Pleasant Tuesday follows quiet night, chance for northern lights

SAGINAW, Mich. (WNEM) – Although cloudy at times, it’s been a smooth start to the workweek and even between our cloudy patches, we’ve had a good deal of sun! Especially early in the day.

We’ve seen a few showers here and there too, but those have been few and far between. As we head through this evening, we should see those eventually fade (there’s not many as of 5:30 PM), and we should have a pleasant night!

If you’re up late into the night with not much going on, you may even have a chance to see the northern lights!

This Evening & Overnight

All of the clouds that we’re currently seeing early this evening are tied to the heating of the day. As soon as we start cooling down tonight, we’ll lose our cloud cover and skies will trend clear into the overnight hours. First, this will lead to an efficient cool down tonight, with our temperatures dropping off quickly into the 40s and that’s where we will land for overnight lows.

Lows will drop into the 40s tonight.(WNEM)

Some patchy fog is possible, along with patchy frost in the far northern areas near M-55.

With those clear skies, there is going to be a chance to see the northern lights tonight. The key word is chance. There is high confidence in the northern lights occurring, but there seems to be some discrepencies on where the lights will be visible. Remember, forecasting our weather can be difficult. Forecasting space weather is even more challenging!

Tonight’s K value is expected to be 6.(WNEM)

But, based on the expected strength of the aurora’s tonight, K values peaking around 6, the visibility could come down into Mid-Michigan. The current peak is expected to be sometime between 11 PM – 6 AM.

If you have any pictures, be sure to send them to our Burst account, which you can do directly on the TV5 First Alert Weather app!

Tuesday

Tuesday should be a beautiful day, with more sunshine expected around the area tomorrow! We will likely start the day mostly sunny in many areas, though some cloud cover may be around here and there after any fog starts lifting out during the morning.

Eventually, some high clouds spilling off some thunderstorms that develop to our west and southwest tonight will move our way tomorrow. They shouldn’t cause an overcast sky by any stretch, but it may be the difference between mostly sunny and partly sunny skies for some areas.

High temperatures are in the 60s and 70s on Tuesday.(WNEM)

Highs on Tuesday will be in the 60s and low 70s, with a west southwest wind remaining light around 5 to 10 miles per hour, gusting to 15 miles per hour.

Dry weather is expected Tuesday evening, but showers may try to move in toward daybreak on Wednesday. We’re not super confident in this scenario at this time, at least for widespread rain. But it’s worth monitoring just to be on the safe side.

Lows Tuesday night will settle in the upper 40s and low 50s.

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