Good afternoon, folks. Our major pattern change continues to evolve, with Old Man Winter getting ready to take full control.

Leading the winter charge is a cold front working across the state tonight and Tuesday. Ahead of this, temps are spiking into the 60s this afternoon as southwest winds crank. Those gusts may reach 40-45mph later tonight and early Tuesday.

Showers and thunderstorms will develop and roll across the state from west to east…

Temps behind this front drop all day long on Tuesday, with below normal temps in here for Wednesday. While colder than normal, the true cold arrives on Thursday as the northwesterly flow becomes established. This is when we start to focus on systems diving in here on the same flow.

The GFS keeps showing a potent setup, with the latest run looking like this at 500mb…

Unlike some earlier runs, that doesn’t fully phase the two upper systems. Of course, this scenario changes from run to run, but we will break em down one at a time.

The above setup leads to two light accumulating snows from the GFS. The first arriving Thursday night, with the stronger system bringing snows in here Friday night and Saturday…

Each of those could be advisory type events, but we still have a ways to go before I can get specific on snowfall possibilities. I will keep saying the same thing… I think we get our first light accumulating snows at some point from Thursday night through Saturday, but I can’t offer specifics. I should be able to start doing that tonight and Tuesday… I think. 🙂

The air coming behind that is Frigid and could push wind chill numbers to zero or below at times. If we can get snow on the ground, single digit lows could be seen in some areas.

The next system continues to show up well in about a week from now. The GFS, similar to last night’s Euro, shows the Polar Vortex getting into the states…

You can see that well on the 16 day GFS animation of the 500mb anomalies…

You can also see how the deep troughs just keep forming throughout the entire run. The GFS Ensembles continue to grow more aggressive in snow chances during the same time…

I will have another update coming this evening and will have the latest on WKYT-TV starting at 4pm.

Make it a great one and take care.