School Closing Outlooks For Monday 01/05/2026 & Tuesday 01/06/2026

Jonah Drake (Owner & Co-Founder)
3 days ago
4 min read

Updated: 2 days ago

Day 1 School Closing Outlook Results: www.WestMichiganWeather.net/closings Forecast Results Issued: Monday, January 5th, 2026, 11:30 AM EST Harrison Community Schools in Clare County was the only reported weather-related school closing reported within our coverage area this morning. We are aware that Clare Public Schools and Farwell Area Schools were closed today as well. However, those districts were scheduled to be closed to students today as part of the holiday break, and thus, are not reflected as closed in our results. Elsewhere, no other school closures or delays were reported across our area this morning, including within our Minuscule risk zone north of the M-46 corridor. As mentioned last night in the Outlook, confidence in the specifics of the ice threat was low, and said threat did not materialize enough to warrant closures or delays in the risk area. This does, however, align with our expectations for the Minuscule risk zone, which is issued when we don't anticipate any school closures or delays but cannot completely rule them out.

Day 1 School Closing Outlook

www.WestMichiganWeather.net/closings

Forecast Valid: Monday, January 05, 2026

Forecast Issued: Sunday, January 14, 2025, 5:13 PM EST

Forecasters: Jonah Drake & Owen Drake

Special Note:

Beginning this year, School Closing Outlooks at West Michigan Weather will begin to account for/forecast for the risk of severe weather.

Severe weather is defined as any thunderstorm wind gust over 58 MPH, any hailstone over 1" in diameter, or tornadoes.

In past years, we have not considered these threats as something that has the potential to result in school closings or delays, and for the most part, even on days that do have a severe weather risk, that will remain the case.

However, given some of the higher-profile/higher-threat events of recent years, (April 5th, 2023, February 27th, 2024, May 7th, 2024, March 30th, 2025, and May 15th, 2025), we do believe that in some rare cases, especially if the event is well-forecasted by the NWS, that some risk for early dismisals, or even school closings, is possible when severe weather threatens.

The risk assessment for severe weather regarding our School Closing Outlooks will consider the NWS Storm Prediction Center Severe Weather Outlooks, any Tornado or Severe Thunderstorm Watches issued by the NWS, and any power outages that may exist in the days following a substantial severe weather event.

Also, we have gotten a lot of questions from all of you about our School Closing Outlooks and how we create them. If you'd appreciate a video of how we make these forecasts, or even having them done live sometimes, please let us know in the comments!

Summary:

Overall forecast remains on track with little changes from yesterday’s Day 2 Outlook. A clipper system is forecast to bring accumulating snow to parts of our area from Sunday night into early Monday morning. This may result in at least a couple of isolated school closings or delays on Monday.

Discussion:

Computer weather model guidance and NWS forecasts continue to highlight the risk for accumulating snow from Sunday evening through early Monday morning. We’ve also introduced low-end ice probabilities into this forecast as well.

Because of the introduction of low-end ice probabilities, minor adjustments have been made to expand the “Minuscule” risk area farther west as the latest forecast data suggests that the best chance for light freezing drizzle and a glaze of ice will be along and North of M-46, especially north of US-10. This type of threat would normally justify the expansion of the “Limited” risk area across this entire region, but extremely low confidence in the specifics of the ice threat precludes the introduction of higher risk levels in these areas.

Confidence in snow showers is much higher as we still anticipate that they will move in from the northwest Sunday evening and spread over the area mainly along and North of I-96, with the highest totals expected to be north of US-10, east of US-131, where final accumulations by Monday morning could exceed 3-5 inches across the northern and northeastern parts of Osceola and Clare Counties.

Graphical Forecast: