Good Sunday and Happy New Year. We are rolling into the first work week of the year on a very active weather note. Things start out with thunderstorms and end with arctic air and snow possibilities.

Let’s start things out by tracking some scattered showers in from south to north…

Gusty south to southwesterly winds crank up tonight and Monday ahead of a low pressure working into the region. This will touch off showers and thunderstorms through Monday night and some of them can be strong. This looks like a nasty severe weather outbreak across the south with a low risk of severe across Kentucky…

An arctic front moves in here Tuesday night with the possibility of some snowflakes just behind it. This sets the stage for a very cold stretch of weather and a good chance for, at least, a light snowfall. As expected, each model run handles the Thursday through Saturday systems differently.

The GFS had lost the late week system for the past several days. All of a sudden, it finds it again this afternoon…

gfs

Here’s the snowfall map from that particular run (it will change many times)…

gfs-snow

At least for one run, the GFS fits the “lower Ohio Valley/Tennessee Valley” setup the pattern has been suggesting for a while now.

The individual members of the GFS have several members showing a healthy system…

gfs-snow-2

The GFS and its Ensembles have a friend in the Japanese model…

jma-1

The Canadian Model has a light snowfall Thursday into Thursday night…

canadian

It then follows that up with a suppressed system, bringing a snow swipe to southeastern Kentucky later Friday…

canadian-2

The European Model has a similar look with the Thursday system…

euro-2

It also shows a suppressed solution for the Friday storm…

euro-3

The models won’t fully get a handle on all this until the energy is into the country and can be properly sampled. That should happen Monday into Tuesday.

All I can say is the pattern favors, at least, a light snowfall in our region. It also favors arctic cold temps from late week into the weekend.

The Canadian puts some snow on the ground and gives you these temps for next weekend…

canadian-3

Looking beyond that period, this is a pattern that can repeat itself the following week and into much of the month. One way to see that is to expand the GFS Ensembles snow maps we looked at above. Let’s add on another week to those…

gfs-snow-3

Notice how several members show a snow threat into the DEEP south? That would be indicate some pretty big cold shots as well.

I will hook you up with another update later tonight. Happy New Year and take care.