Good Thursday, everyone. Arctic air continues to press into the bluegrass state from the northwest. This will knock our temps way down, but may just be a small preview of what’s to come. This pattern setting up across the country has a little “Wow” factor to it.

The artic air pours in from the northwest today and carries us into the start of the weekend. A few snow flurries will be possible tonight into Friday as the northwesterly flow kicks in.

From there, we are seeing more than the normal amount of model variance in regards to the late weekend system. To be honest, this has been the case for the past week, and looks to be the case for next week. Why is this happening? It’s likely because of the extreme cold air that’s engulfing North America. Models don’t handle extremes very well and can give us some pretty substantial swings from run to run.

The changes for the Sunday-Monday system include a much weaker Sunday system and a stronger system arriving Sunday night into Monday. Under that scenario, the best chance for snow and winter weather is across the northern parts of the state.

Here’s a snapshot of where the GFS thinks the snow falls Sunday into Monday…

gfs-snow

The Canadian Model is singing a similar song, but is all strung out on steroids with the totals to our north…

canadian

You can clearly see a west to east moving system instead of one cutting into the Great Lakes. How far south that can come is the question and one the models won’t fully figure out for another day or so.

If we take the above model runs at their word… the heaviest snows stay just to our north with some snow across northern Kentucky, with a mix to rain in the south.

We are also seeing some changes with how the models handle the arctic outbreaks moving into the country next week.

The GFS went from a weak system introducing the arctic air, to something much stronger…

gfs

That model run sets off one angry temperature drop from Tuesday evening into Wednesday morning. The numbers below are over a 12 hour period…

gfs-temps

That’s impressive to say the least.

The same run of the GFS then did this a few days later…

gfs-2

The temps behind that were even colder…

gfs-temps-2

The exact evolution of all this remains to be seen, but there is no denying the potential for much of the country to be in the deep freeze as we go through the rest of December.

Snow threats should be there during this time, but again, specifics will be worked out as we roll ahead.

Speaking of snow threats… the GFS Ensembles continue to do their thing over the next 2 weeks…

gfs-snow-3

For fun, the overnight operational run of the GFS decided it wanted in on the Ensembles fun…

gfs-snow-2

And for the record… none of the above maps should be taken as anything other than what they are meant to be used for… Guidance. They are snapshots in time of what particular computers think will happen. The specifics of each model run change, and can change drastically with each update.

That said, the trend on the “guidance” is now matching what the analog years have been suggesting across the country for December.

I will hook you up with updates later today. Make it a good one and take care.