Greetings and welcome!
I am at it early today trying to nail down something more concise than a 50/50 chance of rain for the weekend weather. Right now it looks like it might get a little wet here north of the force field.
Both the NAM and GFS have landed on flip this morning, and are showing the storm pushing rain north of Hwy 64 for both Saturday and Sunday. The HPC agrees, as does the NWS and the local TV weather station.
The best that I can tell the collection of forecasts is showing a little pre-dawn and early morning rain Saturday, and then a break in the action until later in the afternoon Saturday.
As far as QPF, the HPC has our rain totals for the storm in the 0.01-0.1″ range and we are close to the 0.1-0.25″ band. That isn’t much.
The chances of rain made me laugh. For Saturday the NWS has us at a 30% chance of rain. Green Bay it is at 70%, and Iron Mountain 40%. Exactly how does that work?
Maybe the NWS knows about the Silver Cliff Split. The SCS is a local phenomenon where we watch the storms rain all of the way across the state, part and go around us, and then reunite and rain 20 miles east, time after time. It is enough to give a guy delusions of persecution. Now it’s even in the forecast. LOL.
The other element in the forecast is the wind. The NWS is predicting an east wind at 10-15 for Saturday and a blustery day on Sunday in our forecast. The Iron Mountain forecast expands on that a little for Sunday, with NE winds 15-20, gusting to 30. Saturday looks less windy with 10-15 gusting to 20.
So..
Saturday- Cloudy, some wind, and rain likely early and late, rain chance here 30% (NWS). Highs in the low 60s.
Saturday night-Cloudy NE winds 10-15 low around 40, chance of lingering showers.
Sunday- Cloudy, windy, highs in the mid 50s, minor chance of lingering showers.
When the rain comes it looks like several notable waves (currently guessed at early & late Saturday) and mostly light and scattered stuff, thus the expected total rainfall of less than 1/4″ all weekend.
It would be great to lock in the longer term GFS forecast and yell, “Buy!” right now. It is showing something like five significant rain chances (1/2″+) between next week and the second week in May. I am skeptical for sure, but would love to see it happen.
In the meantime if you are not here you probably should be. It looks like one of those warm Fridays in advance of the storm, and at the moment it is very sunny and nice. The NWS says that it could go to 65 or 70, and as of late morning it is off to a fine start on that.
Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!
RJB