Gardeners beware, frosty morning coming to unexpected part of Michigan

The cold northeast wind off Lake Huron is going to set a large part of Michigan up for a frosty morning.

Thursday is going to be a chilly day for all of us here in Lower Michigan. A stiff northeast wind gusting over 20 mph throughout Thursday will funnel cold air hovering over Lake Huron into Lower Michigan.

Temperatures will only warm into the 50s Thursday afternoon. The wind will diminish Thursday night and allow temperatures to plummet.

Friday morning will be frosty at any location where the low temperature forecast is 35 degrees or less. Many spots will even drop to 32 degrees for one to two hours.

Here is the low temperature forecast from the model that is usually the most accurate in this situation. This model predicts all of us will get a frost or fall right to freezing Friday morning. The only exception would be the warmer metro areas of Detroit and the Monroe and Adrian areas. Even Ann Arbor, Jackson, Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids would be frosty in this scenario.

The second most accurate model in this time frame is actually predicting colder temperatures for far southern Michigan and a bit warmer temperatures for the northern half of Lower Michigan.

In the scenario below we would have an actual freeze from the Thumb to Flint to Lansing, Jackson and Kalamazoo. The rest of the southern half of Lower Michigan would have spotty frost.

If you rushed it a bit on planting cold sensitive plants, you’ll have to cover them up tomorrow evening to prepare for a killing frost Friday morning.

It looks like that will be the only time you’ll have to cover the plants, at least in the next 10 days. Are we totally done with frost after Friday for the southern half of Lower Michigan? It appears so with a warmer-than-normal forecast out to May 20. After the ground warms up a lot next week it will be hard to have another frost across southern Michigan.