Good Saturday, my fellow weather weenies. As rain rolls across the state today, major changes are on the way for the upcoming week. Our halftime of winter is coming to an end, and Old Man Winter is ready to start the second half with a long return for a touchdown. I’ve got a blowout post to cover it all. 🙂

Today’s rains will increase from west to east, with several hours of steady rain likely for any one location…

Local amounts of greater than a half inch are likely through the first half of Sunday. That’s when the rain ends across the southeast, with some sunshine showing up across the region.

Another cold front then slides in here late Sunday night into Monday, unleashing a cold northwesterly wind. That wind will create rounds of snow showers and flurries through early Tuesday…

Light accumulations are a good bet during this time, especially across the mountains of eastern Kentucky.

As we head toward the second half of next week, our winter storm signal continues to show up for the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys.

An arctic front moves in and slows down, allowing a storm system to develop along the front. This system should have ample moisture to work with and much of that falls in the colder air. Just how strong this system gets, is still to be determined, so we still have a lot of time to watch it.

That said, we continue to see amazing agreement from all the models. The GFS keeps showing a significant storm for our region…

The Canadian Model is similar, but shows much broader coverage of the precipitation shield…

The European Model is coming around to the stronger system idea and is similar to the above models…

 

If we look at the GFS Ensembles (21 members) snowfall average, we also find our region in the target zone…

In some aspects, not all, this reminds me a little bit of February 2015. Of course, that doesn’t mean it will turn out in similar fashion.

If we can put a snowpack on the ground, temps next weekend can get back to where we were into much of the first half of January…

Arctic cold shots are lining back up, and will keep coming into the country over the next few weeks, at least…

I will update things later today. Make it a good one and take care.