Winter Storm in Michigan, January 12 to 13, 2024

A major winter storm impacted the Great Lakes region on Friday Jan 12 2024 into Saturday Jan 13 2024. Precipitation quickly overspread southeast Michigan during the mid afternoon hours of Friday as the main low (981 MB) reached Chicago in the early evening hours. Just enough mild air near Lake Erie/Detroit River caused some melting snow/rain. Otherwise, despite temperatures mainly 32-34 degrees, heavy wet snow was the predominant precipitation type during the late afternoon into the early evening hours. This was due to very strong forcing, which led to visibility down around a quarter of a mile in the heavy snow, with even thundersnow reported in and around the Detroit Metro Area. Storm totals reached 4-8 inches across the Detroit Metro Area, as well as the Tri-Cities region and Lapeer county, with 1-5 inches elsewhere. Precipitation did taper off in the mid to late evening, and fell in the form of rain south of I-69 where the total liquid equivalent ranged from 0.5-1.25 . Here are some of the highest snowfall totals received: |Ortonville 8.5 inches.|Lapeer (2W) 8.2 inches.|Midland (2E) 8.0 inches.|Ann Arbor 6.3 inches. |Auburn 5.8 inches. |Saginaw 5.6 inches. | |Due to the heavy wet nature of the snow, widespread tree limbs came down in several counties (Oakland/Lapeer to name a few), which caused power outages to well over 100,000 customers at the peak of the storm. Easterly winds also reached 30-40 mph ahead of the low, with southwest wind gusts topping out 40-55 mph south of M-59 Saturday morning as the low exited northeast.