Brad Gilbert, Emergency Management Agency director for Wood County, has issued the following advisory:
Forecast models are showing a very active week next week. For everyone’s planning purposes, I want to get some preliminary information out to everyone.
From this evening through the weekend, snow showers (low percentage) with little or no accumulation will be possible each day. The best chance of snow will be Friday evening and that will likely be ½” or less. Cold temperatures move back into the area tonight as well.
Another storm system will be developing that will track through the lower Great Lakes late Sunday night and into Monday. It is still too early for definitive snowfall forecasts, but for planning purposes this early, 3” – 5” of snowfall should be considered. Indicators at this time show that southern lower Michigan and extreme northern Indiana and Ohio will be in the moderate snowfall range. Again, the exact track of the storm is critical to the snowfall forecast, and that is not known yet so adjustments are possible from the planning purposes estimate at this time.
The other significant issue for next week is a polar/arctic air mass that will move into the Great Lakes area on Wednesday and Thursday. This will be dangerously cold air that we have not seen in years or even more than a decade. Indicators are that high temperatures will struggle to get back to zero with overnight lows well below zero. At this time, we do not know to what extent the wind will play a factor in this cold air. If the air mass is association with breezy to windy conditions, the situation will obviously be more dangerous than just the arctic cold with no wind.
EMA will update this information tomorrow and again on Monday. Monday storm updates will also be posted on the EMA Facebook page over the weekend. Again, this is advanced notice for planning purposes especially for the dangerous polar/arctic air in the middle of next week. On hopefully an encouraging note, this week and next week are the traditionally/average coldest two weeks of the winter season. This doesn’t mean we won’t see cold outbreaks of arctic air in February, but after these two weeks we can feel like we are “over the hump” of the average coldest part of the winter.
