Metro Detroit weather: Stretched-out snow event starts Wednesday evening

3–5 inches expected for much of the area

DETROIT – First the chill, then the snow. Even though our numbers over the next couple days will be near normal for February, it's a sharp drop from the 50s that started our week.

Bitter Cold Starts

It won't take much wind to drop wind chills into the teens Wednesday morning. Some spots in the North Zone will walk out the door to "feels like" temperatures in single digits. But at least most of us will be dry.

That small snow chance we were eyeing for Wednesday morning looks like it will slide south of the area. So we’ll spend the daylight hours with plenty of clouds and some gusty winds.

Snow Stretches Out

The midweek snow we’re expecting looks like more of a stretched out event. It will start earlier, with flakes flying by the evening hours on Wednesday. The core of the accumulation will move through during the overnight and early morning hours of Thursday.

So a good chunk of the entire event will be on the ground by the end of the Thursday AM commute. That will be 3–5 inches for much of the area.

Thursday snow forecast. (WDIV)

We'll slowly add another inch or so to those totals throughout the day on Thursday. Then we tack on another two inches with the last wave along the front on Friday morning. Snow lightens and tapers off during Friday afternoon. So our forecast totals above are for the first and largest part of the system, ending 11PM Thursday.

Weekend, What?

Don’t look now, but we don’t have *any* precipitation in the weekend forecast. There won’t be a ton of sunshine, but I don’t think most folks will care. This will be the first time since late December we’ve had a dry weekend.

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About the Author:

Ben loves his job at Local 4 because broadcast meteorology challenges him to crack Mother Nature’s code, then find new and creative ways to tell that story to people.