Jeff Andresen...After an extended period of mostly sunny, dry weather across the state and region (many areas have been dry since August 30-31), forecast guidance is now suggesting some major upper air changes during the upcoming week. The upper air ridging pattern across the region that has led to the abnormally dry conditions (In the State Climatology Office, we=ve referred to it as our Michigan version of “California weather.”) will give way to a troughing pattern by early next week, resulting in wetter and possibly cooler weather.

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Jeff Andresen...High pressure firmly entrenched across the Great Lakes region since earlier this week will continue to hold through much of the upcoming holiday weekend, resulting in more sunny, dry weather across Michigan. A slow-moving frontal boundary and increasing levels of Gulf of Mexico-origin moisture will bring the chance showers and thunderstorms once again by the middle of next week.

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Beth Bishop...Check out the overnight temperatures tool at www.enviroweather.msu.edu. This tool displays overnight temperatures recorded by area weather stations during the previous night. It also shows forecasted low temperature for the upcoming night. Late afternoon/early evening dewpoints are also provided.

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By Jeff Andresen... Following a summer-like week with above normal temperatures, the jet stream configuration across North America is currently changing back to a pattern somewhat similar to that in July: ridging across western sections of the lower 48 states and troughing across the east.

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By Jeff Andresen... After several weeks with the same general upper air pattern across North America; ridging (and excessive heat) across western North America and troughing (and cooler than normal temperatures) across central and eastern sections, major changes are currently underway with an eastward shift of the ridge to the Midwest and east.

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By Aaron Pollyea... After a day of precipitation, we’ll have more of the same Friday, July 24, as another system moves through the state with the highest amounts occurring overnight Friday into Saturday morning.

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By Aaron Pollyea...After a week of dry conditions, a large frontal system will be moving through the state starting this evening and rainfall will occur Friday, July 10, in the Upper Peninsula. The rain will begin later in the evening in the lower half of the state continuing until Saturday morning, July 11.

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By Jeff Andresen... Almost as if on cue with the beginning of astronomical summer (solstice this year was 1:45 AM EDT on June 21), a large upper air ridging feature formed across central sections of the United States bringing the first major heat wave of the summer season. The upper air ridging pattern and heat will gradually give way to northwesterly flow and a cooler weather pattern by early next week.

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By Beth Bishop... Computers and the internet have indisputably changed modern life, giving us almost instantaneous access to information. We have come to expect up-to-the moment information at the press of a button or the click of a mouse.

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By Aaron Pollyea... Friday, June 19, was a very wet morning across many portions of the state with severe weather in the southern areas of the Lower Peninsula. Model runs suggest the rain will continue through much of Saturday before finally leaving the state and moving east. The next possibility of rainfall doesn’t look to be until late next week as a trough passes through our area.

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By Jeff Andresen... Forecast guidance during the past several days has been very consistent in suggesting an extended period of mostly dry weather during the upcoming week, with gradually warming temperatures. A weak upper air disturbance will move through the region overnight Friday into Saturday (June 12-13), setting off a few widely scattered showers, mainly in western sections of the state.

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By Jeff Andresen... A weak cold front will move through the state late Friday, June 5, into Saturday, June 6. Given very limited moisture in place ahead of the front, only scattered light showers (less than 0.25 inch where rain falls) are expected, mainly in northern sections of the state with dry conditions continuing elsewhere.

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By Jeff Andresen... A pair of cold fronts will pass through the state during the next 24-48 hours, bringing a chance for scattered showers and thunderstorms. The first front will move through late Friday afternoon, May 29, and evening and the second just behind it during the day on Saturday, May 30.

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By Jeff Andresen... A weak cold front will move from northwest to southeast across the state Saturday, bringing the chance for scattered showers and cooler temperatures. Similar to the front that passed through the state Thursday (May 21), relatively little moisture will be available ahead of the front and only light rainfall totals of less than a quarter inch where rain occurs are expected.

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By Jeff Andresen and Tom Dudek... From its appearance and the damage it caused, it almost appeared as if a small tornado had moved through Lincoln Nursery in Ottawa County last Sunday afternoon (See image). However, tornadoes are always associated with severe thunderstorms and the weather last Sunday in western, lower Michigan was sunny, cool and windy. The culprit, in this case, was a dust devil, a weather phenomenon more typical in the southwestern U.S. Dust devils are a relatively small, but well-developed, rotating dust whirls, usually of short duration and rendered visible by dust, sand and debris picked up from the ground.

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By Jeff Andresen... High pressure will give way to a frontal boundary and an approaching area of low pressure Friday with increasing clouds as the day progresses. This system will lead to more widespread rain across the state with showers and thunderstorms arriving by early Friday evening, May 15, in western sections of the state spreading to eastern sections by late evening.

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By Jeff Andresen... A cold front boundary will move across the Upper Midwest on late Friday, May 8, and Saturday, May 9, bringing a good chance for rainfall and much cooler, windy conditions to much of Michigan. Look for occasional showers with a few rumbles of thunder statewide Friday evening through late Saturday afternoon. Rainfall totals are forecast to generally range from 0.25-0.50 inches with a few 0.50-1.00 inch totals across northern sections of the Lower Peninsula.

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By Jeff Andresen... A split flow jet stream pattern with troughing across the western United States and ridging across western Canada continued during the past week, leading to an active weather pattern across Michigan and the Great Lakes region. Widespread, heavy rain fell on the April 25 through the 27 and again on April 30 with totals of two inches to more than six inches falling over southern and central sections of the Lower Peninsula.

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By Jeff Andresen ... A broad area of high pressure across the Great Lakes region Friday, April 17, will bring another one to two days of very spring-like weather to Michigan. A cold front will edge southward across the state late Saturday and early Sunday, bringing the possibility of a few widely scattered showers, mainly to northern sections of the state.

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By Beth Bishop... Spring has finally arrived and despite the freezing temperatures, there are signs that the growing season will soon be upon us: crocuses are blooming, grass is greening, robins are singing and vultures are circling.

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By Jeff Andersen... If it seemed like a long, cold winter, that=s because it was (at least from a climatological perspective). A high amplitude jet stream pattern characterized by large troughs across western and central North America set up just before Thanksgiving last fall and persisted into early March.

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Bert Cregg...Heavy rains from the recent round of storms left many nursery fields underwater in Ottawa County. In touring the area yesterday with MSUE educator Tom Dudek, it appears that flood damage to field grown nursery crops was relatively minor. We observed some flooding-related mortality in lilac stock plants at a nursery and some limber pine transplants that were washed out. Overall, however, most fields seem to be in good shape.

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MSUE educator Duke Elsner captured videos of plants covered in frost this past week in Grand Traverse County.

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Jeff Andresen and Aaron Pollyea...A large Canadian-origin air mass centered over the central Great Lakes region brought widespread frost and freezing temperatures to Michigan the morning of May 28. Sub-freezing minimum temperatures were recorded across the majority of the state with minimum temperatures in the morning ranging from 23ºF at Chatham and Elk Rapids to the mid- and upper 30s across southwestern and southeastern sections of Lower Michigan. The event was climatologically unusual with several new record lows for the date.

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Bert Cregg...With temperatures dipping well below freezing on April 30, it looks like we’re done with our annual bout of late frost. Now it’s time to set about cleaning up the damage. In the mid-Michigan area, most of the damage I’ve seen has been relatively mild. We lost some magnolia blossoms, and a few early flushing trees and shrubs were frosted back a bit.

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Bert Cregg...Next to “Will we have good fall color this year?” this question on winter injury is the one I dread the most. In both cases, we usually don’t know the final answer until the event is actually upon us. So far, the winter of 2007-2008 has been the closest thing we’ve had to an “average” winter since I moved to Michigan in 1999. Granted, things have been chilly the past couple of weeks, but we’ve not had any record-setting cold temperatures this winter. This winter has also been relatively free of wide temperature fluctuations that are usually associated with winter injury to our landscape plants in Michigan.

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Jeff Andresen ..Scattered showers and thunderstorms brought some much needed rainfall to a few locations across Michigan during late July, but the rainfall was localized and drought conditions persist in many areas of the state. For the growing season thus far (beginning April 1), precipitation deficits have grown in many areas to the 3.0 to 5.0 plus inch range, although these figures are somewhat misleading since the majority of the drier than normal conditions have taken place since early June when crop water needs are relatively greater.

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Mark Trent...More station coverage and new technology are enabling Enviro-weather to provide more weather related services to Michigan at lower costs. Four new weather stations have been added over the past 16 months to the Michigan Agriculture Weather Network (MAWN) to offer better coverage for the Enviro-weather system. New station locations are Commerce Township, South Haven, Lawton, and Scottdale. In addition, we have moved the station previously located at Goodells approximately 5 miles west to Emmett.

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Late last week a new agricultural weather station was added to the statewide network maintained by our Agricultural Weather Office at MSU. This station is in Commerce Township and is located at the Long Family Farm and Orchard.

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Jeff Andresen...Earlier this year, meteorologists at Accu-Weather, a commercial meteorological firm in Pennsylvania, released an extended outlook that mentioned the possible return of “Dust-Bowl” type conditions to portions of the central United States. The Dust-Bowl era of the 1930s (especially 1934 and 1936) included some of the most severe heat and drought conditions experienced in the central United States during the last century. Many of the climatological records in Michigan for extreme maximum temperatures, including the state’s all-time high temperature of 112°F at Mio (July 13, 1936), were set in the 1930s.

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