Tuesday PM Forecast: Chilly tonight, with frost likely north

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:04]We have a lot of cloud cover that's built back and we can see that's looking out of our Grand Rapids right now.

[00:00:08]There's a little bit of some thinner cloud cover in some spots, but it's pretty overcast in Grand Rapids. 52 at the moment, wind from the west at 16 miles an hour. So it's still a pretty breezy day. Yesterday's wind was from the south, which is what helped to bring up all of that warm air. But today behind the cold front with the influence of that cooler air on the backside, well, we're about 20° cooler or more compared to this time yesterday. Lots of widespread 52's with Fremont at 55, one of the warmer spots. North of 96, we do have some more filtered sunshine. It's solidly cloudy farther to the south, so it's a little warmer north right now.

[00:00:44]But if it does continue to stay pretty clear tonight, that's also going to be why some of those locations north of 96 could be on the cold side and actually drop a little bit more than the rest of us. Our cold front from yesterday's now hanging off to the east, but there is a wave down to the south that's going to bring some showers right up along this front and that could briefly clip especially areas close to the Indiana state line and east of 131 this evening, but it's going to be a very stray shower and probably very, very light. It's also going to be short-lived as this big high pressure nudges in from the west and that's going to bring in some cold air as well. Temperatures across the Midwest are the coldest up into North Dakota, Minnesota and then into Canada, but all of that is getting drawn in behind our cold front and as that high pressure gets closer, too. So even though right now we are well above freezing, temperatures are going to be dropping pretty significantly later on tonight.

[00:01:35]And you can see all of these frost and freeze alerts from South Dakota all the way over to us here in West Michigan.

[00:01:41]We're kind of on the edge, but there is a frost advisory for Oceana, Newaygo, Mecosta and Montcalm counties from 1:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. for temperatures that could be as low as around 34. Now, the rest of us are not currently included in this frost advisory and probably won't be as temperatures are not expected to fall quite as low there, but if we have any of these clouds clear out just a little bit early, temperatures could fall a few more degrees. So for most of us, we're going to be around 41 by 2:00 a.m., 39 by 4:00 and then bottoming out anywhere between 37 and 40°, probably outside of the realm of any frost potential from 94 south, but it's a little bit more questionable for places like Grand Rapids and Ionia. So you may want to go ahead and just cover your plants tonight just in case. The chance is pretty low, but still it's better to have them covered and be a degree off than to have any damage from colder than expected temperatures. Big upper low to our north is continuing to swing around the Hudson Bay and the Great Lakes, just continuing to funnel in all of that cool air. That's going to lead to chillier than average temperatures for mornings and afternoons the next few days. So for tomorrow, for Thursday, we're talking mid-50s. Best chance for a widespread frost does come Thursday morning. We'll be around 36°, maybe 35 with temperatures only driving up into the mid-50s before we finally get a little bit of a warm-up from Friday beyond.

[00:03:00]Then at least we're into the 60s.