DETROIT – Sunshine will finally grace us with its presence Thursday. But will the skies stay clear long enough for us to see the Northern Lights Thursday night?
Bright day & bright night?
The clouds may have won out on Wednesday. But sunshine will prevail on Thursday. That’s likely to be our brightest day of the forecast, too.
We expect clouds to come back prior to sunrise on Friday. So if we can keep them out long enough, we may be able to see the Aurora Borealis, or more affectionately known as the Northern Lights. NASA detected a solar eruption Monday and issued a Geomagnetic Storm Watch for Wednesday through Friday (how 2020 is that?). Why the delay? Well the 93 million mile trek takes on average 3.5 days.
What does this mean for us? Normally these eruptions aren’t strong enough to push the glowing gases far enough south from the north pole for us to see them. But this is a G3 storm (on a 1-5 scale). That strength means we have a decent shot at seeing some really pretty colors in the northern night sky Thursday at the height of the geomagnetic storm (that’s if we can keep the clouds at bay).
Weekend snow shot
Our weekend system still looks like a rainmaker, primarily. Expect showers to begin late Friday evening and continue through the day Tuesday.
The rain/snow line will be just off to our northwest. So, it won’t take a huge change in the track of this system to drastically change our forecast.
As it stands now, the low will pull most of the moisture to our northeast by the time temperatures cool enough for a transition to snow. So any accumulations look minor, but they’ll be more likely in our North and West Zones.
Cooldown coming
Temperatures will remain above normal through Saturday.
That weekend system will be the transition to more December-ey temperatures for next week. Expect highs in the mid 30s Sunday through the end of next week. Most of that stretch should be dry outside of a snow chance on Wednesday.