textproduct: Northern Indiana

KEY MESSAGES

- Cold tonight with low temperatures expected in the single digits above zero for many locations.

- Low chances of light snow (20-30%) for Thursday, with greatest chances (50-70%) late Thursday night into Friday.

- Temperatures moderate by Friday, but colder conditions return for weekend.

- A more significant moderating temperature trend expected next week.

DISCUSSION

Issued at 305 PM EST Tue Feb 3 2026

An upper level short wave continues to sink southeast across west central Illinois this afternoon. Downstream stronger low/mid level frontogenesis forcing has slipped southeast of the local area and should no longer pose a chance for any additional snow accumulation this afternoon/evening. Otherwise tonight, a weak sfc trough/low level cold front will drop southeast across the eastern Great Lakes with some renewed low level CAA/dry air advection. This should allow for partly cloudy to clear skies developing tonight, and this combination of at least partial clearing, cold advection, and good decoupling should promote much colder temperatures tonight with single digit lows. Some concern that favored cold spots could really crash this evening, but age of snowpack could limit these extremes. If temps do drop off more than forecast, winds should be on the light side, so minimum wind chills should be in check tonight around zero. Some weak lake response is expected tonight given the cold advection, but would expect this to manifest more as mid-lake band given anticipated development of land breeze, weakening flow, and positioning of lake aggregate trough.

Broad low level thermal troughing will remain anchored from the Mid MS Valley to the eastern Great Lakes on Wednesday as an expansive low level anticyclone settles into the region. While magnitude of low level thermal progs are not nearly as cold as post-frontal situations of past few weeks, overall poor mixing in this setup should limit highs to the 20 to 25 degree range. The next large scale upper trough will shift across the western Great Lakes late in the day Wednesday, but moisture profiles will be scant and very shallow. Approach and passage of this trough could shift any weak mid lake convergent band back eastward across SW Lower MI/NW Indiana but given such limited moisture depths/shallow inversion heights, this would likely manifest as just some light snow showers or flurries.

An amplified longwave pattern persists into Thursday with a 582 dm upper ridge across western CONUS and several small scale perturbations carving out negative upper height anomaly across SE Canada. Guidance continues trend of depicting two separate NW flow waves topping the ridge and diving southeast into the region, one for Thursday morning, and the second for late Thursday night into early Friday. The amplitude of this pattern and effects from the aforementioned broad low level anticyclone will allow for limited low/mid level moisture in this pattern. With the first wave early Thursday, some mass convergence at nose of a westerly low level jet and strengthening low level WAA could allow some prospects of light precip to reach as far south as US 6 corridor, but confidence in precip is low at this time. Better precip chances still look to be in the later Thursday night/Friday period as a 150 knot upper speed max dives southeast allowing better push of arctic air into the eastern Great Lakes. Stronger low level convergence and brief period of strong DPVA with the upper vorticity should allow snow to spread across much of lower MI/northeast IN/northwest OH. Deep moisture profiles with better RH in DGZ still look to be of limited duration (2-4 hours), but a quick inch or two of accumulation is possible early Friday. This setup could yield some flags for snow squall potential, but the very limited moisture setup might suggest that better RH in DGZ is lost by the time steeper low level lapse rates and stronger wind gusts develop. If some snow squall potential materializes, this may be maximized across the eastern Great Lakes.

Below normal temps build back in behind this system Friday night into Saturday, with weak warming trend through the weekend as mean ridge axis slowly shifts eastward. The wildcard for the weekend will be potential of any additional NW flow waves while the upper ridge axis is far enough west of the area. This could support additional light snow chance at some point later Saturday/early Sunday given expected strong baroclinicity with any NW flow wave, but confidence is on the very low side given low predictability of these low amplitude progressive waves. A sharper warming trend still looks to be in store for next week as medium range guidance consensus favors longwave troughing across the western CONUS by middle of next week.

AVIATION /00Z TAFS THROUGH 00Z THURSDAY/

Issued at 649 PM EST Tue Feb 3 2026

VFR to MVFR conditions at the terminals this period. As previous discussion alluded to, the model guidance continues to show the clearing from dry air to the north infiltrating both terminals. There is an area of clearing on Satellite between KBIV and KDTW, but behind that is another MVFR deck of ceilings between 2500-3500 feet. Over northern IN/IL/OH ceilings are still socked in around 2500-3000 ft, with a couple locations near toledo at 3500 ft. Flow should remain north-northeast, which would keep lower clouds closer to the lake locked in longer before the more northeasterly flow develops. I'm skeptical clouds will clear out for a long period given the ceilings behind the clearing on satellite-so opted to keep at least tempos of MVFR until later in the period.

IWX WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

IN...None. OH...None. MI...None. MARINE...None.