southwest Lower Michigan gets additional snow from today through Sunday of at least 6to 12 inches. Southwest of Grand Rapids and northwest of Kalamazoo will have the heaviest snow and it will be a bunch.

All of the snowbelt areas from Cadillac and Traverse City to the Mackinac Bridge will also have a solid 6 to 12 inches of snow through tomorrow.

For the east side of Lower Michigan, we will have the heaviest additional snow around Ann Arbor, northwest Detroit and Flint. We could see another 2 to 4 inches of snow in that area. Saginaw, Bay City, Midland, the Thumb and northeast Lower should only have another inch or two of snow through Sunday.

The blizzard warning has been dropped for northeast Lower Michigan. This does not mean all of us will have no drifting. It just means areas are not expected to reach blizzard criteria. Winds will stay strong today with steady winds at 20 mph and gusts up to 35 mph or higher all over the entire state.

So there will be plenty of snow and dangerous drifting and blowing snow today, tonight and tomorrow.

Stay update with the stormy wintry weekend weather here.