School Closing Prediction For Wednesday 09/17/2025
- Jonah Drake (WMIWX Owner & Co-Founder)
- 18 hours ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 10 minutes ago
Day 1 School Closing Prediction Results
Forecast Valid: Wednesday, September 17, 2025 Forecast Issued: Tuesday, September 16, 2025, 5:37 PM EDT Forecast Results Published: Wednesday, September 17, 2025, 12:15 PM EDT
We predicted that fog and dense fog would have the potential to prompt a few school delays this morning. This was particularly forecasted in the greater Mount Pleasant area.
While fog did develop, especially along US-127, light winds overnight and slightly lower dew points than forecasted allowed for fog to remain more patchy and less dense in nature, and hence, schools were not required to delay the start of their school day, and no weather-related closings or delays occurred in our area.
Fog is difficult to forecast, and despite us using the higher of the 2 delay probabilities on our scale, it is important to remember that said scale does max out at 40% for a reason, and that is because of those little variables that can drastically change the result of a fog forecast.
Day 1 School Closing Prediction
Valid: Wednesday, September 17, 2025
Issued: Tuesday, September 16, 2025, 5:37 PM EDT
Forecast Graphic: Jonah Drake
Forecast Discussion: Jonah Drake
An Introduction To The Season:
Hi, West Michigan! Co-founder Jonah Drake here, I just wanted to let you all know that this is our first official school closing/delay forecast of the 2025/2026 academic year. We've gained a lot of followers over the summer, so for some of you, this is new. However, for many of you, these outlooks have been your trusted source of reliable predictions on when schools in your area might be closed. For those of you who are new to these outlooks, I want to just give a brief introduction, and for those of you who aren't new, you'll notice we've made a few changes as well! Let's see if you can spot them, and as always, let us know what you think in the comments below! We issue these forecasts any time we believe there is some risk for schools in any part of our area to be closed, delayed, or run their buses on paved roads only for weather-related reasons. Threats: Weather-related reasons include impacts from snow, wind, ice, fog, and dangerous temperatures. Each one of these elements is considered a "Threat" and is displayed on a 1-6 intensity scale on the left side of the graphical forecast image.
As the cumulative value of those threats increases, so does the overall risk for a school district to have its schedule altered, which is displayed in 2 different color scales on the map of our area.
Delays:
The first color scale is used to indicate potential for school delays.
Green indicates a 10% or higher risk for school delays within that shaded area.
Yellow indicates a 40% or higher risk for school delays within that shaded area.
Closings: The second, larger color scale is used to indicate potential for school closures and/or early dismissals.
"Very Low" or the cyan color indicates that the risk for closures is less than 15%.
"Low" or the light-blue color indicates that the risk for closures is 15%-30%.
"Medium" or the dark-blue color indicates that the risk for closures is 31%-50%.
"Elevated" or the purple color indicates that the risk for closures is 51%-70%.
"High" or the magenta color indicates that the risk for closures is 71%-90%.
"Very High" or the red color indicates that the risk for closures is greater than 91%.
In addition to the visual graphic, we also write a discussion that outlines why we have chosen to utilize the risk and threat levels that we have to better communicate the overall severity of an event, especially when significant winter weather may pose threats to life and property. When possible, we follow up each of these forecasts the following day with an accuracy result graphic to be transparent about how our forecasts perform and to hopefully allow all of you to trust us and to rely on us in the future! A Few Friendly Reminders: 1. First and foremost, please understand that we use these outlooks as a FUN way to engage all of you, our amazing followers! Snow days are exciting, and the even popular question among school children is: "Will we have a snow day tomorrow?!?" So join in the fun, get your kids involved and excited about the weather and the science of snow, ice, and more with these outlooks! 2. We never want these outlooks to be inaccurate or "over-hyped," and we've dedicated the last 6 years to doing just that with an extremely high success rate. That said, however, we can be and will be wrong sometimes. At the end of the day, we are at the mercy of Mother Nature, as are all of you.
3. We never encourage school administrators to use these outlooks to make preemptive decisions about altering their school schedule. Please use your wealth of experience, official guidance from the National Weather Service, and the conditions each morning for making decisions about closing or delaying your district/school.
Summary:
Extensive fog will develop across the area overnight tonight and into Wednesday morning, especially across our Northeastern zones. This fog may result in isolated to scattered delayed starts to the school day.
Discussion:
Current short-range computer weather model guidance, particularly the HRRR model, and local forecast guidance from the National Weather Service indicate that widespread fog will develop across the area overnight tonight and into Wednesday morning. For many areas in West Michigan, this fog will result in little more than a minor inconvenience/hazard as Michiganders head off to work and school. However, there are 2 areas of particular concern, particularly in our Northeastern zones, where fog could become pretty dense and persist into the morning school commute and through sunrise, which may prompt some school delays.
Visibilities are expected to drop to as low as near-zero in the greater Mount Pleasant area, and these poor conditions are expected to persist through 8:00 AM and begin to improve no sooner than 9:00 AM. For this reason, we have introduced 40% Delay Risks across much of Isabella County, as well as extreme Northeast Montcalm and Northwest Gratiot Counties. Surrounding the greater Mount Pleasant area, delays are still possible, but the probability of any one district we feel falls below the 40% threshold and is realistically closer to 10%, still wouldn't be entirely surprised to see some localized school delays in those areas as well. Similarly, parts of central Jackson County may see locally dense fog develop as well, but current model guidance suggests that this may hold off til closer to sunrise and therefore be less of a prolonged threat so for that reason have opted to keep probabilities lower in that region as well.
Graphical Forecast:
