It’ll stay windy and cold this Monday with rain and snow showers. Temperatures much of the day will be from 35° to 40° with wind chill factors in the 20s. The ground is relatively warm, so most of the snow that hits pavement will melt as it falls. It may accumulate an inch on grassy areas, especially north of Kent County.
In the top picture are marine flags signifying Gale Warnings, which will remain up for Lake Michigan until 8 pm. This is for wind gusts up to 40 mph and waves up to 6-10 feet.
There were no severe thunderstorms in Michigan on Sunday, though the strong wind gusts did knock down a few tree limbs that cause a few power outages. As of midnight, there were 16,163 customers without power in Michigan, most of them on the east side of the state.
Here’s U.S. Storm Reports from Sunday. There were 33 reports of strong winds (58 mph or greater) or wind damage and 4 reports of large hail.
This is hail that fell in Port St. Lucie, Florida (from the Melbourne NWS facebook page).
So far, this April is averaging 8.7 degrees warmer than average in Grand Rapids. It’s been a diverse month. We’ve had 3 days with high temperatures in the 80s, 3 days with highs in the 70s, 3 days with highs in the 60s, 4 days with highs in the 50s and 3 days with highs in the 40s (including today – Monday).
The warm weather has brought out the blossoms on the magnolias, weeping cherries and yellow forsythias. We’re hoping we don’t get a frost, which certainly is possible in late April or early May. The Sunday night run of the GFS forecast computer model gives Grand Rapids a low temperature of 32° Wednesday morning.
I’ll have another man-cave Monday segment on the 4 pm news today (probably around 4:45 pm). I’ll tell you about the strongest tornado (the city of) Grand Rapids has ever had. Hope you can watch me this PM on WOOD TV8.
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