Good Sunday and Merry Christmas!!! It’s hard to believe the big day is here, and it’s even harder to believe the surge of mild air moving in. This will set the stage for a dramatic temperature swing from north to south today. This will kick off a mild few days, but Old Man Winter is lurking in the week ahead.

Before we get into it, let’s take a look at December temps so far across the country…

december-2016

As you can see, it’s been a very cold month to date for much of the country. That’s actually a scaled down version of how December of 1983 played out. For Kentucky, it’s our coldest first 3 weeks of December since 2010.

The above numbers are certainly a FAR cry from what we have had the past two years at this time…

december-2

Let’s get back to where we are on this Christmas Day. Temps in the north likely stay in the 40s, while readings in the south may hit 70. Wow. There will also be a shower or two on the move…

Temps on Monday surge deep into the 60s ahead of a strong cold front arriving Monday night. A line of showers and thunderstorms will accompany that front into town as winds really crank up.

A seasonal brand of chill moves in for Tuesday, but another front will bring much colder air for the second half of the week. Northwesterly winds may produce some snow showers and flurries…

gfs

That brings us to New Year’s Weekend and another potential system. The latest GFS loses a lot of the winter weather aspect of this, as it brings our system out in two pieces…

gfs-2

While it IS the GFS, I can see that as a very plausible scenario.

I mentioned in my last post I was seeing the potential for some things I did not think would happen this winter. There are some hefty signals showing up for a extended period of harsh winter weather engulfing our region into January. The big blocking signature near Alaska always gets my attention and has been, in my eyes, the driving force to our recent run of incredible winters. That is starting to show up on the GFS as we get into January…

gfs

You can also see a block across Greenland joining in on the fun, forcing a DEEP trough to engulf the country. Look at the temp anomalies with that…

gfs-gif

We will see how all this works pans out, but my winter forecast is a little nervous that it didn’t go far enough toward the cold and snow. As always, time will tell.

I will shoot you another update later today. Merry Christmas and take care.