Good Monday, everyone. The holidays are now officially behind us and it’s full steam ahead into the new year. The weather pattern is kicking it up a notch or ten this week with thunderstorms giving way to arctic air and the potential for late week snow.

Let’s start with the threat for showers and storms out there today.

Winds will be very gusty from the southwest as temps surge into the 60s. Scattered showers will be possible with the main action coming this evening into tonight. That’s when thunderstorms flare up with high winds and heavy rainfall the primary threats.

Areas to our south may be in for a severe weather outbreak today, and a few strong to severe storms can reach Kentucky. The best chance is in the west and south…

Today’s risk area

Latest Day 1 convective outlook

Current Watches
Current Watches

Possible Watch Areas
Current MDs

Arctic air then moves in here Tuesday night into Wednesday as a front slams in from the northwest. Some light snows are possible just behind this boundary.

This is where things continue to get interesting. For nearly two weeks, I’ve been talking about the pattern targeting the lower Ohio Valley into the Tennessee Valley for winter weather in the first week of the new year. That certainly appears to be the case later this week into the coming weekend. The question is… To what extent? Some light stuff or a lot more? Both options are on the table.

Several days ago, the forecast models all had a threatening look. Those same models then lost the entire setup for a few days, even though I preach and preach how the models show something then totally lose it in days 4-7 then find it again. Sure enough, the models are doing just that.

Let’s start with the European Model as it keeps trending toward what it had a few days back. This model throws accumulating snow at us on Thursday, then brushes us with a bigger system it develops. Each passing run is stronger and farther north and west with the second system for Friday into Saturday…

euro-2

Verbatim, that run shows a few to several inches possible from Thursday through early Saturday.

The Canadian model also shows the Thursday snow maker…

canadian

And, compared to earlier runs, is also going farther west and north with the Friday/Saturday system…

canadian-2

Man, the European and Canadian Models are very close to going big.

Speaking of going big, that’s exactly what the GFS did. It has a much weaker system for Thursday as it takes all the energy out at once, creating a much bigger storm for Friday and Saturday…

gfs

For fun, the snow map from that particular run…

gfs-snow

The computer models and their snow maps will change a lot from run to run over the next day or so. We should start to see them figuring this out by Tuesday.

While I don’t put a lot of stock in any one model solution, it’s interesting to note how many GFS Ensemble members are “in the ballpark” with what he operational model has with this setup…

gfs-snow-2

At this point, I cannot endorse any of the above models posted in this blog. We are having a discussion on each of them, but it’s really good to see the models showing winter weather in the exact areas I have been highlighting by looking at the pattern setting up.

We still have a bit before we know the extent of the winter weather. Will this become “threat” worthy? Possibly.

I will have updates later today. Make it a good one and take care.