School Closing Outlook for Wednesday 02/18/2026
- Jacob Melton
- 17 hours ago
- 2 min read
Updated: 2 hours ago
Day 1 School Closing Outlook Results
Forecast Results Issued: Wednesday, February 18, 2026, 9:15 AM
No weather-related school closings or delays were reported this morning across our area.
While this means our forecast did not verify, we did mention this was a possibility in our full forecast discussion last night. Freezing rain is very sensitive to temperatures both at the surface and in the atmosphere. Ground observations and RTMA analysis indicated that temperatures warmed above freezing a touch faster than anticipated in Clare and Osceola counties, thus transitioning precipitation to regular rain a bit earlier than expected.
In addition, warmer ground temperatures helped limit icing impacts on roadways, reducing travel impacts to a level that did not warrant school closures or delays in the outlook area.
Day 1 School Closing Outlook
Forecast Valid: Wednesday, February 18, 2026
Forecast Issued: Tuesday, February 17, 2026, 4:45 PM
Forecasters: Jacob Melton
Summary:
Some school closures or delays will be possible on Wednesday morning, particularly across some of our northeastern areas, due to the potential for freezing rain creating very slick travel for the morning commute.
Discussion:
As mentioned above, some school closures or delays will be a possibility on Wednesday morning, particularly across our northeastern areas east of US-131 and along/north of US-10, due to the potential of freezing rain resulting in very slick travel conditions for the Wednesday morning commute.
A Winter Weather Advisory has been issued for Clare and Osceola counties, which begins at midnight tonight and runs through 9 AM on Wednesday. This area will see the most impacts from the freezing rain, with total ice accumulations around one-tenth of an inch expected, with localized areas seeing up to two-tenths of an inch of ice.
While this will not be enough to create widespread issues relating to power outages, a few sporadic outages cannot be fully ruled out. The main concern with this freezing rain event will certainly be travel conditions on Wednesday morning, with very slick conditions likely, especially on any untreated roadways.
As such, we have opted to go with a “Medium” risk of school closures/delays along and north of a Reed City to Clare line. Probabilities trend down south and west of this area. A glaze of ice will be possible in areas between US-10 and M-46; however, Temperatures will tend to rise overnight, resulting in a transition to regular rainfall, which should limit impacts from icing to travel on Wednesday morning. With that said, an isolated closure or delay cannot be fully ruled out due to secondary road conditions. South of M-46, precipitation should fall as all rain, and thus no icing-related travel impacts are anticipated.
One of the main things limiting forecast confidence is the inherent difficulty of predicting where and how much freezing rain will actually fall in advance. Freezing rain is very sensitive to temperature differences both at the surface and in the atmosphere, and only a one to two degree difference can be the difference between the forecast verifying or not.
Graphical Forecast:
