The pic. above is some pretty pink blossoms at my house. Blossomtime came 1-2 weeks later than usual this spring, due to the cool pattern and it came and went fairly quickly toward the end with the warm weather than followed. The last of the showers will end this Fri. AM. Here’s G. Rapids radar:
And Regional Radar
Go to: Most Recent Image
We should see the sun this mid-late afternoon, winds will swing to the northwest and significantly cooler and less humid air will move in for the weekend. Temperatures will be near 70 this PM and only in the mid 60s Sat. and Sun. afternoon. I can’t rule out a sprinkle Saturday, but most all of the weekend will be dry. Cool spots like Baldwin and Leota should dip into the mid 30s at night this weekend.
Check out the thunderstorm that just “exploded” over Comstock Park around 4:30 pm Wednesday.
I had 2.24″ of rain at my house on Wednesday, much of that coming in about 25 minutes. The rain produced a significant rise in area creeks.
I took this picture of York Creek along Mill Creek Avenue in Comstock Park. At this point, the water was barely getting under the bridge. Debris on the bridge suggested that it actually went over the bridge for a short time. Another foot or so and the water would have been up on the road.
This is another view of York Creek. I was standing on the bridge. The water was really racing by at the time. For a river to get the water through a confined space during a flood or going through a narrow canyon, it will speed up. That’s Bernoulli’s Principal.
This is a shelf cloud approaching from the south during the late afternoon in Comstock Park. The wind had been NE at around 10 mph prior to the shelf cloud…then as the cloud came overhead, the wind flipped to SW and picked up to about 18 mph.
I took this pic. Wed. evening amid the raindrops. It’s the Grand River boat launch at Riverside Park. You can see the water is still quite high and the water was flowing at a pretty good clip. It would have been some effort to move my kayak upstream. At Grand Rapids, the river is back below flood stage and is slowly falling.
 |
The Grand River is still a few inches above flood stage at Robinson Township in Ottawa County. It should fall below flood stage here tomorrow.
 |
The only other river location still above flood stage is the St. Joseph River at Three Rivers. The river is expected to get back below flood stage this weekend.
The above map is the Severe Weather Outlook Area for this Friday PM/night from the Storm Prediction Center. There is a fairly large Slight Risk Area (in yellow) from N. Virginia up into Canada. That is surrounded by a (dark green) Marginal (or low Risk that comes badk into W. Ohio. There is also a rather rare Marginal Risk Area from extreme northern California, across Oregon and Idaho into SW Montana and NW Wyoming – including Yellowstone National Park.
One more thing – the first birds started chirping at 4:41 this am. It looked dark to me, but there was enough faint twilight to get the first birds up for their day. I just filled the bird feeders Friday evening, so they get first eats this morning.