Heavy downpours tonight and Friday with one Michigan area targeted for up to 5 inches of rain

We have a delicate weather situation over southern Michigan tonight and Friday. Slow moving thunderstorms with copious moisture to tap into could bring some very heavy rains.

This heavy rain situation I’m talking about isn’t going to flood everyone. We can use Wisconsin right now as an example of what should be over southern Lower Michigan late tonight and Friday. Wisconsin has had very heavy rainfall in patches of thunderstorms today. Currently this evening there are three flash flood warnings in central Wisconsin due to rain amounts of two to five inches in a short time.

Here is the always updated radar.

The area of thunderstorms in Wisconsin is going to drift southeast into southwest Michigan tonight and then east into the Ann Arbor area and Detroit area tonight and Friday.

Remember this won’t be a rain that all of us get into. It will be a rain that has some pockets of very heavy rainfall. If the heavy rain falls on poor draining intersections of southern Michigan you could have flooded roads.

The radar forecast shows patches of heavy rain in thunderstorms somewhere in southern and southeastern Michigan overnight.

I’m letting you know some abnormal heavy rain is possible. If you have a building project that would be affected by heavy rain do whatever you need to protect your project. Your drive to work Friday morning could be affected in southern and southeastern Michigan.

Here is the rainfall forecast from a model that seems to be doing a good job with this situation.

The red areas you see could have spotty three to five inch rains. Again this won’t be everywhere. We also don’t know exactly where the heaviest rain will be, but some of us will have a lot of rain in our rain gauge by this time Friday. The heaviest rain seems most likely from the Lansing area to Ann Arbor area to the Detroit area.

So don’t be surprise by very heavy rain. Also know the humidity will be very high after these rains.

We are in a tropical air environment right now. This is the type of weather some Michiganders wish for in January.