Good Wednesday, gang. Christmas is fast approaching and the requests for snow are coming fast and furious. There are years we pretty much know there is little to no chance of snow for this festive time. This year is not one of those years. Snow chances are lining up through Christmas week and beyond.

Christmastime snow lovers have to be excited at the possibility…

charliebrownsingingchristmas

We have a few flakes flying around early today as clouds hang tough. High temps will be mainly in the 30s with gusty winds making it feel like the 20s out there.

We are likely to see a swath of light snow and flurries streaking eastward across Kentucky on Thursday. This may put down some light accumulations across the western parts of the state. Even with a diminishing snow trend, It does look like flakes could fly all the way into eastern Kentucky. You can see what I’m talking about on the European snowfall map…

Euro

I will have more on this with an update later today.

The next system rolling in for Friday night and Saturday continues to look about the same as it did with my last updates. The operational models continue to show this as a weaker storm rolling across the deep south. This storm is just getting to the tail end of the NAM range. Here’s what the NAM is showing for Saturday morning…

NAM 2

That has a nice shield of snow working across southern and western parts of the state. That would likely then work to the northeast during the day. That does match up well with the new snow/frozen precip map from the European Model…

Euro 2I want to get within 48 hours of this system to see what the models look like. Why? Look no further than the flakes coming tomorrow. The models were showing that potential several days ago, backed off, then found it again with 48 hours.

This brings us into Christmas week and this is the period I’ve been pointing to for the past few weeks, at least. It’s the timeframe that has been giving us a huge signal for a big return of Old Man Winter to much of the country. That signal grows louder the closer we get to Christmas.

It’s so loud that even the GFS is picking up on it…

GFS GFS 3

That basically shows a storm bombing out as it works from the Ohio Valley into the Great Lakes. A scenario like that has been showing up on many runs of the ensembles in recent days. The newer version of the GFS has been showing a similar setup, as has the European Model.

Speaking of the European Model. Its last run looks like a distant cousin of a certain Ohio Valley storm from January of 78…

Euro 3 Euro 4

I’m just showing you what the models look like. That’s what we do on a weather blog. Folks, I would just settle for some flakes flying around Christmas week. I’m pretty easy to please. 🙂

I will have updates later today. Take care.