Good Tuesday, everyone. The day is starting with a wintry mix of rain and snow across much of the region, with a swath of light accumulating snow possible. The system that follows this has the potential to bring a bigger mess to the state as rain, snow, freezing rain and sleet move in.

I will get to that in a moment, but let’s start with what’s going on now.

A band of wet snow may very well be noted across parts of the region to start the day. This would be oriented from southwest to northeast and could put down some slushy accumulations on grassy or elevated surfaces. Here are your early day tracking tools…

Hamburg Area from WKYT Studio
Lexington

I-75 @ Newtown Pike
Lexington

I-75 MP 127
Georgetown

I-64 at KY-801
Near Morehead

I-64 MP 97
Winchester
I-64 WB @ MP 97

Mountain Parkway @ MP 36
Near Pine Ridge

With temps around freezing, watch out for a slick spot or two trying to develop.

The next storm system continues to look like a messy one for our region from Wednesday night through Thursday night. This is the system that wasn’t on any models last week, but I said I was picking up on a signal for a decent storm during this time period. That signal proved to be true and this has the makings of a pretty big hit from Missouri to the Mid-Atlantic to the northeast.

One low develops ahead of the upper level low and works into the lower Ohio Valley then transfers energy to a huge storm along the east coast. This setup may very well bring heavy snow into parts of western Kentucky with the rest of the state going from freezing rain and a mix to rain then ending as some snow. There is a real possibility of a Winter Storm Threat mode later today for the west, especially.

Let’s see how the individual models are playing this.

NAM

GFS

The European

Let’s begin with the freezing rain threat for Wednesday night. I honestly can’t recall talking about freezing rain this early in the cold weather season, but here we are. If we do get a period of freezing rain, I suspect this is mainly on elevated objects since the ground temps are not below freezing.

Every single model sees the freezing rain threat, but to a different extent.

The NAM…

The Hi Res NAM is on steroids and is likely way overdone…

GFS…

The European Model…

Some sleet may also show up at this time. Thankfully, temps rise to above freezing by Thursday morning.

The snow potential of this system continues to be high along and west of the track of the low and upper low. There is likely to be a heck of a comma head of snow that will put down a thumping wet snowfall. Exactly where that sets up is still to be determined, but areas of western Kentucky is seriously in the ball game.

The European shows the thumper threat…

The GFS…

The NAM is just a bit farther west…