Agricultural Weather Outlook for April 1, 2025
Print
EmailApril 1, 2025
An agricultural weather forecast by Jeff Andresen, MSU meteorologist
Video Transcript
All right. Well, let's shift to weather here and I think one of the take homes here, we're in a very obviously a very, very active weather pattern. Which is not atypical of the spring season here, but very rapidly moving systems across the US. I'll start just by thinking back about Sunday here, we had a big low pressure system go through the region that brought a variety of weather and what you see here, leftovers from some of the severe weather, the southern part of it and you can see Michigan was on the northern edge of the major severe weather outbreak. Across the central US. The red triangles here are tornado reports. At this point, at least four confirmed tornadoes in Michigan. They were different places as well. But the vast majority of the damage associated with the severe weather on Sunday was with straight line winds. In some cases, very high winds. There were many reports in excess of 80 mile/hour. Winds including one at Jackson at the airport of 1996, which is pretty unusual to see certainly for Michigan. Not much hail, just a couple of spots, but again, high winds. Then if you were in the wrong place, one of the tornadoes was just actually east of where I live and Hazlet was on the eastern periphery and a little frightening, about 60 mile an hour winds associated with that early evening on Sunday. It was a active pattern. Now, that said, it's also very important to know that as you went north into northern lower, into upper Michigan, the northern side of the system, the precipitation was frozen and unfortunately it was snow, mostly snow in the upper Peninsula. Some places had almost a foot of snowfall with this, which is not unusual even for the Upper Peninsula. But the other place of note, I think it's really important is that we had a large area where we had heavy freezing rain. Especially in the northern lower, it was one of the worst ice storms there in many, many years. As a result, combined with the freezing rain, many, many power lines down and with the wind damage in the South, more than 100,000 customers without electricity, some of them still to this point in time, what a mess, but it was due to a variety of weather conditions. Let's move through quickly here. Because of the jet stream setup across the Midwest, we had a very, very strong gradient in temperature for the last week here, ranging from significantly warmer than normal across the South to significantly cooler normal in the north, depending on where you were. There was a frontal boundary that sat there for several days into the weekend. That's what served actually as the focusing mechanism for the severe weather. There was also a great deal of precipitation in some parts of the state on the right hand side here. These are weekly totals and most of the southern part of the Blower Peninsula, a half to as much as an inch and a half or even some two inch totals in some cases. But the real winner here in terms of the water was the northern lower the E, the central and eastern upper where again, a lot of the precipitation was frozen. But that combined with another event earlier in the week, many areas 2-4 ", which is a big change and much above normal in terms of precipitation. One word here. We have been for almost all of the winter and actually back into last fall, we've been in an abnormally dry situation for much of Michigan. As you can see on the left hand side here, that's the drought monitor as of last week and even some D two severe drought indicated for central and northeastern lower, but abnormally dry conditions for much of the off season well On the right hand side here, these are 30 day precipitation departures from normal and suffice to say this is changing rapidly as we speak. One of the other bottom lines here in our outlook, we are looking at another big weather system that's going to be moving across the state tomorrow into early Thursday with more precipitation. So the map that you see on the left, we will see a very different thing, a map here later on this week when the drought monitor is updated so that that dryness is much less of an issue than it was earlier, especially northern parts of the state. Other very important one here with that temperature pattern that we saw a minute ago, we have had significant degree day accumulation across southern parts of the state. These are totals here as of through Sunday on the left, and you can see especially for the southern couple tiers of counties the Southwest, we've had many areas now almost about 100 units base 50, and so significant heat accumulation. Contrast that with the northern part of the state where accumulations are much less in some cases almost zero. On the right hand side, just for comparison, those are normals through the end of March and you can see that at least for the southern part of the state, we are now at least at this point in time significantly ahead of normal in our seasonal accumulation. We've got a burst of green and some early development in the South. That's why it has been warmer than normal in the South, but the reverse of that in the North. Okay. Let's look quickly at a forecast here. Today, high pressure across the region on the map here, you can see this morning but off to our west, all of that color out there, frontal boundary, low pressure. That's the next big weather system and that will approach us by late this evening into early tomorrow morning, through the day tomorrow into early Thursday. And look at the map, how it changes by tomorrow morning at 8:00, big area of low pressure out over the Missouri Valley here, and that spreads precipitation here into Michigan as it looks like probably by early morning, around midnight or so in the far western areas of the state and because of the cool Canadian air that's in place here over the state right now, it's going to start off frozen again for most areas. We will see a period of snow and then probably a very rapid transition into freezing rain, maybe some sleet before it finally goes over to rain during the day tomorrow. Exception to that would be in the far north, the Upper Peninsula, maybe the extreme northern lower. The presp will stay frozen longer than it will in the south. There's a warm front off to our southwest and that's going to make its way into the state and set the stage again. Probably something like a repeat of what we saw Sunday, at least the potentials there, but there's a lot of ifs and conditions here. One of them is we're going to see some measurable snowfall again. And especially the northern half of the lower and upper Michigan, probably a couple of inches. Again, there also will be the risk once again of some sleet and freezing rain. This is the probability of at least 1 " of snowfall here by tomorrow night. You can see again, mostly northern parts of the state. Precip in the south will be mostly rain. By late tomorrow night, that low pressure area moves into Wisconsin and you can see the warm air with this system, that warm front into southern lower Michigan. That's a lot like what we saw on Sunday. There's a lot that jet stream is very energetic here and that is going to set the stage, unfortunately, for at least the potential for no severe weather outbreak. This is the Storm Prediction Center's convective outlook here for tomorrow evening and you can see that at least the southern third of lower Michigan into the enhanced category, and a lot of this is going to depend on whether we get any sunshine in the southern part of the state. The risk really is going to be confined mainly to the south, especially I would say south of I 94 would be the highest likelihood of seeing, again, problems with severe weather That would be late afternoon tomorrow into tomorrow evening. That's the prime. Again, the time of the day is not good for this, but it will depend on whether or not we get that warm air to move in, our surface temperatures recover. After today with highs still in the 40s to near 50, another cool day, tomorrow we will see temperatures potentially surge back in well into the 50s, maybe up to near 60 with some of that high humidity air, not quite like what we saw Sunday, but There is the potential there, so something to keep an eye on. The primary threats tomorrow night would be multidimensional high winds. There could be tornadoes possible with this, maybe some hail, but a lot like sunny again, high winds and possibly some isolated tornadoes. Something to watch. If we don't get the warming, it probably won't happen. We'll just get showers and thunderstorms with that as that system moves through. Then finally, on Thursday morning, you can see the funnel boundary clearing off to the east of the state and very windy drier on Thursday and into Friday. That sets the stage. Friday will probably be the nicest day of the week with surface temperatures back up into the 50s and probably fairly sunny skies. That's the best day and then another weather system. For this weekend, but that one will be limited to the southern parts of the state, I think. This is a weather map as of 8:00 in the morning. Most of the precip will be confined to at least the southern half, if not even less than that, and it will be lighter than what we see tomorrow and into tomorrow night. That's the big event precipitation wise here during the next week. Total precipitation during the week ranging from less than half an image in the north and that's a big change from the last couple of weeks to as much as 2 " in the far southeast. That's a little bit of a flip flop. We are expecting the heaviest precip this time across the south, especially across the southeast, Derek for your area. Then just real quickly here, where are we going beyond that in the medium range? Well, there's now some consistency in the model guidance troughing across the upper Midwest and the East, as you can see on the left hand side here, and that leads to a very strong likelihood of a cooler and drier, the normal pattern which develops for much of next week and probably the week following. That middle part of April cooler and drier is the trajectory. The eight to 14 day outlook is almost identical to this, and I think that's a fairly strong bet. Lastly, here, For the new extended lead outlooks, no direction here on the top, April mean temperatures and precipitation departures, no direction one way or the other. That's a little bit of a change. We had been looking still at a little bit wetter than normal conditions. They backed off of that at Climate Prediction Center. But for the seasonal, the three month, April through June, the first part of the growing season, the spring into the early summer, pushing towards milder, and a little wetter than normal. That reflects some of the end of the lagina event that we've had here over the last few months. But we are moving into a neutral situation. If you go beyond this, the outlooks actually do suggest warmer and possibly even drier than normal as we move towards the latter part of the drug season. With that, I'll stop and see if anybody has any questions. Thanks.