Good Friday, everyone. We have rounds of strong to severe thunderstorms targeting the region this weekend. The first round kicks in this evening and could cause some big issues that would carry us into Saturday, with another round later Sunday.
Here’s a breakdown:
- Gusty southwesterly winds will kick in, boosting temps into the 80s.
- Thunderstorms will rapidly develop across the west and southwestern parts of the state this afternoon and early evening. That action will then spread northeastward this evening.
- These storms may be severe with damaging winds and large hail the primary players. Isolated tornadoes are also a possibility, especially in the west.
- A big concern will be flash flooding. These storms may line up and move over the same areas, putting down torrential rains. The greatest threat for this is across the west and central areas of the state.
- More storms will be around on Saturday, but become more scattered during the day. Still, some of these can cause issues.
- A line of severe storms will likely work west to east across the state Sunday into Sunday night. This could produce another round of damaging winds and flooding rains.
Before I get to your tracking tools, I want to say a quick word about the pattern next week. We will likely see additional rounds of showers and storms kicking back in here for the middle and end of the week as another storm system moves in. This could bring more heavy rains our way. It will also likely unleash some very cool temps for Kentucky Derby Weekend.
Back to today’s action… I will have the latest on WKYT-TV starting at 4pm. Here are your storm tracking tools for the day…
I-24 MP 7 @ US 62
Paducah
I-65 MP 36
Near Bowling Green
I-65 @ 234
Near Bowling Green
I-65 MP 92.4
Elizabethtown
Louie B Nunn MP 3
Near Glasgow
I-64 @ I-264
Louisville
I-264 @ Freedom Way
Near Louisville International Airport
US 60 @ US 460
Frankfort
Hamburg Area from WKYT Studio
Lexington
I-64 at KY-801
Near Morehead
I-275 at Mineola Pike
Near Covington
I-75 @ Clays Ferry Bridge South
Between Lexington and Richmond
Have a safe Friday and take care.
My point click forecast for Perry co tomorrow says Sunny high around 90. That’s ridiculous. It should never be 90 in April.
Point click is still following the idea already abandoned here that we could make a run at 90 today. I agree with your sentiment but plenty of places hit 90 as early records already this year.
Thanks, CB! This evening is neither a sky high tornado threat nor a zero tornado threat. Not a bad idea to put the car in the garage considering the hail threat!
There were many mentions yesterday regarding the anniversary of the m-a-s-s-i-v-e tornado outbreak of April 27 2011. I had a scare (albeit, an indirect scare) from that day.
https://kyweathercenter.com/?p=13803#comment-158359
But unlike 2011, Kentucky was more directly impacted on April 27 1971……although Tennessee, Indiana and Illinois were also visited by twisters. Parts of Green County, Ohio County and Russell County had tornadoes with two funnels being F4s. Nine of the ten fatalities that day were in Kentucky.
While our area can have tornadoes anytime of year, we won’t be able to let down our guard a little bit for roughly another month and change. The final week of May is the latest in the spring both Kentucky and Tennessee have recorded tornadoes of at least F4/EF4 strength; F4s/EF4s have not been recorded again in KY and TN until about November. Kentucky has gone from about the 4th week of June through October with no tornadoes stronger than F2/EF2. Indeed, both Kentucky and Tennessee have no July tornado fatalities in recorded history. While other threats like flooding, damaging t-storm winds, heat waves and lightning persist, the tornado threat tends to wane into summer as stronger tornadic storms occur more towards the Great Lakes and the northern plains.
So far in my location, this entire year, we have had one bad storm, and it lasted 5 minutes. For my location, this has not been a stormy year at all so far, which surprises me considering how last year was super quiet in terms of storms.
Thankfully, the last few weeks have been way down from the high tornado pace the country was experiencing earlier in the year. Nashville has had some heavy rains and a few Severe Thunderstorm Warnings this spring, but our power has stayed on.
Kentucky has actually been relatively quiet tornado-wise since the March 2 2012 outbreak while Tennessee has had some fatal twisters since 2012 including last November.
Although SPC is uncertain about exact placement for potential severe weather, heavy, flooding rains appear to be a given for many in our region, especially central and west
I think the general good rule of thumb here is to don’t sweat the details, whether the perceived threat is high or low should be irrelevant. Keep an eye to the sky and to radar, if a storm approaches, go indoors, if a warning is issued, make sure you are actually in the polygon warning, if you aren’t then there is nothing special you need to do. If you are in a Tornado Warning polygon, Lowest Level of your home, away from windows. Cover yourself with blankets or even a helmet if you have one. 9.5 times out of 10 you’ll be just fine.
“Cover yourself with blankets or even a helmet if you have one. 9.5 times out of 10 you’ll be just fine.”
This also works for visiting relatives in Louisville for watching UK-UL games. Just a sound strategy all around, I think.
Thanks Chris. I know you and the KYT weather team have been all over the possibilities of severe weather overnight and into the weekend. It always seems to hit us at night for some reason. But we are like MarkLex, we haven’t really had much stormy weather. We’ve had some warnings, but not anything severe to speak of. Definitely due but I will take a rain check on any severe stuff…. a good storm is one thing, but dangerous weather, especially at night when it is a bit harder to see coming, makes me nervous. I do know that Chris will be keeping us all informed and ahead of it. Going to say its a good bet CB will have a busy evening….hope not, but, probably.
Have a great and safe Friday everyone!
Any update on how things are shaping up? I am a bit nervous about tonight. Prayers for everyone to be safe!
Just depends where your at pretty much, good chance of severe thunderstorms main threats looks to be damaging hail and flooding if storms train over the same area. Cannot rule out a isolated tornado or two. North central/ central Kentucky look to be at the greatest risk according to the NWS but pretty much everyone looks to be fair game. Nothing we haven’t been through before typical spring time severe weather in my opinion. Some will get it worse than others.
As CB just touched on via his Twitter feed, the SPC will likely be issuing a Tornado Watch soon for parts of central parts of both Kentucky and Tennessee.
Also, the Storm Prediction Center will be updating its Convective Outlook soon…. at 4pm eastern/3pm central.
The SPC update shows little change, the area of highest tornado probability across Kentucky seems to be marginally smaller than before but still a 10% tornado threat from the Ohio River on south. Still a rather hefty large hail threat.
http://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/outlook/day1otlk.html
Tornado Watch coming soon
SPC should reconsider the MD’s for our area. The 80% likelihood of a Tornado Watch was busted earlier. Severe threat looks busted. Capping too much to overcome.
A quick question — Is this “capping” something that should or could be forecasted? Or, is it just a flukish thing? Thank you.
Could it? Yes, but obviously every met looking at the data thought the cap would break and allow severe weather to reach central KY. Hopefully they do a post-audit to determine either what they interpreted incorrectly or why the models indicated incorrectly. We had hardly a trace of rain all night in Lexington. Weather forecasting is still a mixture of art and science even with all the supercomputers and trillions of dollars of investment: Mother Nature does what she wants.
The Dome works even in spring for central KY!
Nothing to see here so far.
Chris, does it look like the severe is not going to be real bad for central ky? Praying no tornado weather.
Seems like all the heavy stuff is going north of us