This year it’s been either heavy or very skimpy amounts of moisture in Michigan. The images allow you to see if you are dry enough for drought to develop, or if you are sitting on plenty of moisture in the deeper subsoil.
The big picture shows wet conditions over part of southeast Lower Michigan, extremely dry conditions through central and southwest Lower Michigan and very wet conditions over northern Lower Michigan and most of the Upper Peninsula.
A closer look at southern Michigan shows Detroit at 1.51 inches below normal for the year. This really isn’t too far from normal. Ann Arbor is 1.21 inches drier than normal. Flint is 3.52 inches too dry and Saginaw is 4.42 inches drier than normal. Grand Rapids is one of the driest areas in the state this year, coming in 8.76 inches below normal so far this year. Muskegon, Lansing, Jackson and Kalamazoo are all over four inches behind on this year’s rain.
Over northern Lower Michigan and the Upper Peninsula it’s a different story. The very heavy lake-effect snow helped raise the total liquid amounts this year.
Traverse City is one inch wetter than normal for the year, which is essentially normal. Sault Ste. Marie is eight inches wetter than normal, and Marquette is 4.68 inches wetter than normal. Notice the far west end of the Upper Peninsula has been drier than normal by a few inches because that area missed out on heavy lake-effect snow.
So we have conditions anywhere from extremely dry around Grand Rapids to soaked across far northern Lower Michigan and most of the U.P…