Good Friday, everyone. A wild setup across the eastern part of the country continues to give us some nasty weather here in the bluegrass state. Rain, wind and chilly temps are combining forces to create quite the yuck factor. As all this happens, the weather world continues to watch powerful Hurricane Joaquin.

I’ll get to Joaquin in a moment. Let’s focus on our weather heading into the weekend, first.

Gusty showers will continue to increase across much of the region today. The rains will be coming at us from the east and southeast for the second Friday in a row. It’s not going to rain all the time, but some heavy downpours will be possible when it does. Wind gusts of 25mph will be common today, with gusts to 35mph possible late this afternoon into the evening. Highs will likely stay in the 50s for many.

Your radars to track the drops…

 

 

Saturday will find scattered showers around early in the day with a more substantial band of rain moving in during the afternoon and evening. That, again, will be coming from the east and could put down some decent totals in central and eastern Kentucky. Temps will be back in the 50s for highs.

Our weather at this point depends on what happens with our east coast storm and Hurricane Joaquin. These two continue to bat their eyes at one another from across a crowded room. Do they end up getting together or decide it’s not worth the effort?

The European Model continues to suggest they just walk away…

Euro

It should be noted that the European Model does try to turn Joaquin back to the west a few days later, but still stays east of New England. That’s a change to the west compared to earlier runs.

The GFS does something similar, but get’s much closer to the northeast…

GFS

The map on the left is from Saturday and the map on the right is from Monday. It’s hard to support any solution from the GFS because it gives you something different with each run.

The Canadian Model keeps showing a Mid Atlantic hurricane hit…

Canadian

That model has been consistent with that solution. Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s right.

The NAM isn’t typically used to track tropical systems because that’s not really its bread and butter. The model has been showing the out to sea solution, but did a 180 with the overnight run…

NAM

Again, the NAM isn’t really a good model to look at for tropical systems, but, the pattern across the eastern part of the country isn’t exactly one you would expect with a typical tropical system.

In looking at the models above, it’s all about the timing on when Joaquin makes the turn north out of the Bahamas. The European Model is, by far, the slowest of the 0z models to lift it northward. The NAM and Canadian Models were the quickest.

It appears this hurricane has a small channel it can hit to bring it toward the east coast, but it has to have perfect timing to do so. If not, it’s going out to sea, and that’s probably the correct path. Today should clear all that up… finally.

I will update as needed. Take care.