Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
SNOW BLANKETS the Downtown City Square on Tuesday morning. After a melt-off last week, winter weather brought an additional four inches to town over the past two days.
By CHARITY SMITH
Ironwood - After a brief surge of colder weather and some light snow accumulation over the last couple of days, the National Weather Service in Marquette is predicting warmer weather across the U.P. by the end of the week.
"Right now with the lake being roughly freezing, maybe a few degrees above freezing here and there, it doesn't take much to get any kind of energy transfer from the lake to the atmosphere," said meteorologist Joe Phillips of NWS on the recent snow showers. "Right now with a little bit of colder weather in the area we do have some slope driven lake effect/ lake enhanced type of shower activity in the area."
Over the past two days, Phillips said Ironwood has gotten about four inches of snow. He said this month Ironwood has received just under 16 inches of snow. He said the snow showers have now moved east. "The cloud cover towards the Kewenaw, Gogebic and Ontonangon counties is already starting to scatter out," he said.
According to Phillips, temperatures are expected to gradually rise over the next few days. He said temperatures will be in the mid 40s today and tomorrow, and continue to rise, hitting the 50s by Friday and then 60s by Saturday and Sunday. However, he said, rain is to be expected, so the warmer temperatures might not feel as warm.
Phillips said the storm system moving into the area is primarily rain, which will start this afternoon/ evening. He said rain showers will also hit the area Friday evening and Saturday.
"It does look like there is a signal for another colder punch of air, maybe mid to early next week," he said. "It's kind of hard to tell at this point, but if the cold air that some of our guidance is suggesting does roll in, there might be some kind of upslope type of driven snow shower activity. But at the moment, there doesn't appear to be any kind of strong accumulation signal."
He said with the ground being as warm as it is and with daytime temperatures warming up, the snow wouldn't necessarily stick around.
