Good afternoon, everyone. We are closing out an awesome holiday weekend across the bluegrass states. This might be one of the better travel periods we have ever had for the entire Thanksgiving period. As we head into a new week, changes are showing up.

We continue to track a late week system, with a major winter pattern likely to unfold for the following week.

Temps continue to look mild for the first half of the week ahead on a stout southwesterly wind. There’s a shower chance on Wednesday, but much of the gusty rains arrive on Thursday. The models keep going back and forth with just how strong the late week system will be.

The stronger it is, the more cold air it can create on Friday, potentially bringing some flakes with the departing rains. The new GFS is marginal for the flakes, but is deeper than earlier runs…

The first week of December is when we continue to see massive oveall changes showing up. I’ve highlighted the battle between the cold signals and the mild signals over the past week. The blocking is going to win this battle, sending much of the country into a deep winter setup by late in the first full week of December. That’s a setup that should hang through the holidays.

The Ensembles have been showing this for a while, and now we have the operational models showing the same thing. The GFS shows a major storm that unleashes the cold…

Those maps for December 6-8.

This is EXACTLY when ALL Ensembles have been showing the winter pattern surging into much of the country. The AVERAGE of 51 members of the European Ensembles is crazy cold for almost the entire country…

The control run of the European is brutal across the land…

The blocking forecast to set up is straight out of the playbook of some of the more extreme winters across the country.

Enjoy the evening and take care.