Good afternoon, folks. We have a powerhouse of a cold front marching into Kentucky and this can touch off a few strong thunderstorms. That’s generally the case when you get a 30-40 degree temperature difference from one side of a front to the other.

Damaging winds will be the primary threat from any of the storms going up. Even outside of storms, winds can gust to 50mph at times.

I’ll talk about what comes behind the front in just a bit, but let’s get to the tracking tools right out of the gate…

Today’s Risk Area
Latest Day 1 convective outlook

Current Watches
Current Watches

Possible Watch Areas
Current MDs

We will see temps dropping below freezing by Friday morning across the northern half of the state. This cold can touch off a period of light freezing rain, but a lot of the precipitation may temporarily end at that time.

We know there will be a huge temperature difference from north to south across the region over the next few days. That’s a given. What remains to be seen is exactly where the 32 degree line sets up as additional waves of precipitation move in.

The farther north you are, the better the chance of seeing freezing rain from later Friday through Saturday night. The Canadian Model freezing rain accumulation map remains largely unchanged…

Canadian

You can clearly see how the far west and far north have the best chance at freezing rain, but those will come at different times.

Milder air then surges northward again by later in the weekend into Monday. This could open up the floodgates for additional rounds of showers and thunderstorms through the middle of the week. The GFS keeps spitting out some impressive rain totals…

GFS Rain

After all this back and forth of the seasons, winter surges back in. Can it finally take control of the pattern across this region? This has happened to varying degrees in each of the past 3 winters. It seems like our overall weather patterns are very repetitive and this year may be no different. I will show you some interesting developments with my evening update or later tonight.

Enjoy the afternoon and take care.