Good Tuesday, everybody. Heavy rain continues to target our region today, but I’m looking ahead toward a warmer overall look. That’s a long overdue look and it should be arriving just in time to kick off the month of May and Kentucky Derby week.
Let’s get things started with the heavy rains falling our there today. Our slow-moving area of low pressure continues to spin across Kentucky. Ahead of this, a comma looking band of showers and thunderstorms may be putting down enough water to cause some issues…
The rains will slowly end on Wednesday, as temperatures stay cooler than normal. Some late day sun will boost temps into the 60s for several areas.
Thursday looks awesome with highs ranging from 65-70 degrees with mostly sunny skies.
The upper level system diving in here on Friday continues to look more progressive and less impressive…
Notice how that no longer closes off, but zips in and out without a lot of fanfare. A few gusty showers will be noted, with just a few hours of chill coming Friday night and Saturday morning.
Watch how quickly a big ridge takes over by Sunday…
That should bring the 70s in here VERY quickly, with nice weather settling in. This is out longest and strongest stretch of true spring weather, so far. That ridge really pops into Kentucky Derby Week…
As I’ve mentioned for a few days, 80+ degree temps are likely to show up under that type of ridge. You can also see a deep western trough on the above map. In between the two, some big thunderstorms may roam. Watch how that pushes farther east by Derby weekend…
That setup can bring severe weather from the plains into the Ohio Valley at some point next week. This has been a very, very odd severe weather season across the country. Even as cold as it has been in Kentucky, we have still had 22 tornadoes already, which is way above normal for this time period. That’s 22 more tornadoes than Oklahoma and Kansas COMBINED. That’s right, the heart of tornado alley has not had a single tornado and the month of April is a week from wrapping up. That’s insane.
Kentucky’s 22 tornadoes are second only to Alabama’s 30.
I will have another update later today. Make it a good one and take care.
Thanks Chris for the update. We had slow on and off rain showers throughout the night and temperatures remained in the low fifties. Looking forward to the very nice weather later this week. Highs in the sixties and seventies and lows in the forties. I hope this nice stretch of weather coming up will continue through Derby weekend. I didn’t realized that the state of Kentucky has already had twenty two tornadoes this spring. This scares me as I have never been in a tornado. As for tornado alley, aren’t those areas experiencing drought conditions ? Have a great day everyone.
There being 22 Kentucky twisters (and a more than a few in Tennessee, Missouri, etc) caught me a bit off guard as well. Perhaps because it’s been mainly a bunch of EF0s and EF1s spread over time in sparsely populated areas, although there was the fatal EF2 in Logan County KY last February.
With our likely pattern flip to warmer wx coming up, I thought it would be safe for me to post this……hope I’m right 😉 . I’ve been tired of the spring snow and cold as well. Even my wife wants no more snow, and she loves snow……when it’s winter that is.
On this day in 1910 was a rather late snow across not only our area but even the Deep South. Without having checked, I would guess that Atlanta’s 1.5 inch snow is their latest measurable snow on record even if there may be later trace snows.
From NWS Nashville
http://www.weather.gov/ohx/19100425
I know its been more than 10 years ago…even 15 years ago that I was reading somewhere about how “Tornado Alley” is either shifting or extending eastward to include Central Kentucky.
Of the 22 tornadoes that have been reported so far in Kentucky this year, I’m going to guess about 20 have occurred west of I-65.
Thanks Chris, we appreciate your happy kindness while softening the blows of unpredictable awesome chameleon weather of Kentucky