Michigan Weather Forecast - Friday, May 8, 2026

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]Hey, good morning, my friends. I'm Mlive Chief Meteorologist Mark Torregrossa here with the Mlive morning weather update. At Mlive, we've dubbed it Frye.

[00:00:12]Although at Mlive, we don't stop, so it goes on the weekends, also. But, yeah, Frye. Now, the changes uh coming up. The weekend, we talked about a flare-up of showers and thunder showers in the afternoon, mostly in the eastern 2/3 of lower Michigan. We talked about that yesterday for Saturday afternoon, Saturday evening. Um so still the case, but lesser coverage, lesser intensity, such that you may actually uh miss some of the rainfall. So, we'll get into that. And remember and remember I told you just hey, don't freak out about cold forecasts.

[00:00:58]Everything's starting to come around to what I've seen as the overall pattern, that it's going to get uh very warm. I guess I should quantify that because your very warm, my wife's very warm, my very warm, all different. So, I'm going to say 75 to 83. I'm not going to say 85 because it'd be tough to do that on wet soil. But, let's get into it and show you what's going on. By the way, when we get it hopefully you've been watching the the national weather scene.

[00:01:34]There've been some significant severe weather outbreaks. If we get into the warmth and get one of these disturbances coming through, we could have uh significant severe weather. Always be thinking about a backup generator, I think is one thing that we need to be getting to in our households when we can afford it.

[00:01:55]All right, so here's the high-resolution rapid refresh. Hey, let me just say hi to some folks. Uh good morning Grass Lake Dave Stang. Yes.

[00:02:06]Sounding better. I was starting to get a little bit itchy nose sneezy and then it's it's better. So uh definitely an allergy.

[00:02:18]Uh Mike Predmore, should we wait to plant until next weekend to be safe in southern Michigan? I would say wait to plant until about Thursday of next week and see what it looks like on Tuesday-ish if you want to you know, I'll let you know there. So hey, good morning everyone. So uh radar forecast through the day today. This is 3:00 this afternoon, 4:00, 5:00, 6:00.

[00:02:45]A dry afternoon.

[00:02:47]Dry day.

[00:02:49]With some sunshine. Not too terrible of a day. Here's the other change.

[00:02:54]Everything is starting to inch up 2°.

[00:02:57]You know, so remember when it looked like um I think it was today was supposed be in the upper 40s. Now it looks like it'll be it'll be in the 50s and that sunshine has power.

[00:03:11]So here's Saturday morning. So you do get some spotty showers northern lower Michigan in the morning.

[00:03:20]This is 10:00, 11:00, 12:00. It almost looks like the zone that would cause the main precipitation is sneaking through early in the most stable part of the day and that's kind of the reason for the change. This is 3:00, 4:00, 5:00, 6:00, 7:00. So it's not a totally dry forecast but you'll notice that the coverage is really pretty sparse meaning a lot of you uh, will escape any rainfall tomorrow.

[00:03:59]Carmelita says, "That's the trick, being able to afford a backup generator." They have come down in price some. And especially, you know, especially the portable ones that you pull out of your garage, uh, not the, you know, not the stand-alone permanent ones. Those have come down a little bit, but the portable ones, you know, because we haven't had, my theory, we haven't had, uh, hurricanes last year, uh, along the US coast. Portable ones are down. You can find something that can power your essentials for, you know, 800 to a thousand dollars.

[00:04:41]Okay, so, that shows the talk of less showers tomorrow, but not dry. Now, we go into our other model that we like.

[00:04:50]This is tonight. Again, showers across Traverse City and across northern lower Michigan. This is 7:00 tomorrow morning.

[00:04:58]And then this is the afternoon flare-up.

[00:05:02]Right there, you know, not showing very vigorous or widespread.

[00:05:12]Uh, Maury Rules H, "Last year we had incredible cold in late May and most of June. I'm praying that won't be the same this year." I don't think it will be. I don't, I don't think it will. I think, you know, every year's different and they often are very opposite. Here's the total precipitation in 24-hour period through through tomorrow afternoon. Now, let me go, let me show you this. Let me show you this change. Okay, so this is the current run.

[00:05:41]Let's just go back to what I showed you yesterday for the same time period.

[00:05:46]Okay.

[00:05:48]Um right there.

[00:05:53]And it it wasn't real heavy, but it was more widespread.

[00:05:58]Okay, so we're definitely on the downswing on the precipitation. Let me go Let me go back to that one.

[00:06:06]At the latest just to show you kind of the idea of the next week or so. This is Sunday. Should be dry.

[00:06:14]This Monday.

[00:06:15]The next rain maybe Wednesday in the southern half of the state.

[00:06:22]And the next widespread rain, I mean we're out to the following weekend now and then the week after May 18th. So, rain slowing down for the moment. We'll take it. European model.

[00:06:38]Jenny Steel, yeah, I I think you're uh you're definitely going to continue to slowly dry out. You're going to have more drying than rain in northern Michigan coming up in the next week or so. You should be in pretty good shape, I would think after that.

[00:06:56]Um So, here's the European model uh Sunday right there. Dry.

[00:07:04]Cool, maybe.

[00:07:06]Monday. [snorts] Next storm system in the southern lower Michigan Tuesday night or Wednesday morning.

[00:07:14]That'll get a northeast wind, keep us cool. That's why I'm targeting, you know, after Thursday. And I'll show you that in just a moment. And then as we get to the following weekend, it appears as though we might get into this uh temperature switch has flipped. Now, watch this, okay?

[00:07:35]This is very important.

[00:07:38]And this is why you got me around.

[00:07:40]Um Let me put my name up there. This is why you got me around, Mark Torregrossa, and I'm not saying I'm always right.

[00:07:49]Um I'm saying I'm pretty good at recognizing patterns. So, what we're seeing is the warmth wants to come this way. Well, it happens a lot and then the cold says, "See you later." But, you'll notice we're going to look at the European model in the ensemble mode, 51 different runs of it, averaged. And when we see a pronounced ridge 16 days out, we know that most of those 51 tweaks are showing something even bigger, and some of them are not showing that ridge at all, and a few of them must be showing a trough.

[00:08:25]But, when you average them and you see this, very key there.

[00:08:34]Uh so, this is this is that. And, you know, we're still got the influences of that upper low over, you know, Hudson Bay.

[00:08:49]And into next week, there's Tuesday. Some of these disturbances are going to keep sliding down and just reinforcing.

[00:08:59]But, then we go toward Friday of next week. Uh work skipper Friday next week?

[00:09:05]Yeah, probably.

[00:09:08]Saturday, Sunday.

[00:09:14]And this is out to May 22nd, May 23rd. Right there, what is what would that what would we expect out of that? We would expect 70s and 80s.

[00:09:29]And you see where the ridge is kind of flat out in Iowa, Nebraska.

[00:09:35]And that's what a what a weather maker looks like on an ensemble way out and you see the trough out in the southwest part of the country in California. So, it's going to start to spit those out and then my friends, we're into our severe weather season.

[00:09:51]Very warm thunderstorm activity. I want to show you this. Okay, so remember last several days I've been cautioning you. I'm going to write a post to the people that don't join me on this, but I've been cautioning you. When you look at the app, maybe the app takes the straight output off of the Europeans operational mode. That's the one mode that is considered to be the best stuff on average all the time, but it's not really good out into the future. After about 7 days, it's flaky, especially at change of season times of year like right now. But let's look at the European. Now, they've added this on and I'll be honest, I don't know totally about it, but they've added AI to the European. So, this we're looking at the European operational with the AI attached to it. And the people that I follow, I haven't seen the numbers. I'd like to see the studies. You know, a lot of this data of everything in the world is really hard, you know, time consuming to find and whatnot. But what they're saying is that the European operational with the AI has added accuracy over the operational mode that we've been showing you for a long time.

[00:11:10]So we're looking at this and what you'll see is a very warm flow coming up.

[00:11:23]So this is next week. There's your disturbance on Tuesday and it brings a little bit of a cool down again. But then my Friday, look, we're already ridging and where does that air come from? It comes out of the west, southwest part of the country. So, that's 70s. There's a disturbance right there next weekend.

[00:11:45]And then look at look at the ridge try to blow up as we head toward May 20th, 21st, 22nd, 23rd.

[00:11:54]Something like that right there.

[00:11:56]We're into summer weather.

[00:11:58]May 23rd.

[00:12:01]Note the disturbances. Note the little U-shaped flat spots in the ridge. One over Illinois, Wisconsin. One in the four corners region. One off the southwest part of the screen. So, that would be That would be a thunderstormy pattern.

[00:12:21]If you're like me and my wife and we've been craving a good you know, evening 10:00, 11:00 when it's dark thunderstorm with some lightning around. Nothing severe, but you know, it just seems like we have not had one of those where Mother Nature gives us some fireworks for half hour, an hour. That would be the kind of pattern that would do it. All right, now we're going to go to the temperatures.

[00:12:50]So, everything is a touch a touch warmer than what it was.

[00:13:00]Moreeve rules H. The only meteorologist that I trust. Thank you. I appreciate that.

[00:13:10]Appreciate that very much.

[00:13:12]Um so, 60-ish today, low 60s. That isn't terrible. Tomorrow, 60 in Detroit, 67 Ann Arbor, 63 Flint, Saginaw, Bay City, Midland, the thumb, 60, Grand Rapids.

[00:13:28]63, Kalamazoo. That's not terrible.

[00:13:30]Traverse City, yeah, 55-ish, 58.

[00:13:35]Sunday, Mother's Day, little cooler.

[00:13:42]Little cooler.

[00:13:44]In the 50s, maybe 40s north, that might be overdoing it. Remember, this model has a little tendency to be too cold.

[00:13:51]Here's Monday in the low 50s, and remember, that was Those are the magical numbers that we generally watch for frost in the morning. So, if we drop 20° on a clear, calm night, you're only 54 at 5:00 in the afternoon, you're dropping down to 34. It's my just general rule of thumb.

[00:14:12]Here's Wednesday, 50s. Here's Thursday, 60. Here's Friday, 65. Probably be warmer than that. Here's next Saturday in the 70s. Here's next Sunday in the 70s.

[00:14:26]Next, uh, Monday, May 18th.

[00:14:29]And, uh, so, remember, this is the operational mode. We're out there 16 days, and it can be really flaky, up and down, up and down, but the overall pattern says up. Now, the key here, frost.

[00:14:46]Yeah, Marjorie Stevens.

[00:14:48]Um, now, uh, Marjorie Stevens says she hasn't seen heat lightning in a long time, since she was a kid.

[00:14:57]Okay, true.

[00:14:59]Uh, one thing I want to mention is that heat lightning, I've I've heard this term, it's not really a thing. It's not It It was It was dubbed that.

[00:15:14]Um, hey, this would be a good post idea for me. Thank you, Marjorie Stevens.

[00:15:19]You know, on a hot night, people would see lightning way off in the distance, but no storm.

[00:15:27]And they thought, well, it's generated by the heat. There's actually a thunderstorm there, but it's so hot out at night on those kind of cases that the thunderstorms grow big and you can see the lightning for a long distance. So, it's it's heat lightning caused by the heat, but it's still a thunderstorm where there's kind of this misguided idea that the heat lightning is just heat causing lightning and no storm.

[00:15:59]Okay, so tomorrow morning [snorts] with the clouds, no frost.

[00:16:05]Sunday morning you know, anytime you see a 35 or less, you could have frost. So, frost northern half, maybe. Monday morning still, you know, the southern third, I-94 southward, toward Grand Rapids to let's say Oakland County southward, you might be safe. I would plan on still covering though. I probably would wait just because we're only a few days away from the safe time. This is Tuesday morning and that's chilly. That would be frost killing conditions all the way down to the border.

[00:16:42]Here's Wednesday.

[00:16:44]Here's Thursday. That might be our last cold day. It might be Wednesday. Then there's Friday morning, then next weekend it looks like things straighten out and I would say that at least the southern two-thirds of Michigan are done with the frost. We always have little isolated frost in the interior part of northern lower Michigan in late May, even the first week of June. That's That's actually a climatological norm in the cold places like Gaylord and inland areas of Grand Traverse County and Houghton Lake and whatnot. But for most of us, you know, up close to the house where you can cover something, you can pack away at a little fun gardening this weekend probably. But I'd still wait to see by Tuesday. Let's see what it looks like for Wednesday and Thursday, but the following weekend looks like it's go go go. So maybe what you better do is stretch out this weekend and next week take time to stretch out your hamstring stretch out your back all that good stuff. You know what I'm talking about. All right, thanks for joining me on this What do we call it?

[00:18:01]Friday, right? Okay, thanks for joining me. I'm Mlive chief meteorologist Mark Torregrossa. I do appreciate those of you that mentioned that you have subscribed to Mlive recently. Um it's it's going to be the way, I guess.

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[00:18:58]Have yourselves a great weekend.