Northern Michigan Recreation Weather

There was a wild fire south of Grayling this last week. The NWS in Gaylord caught the smoke plume on its radar look at the loop here. Here are some news stories from TV 7&4 and TV 9&10.

As you can see by the graphic, that spring is slowly taking hold. We had a wonderful week or so with temperatures in the 70s. However, if you have been following the news, we have had some wildfire problems. That will continue to a certain amount, but there will be some rain, most of which will fall Friday and a little on Saturday.

So based on all of this what does this mean? For getting outdoors, you may want to bring a coat and an umbrella. If you are camping or hiking, you will have to be prepared for rain especially early on (Friday and Saturday).

The winter season is definitely over with as Boyne Mountain’s slopes are almost bare and their golf course will be open soon. If you don’t mind cool, damp weather, then golf is not out of the question this weekend.

For the next weekend(9-11 May 2008), the outlook is for below normal temperatures and above normal precipitation. This is on both the 6-10 day and the 8-14 day outlook at CPC. Normal high temperatures for that weekend are in the middle 60s. So right now, cool and damp is the pattern. This will help to keep the fire threat down, but it cuts down on the types of activity you can do outside.

There could be another blast of winter starting tonight (Thursday) to kick off the weekend in eastern upper Michigan. South of the Straits, the precipitation will be more with in line with rain, but a wintry mix isn’t out of the question. So things especially north of the Mackinac Bridge
could be messy this weekend. To top it off there is at least one river in eastern upper Michigan that is above flood stage and that probably won’t improve until after Saturday. Sunday is looking like the weather will be nice, however, the temperatures will be lower again.

The temperatures will continue through the weekend, to be below normal with the next weekend looking the same as well. One thing to keep in mind is that if you are out in the forest be careful with lighting fires. This article in the Petoskey News-Review shows that the dry conditions are already set as the snow comes off the floor of the North Woods. Otherwise, the snow is off of the ground in most of northern lower, with eastern upper Michigan still having between 5 and 10 inches of snow on the ground.

Looking at the NWS Gaylord, MI website, it looks like winter has ended.

1. The snow depth graphic, has been taken down off of the snow forecast page
2. The recreation forecast has switched over to the Mackinac Island and vicinity forecast

So I had to look a bit to get a graphic of the snow depth for the region. I just traveled downstate and noticed that most of the snow in the woods is gone along and south of M-55. North of M-55 and in the middle of the state, there is still snow in the woods, but it too, is melting.

Boyne Mountain resort still has lots of snow on it, and I hear that they are attempting to stay open until May 1st. I don’t know if they will get there, but they probably make it through at least another week of skiable snow before they have to shut down the ski hill.

Talking to one of the locals, who hunts morel mushrooms, this could be a good year as the slower snow melt will allow for more moisture to go into the ground rather than run off into the Boyne River.

Otherwise, the forecast over the next week will have temperatures still just below normal. The normal high temperatures are in the lower 50s across north central lower Michigan with normal temperatures north and south of there lower and higher. So there are some days when there is a chance for precipitation and with the temperatures that we are expecting, the precipitation type should be rain.

On the extended forecast, the 8-14 day outlook is for lower than normal temperatures and below normal precipitation. So the melting will continue, and mud will be here for a while. There is a concern that the below normal precipitation will lead to some dry conditions for some wildfire threat later in the month. Stay tuned.