3:35am Update

Good Saturday… Again. The new NAM is in and I wanted to add it to this post because it continues to trend a bit farther north and west with the winter storm and it ups the snow totals…

I see the NWS in Jackson went with a Winter Weather Advisory instead of a Winter Storm Watch. That’s a major head scratcher!!

Take care,

PREVIOUS UPDATE

Good Saturday, everyone. A Winter Storm continues to take aim at parts of the bluegrass from later today through Sunday. While this storm continues to target southern and southeastern Kentucky with the greatest impact, the models are slowly starting to creep back to the north and west a bit. That’s a trend we will need to watch closely as the day wears on to see if it continues.

Our Winter Storm Threat will likely get upgraded to an Alert today and I highly suspect Winter Storm Watches and Winter Weather Advisories will be issued early today for some areas…

I made a First Call for ice and snowfall last night on WKYT-TV. This was before the full suite of 0z models came in…

Do NOT get attached to those numbers and lines as I will be moving them around a couple of times today as I get a better handle on how this shakes out.  Some issues I foresee:

  • Freezing rain and sleet will complicate the snowfall part of the program. Areas that get more freezing rain or sleet will obviously get less snow and vice versa.
  • There is likely to be a super sharp cut off on the northern and wester edge of snow and freezing rain shield. I’m not exactly sure where that set up, to be honest.
  • Precipitation may try to creep in a little early today in the far south and southwest. As precip moves in, temps come down quickly.
  • The whole mess has a window of opportunity to keep edging farther north and west and, as I said on Thursday, that is a concern of mine.
  • None of this is set in stone. (DRINK!)
  • Please don’t pay attention to automated forecasts such as those that appear on apps. They have no human input and will have wild variations from hour to hour.

Let’s get you caught up on the latest computer forecast models. As of this writing, many of them continue to trend back toward what they were showing a day or two ago. That’s why I didn’t make knee jerk reactions when they temporally jumped ship on Friday.

The new version of the GFS is  farther north and west with the precip shield…

Here’s the snowfall map from that run…

You can also see the fairly expansive area of freezing rain it has…

The Canadian Model is very similar…

The snow map has more widespread action that gets pretty far north in the east…

The short range version of the Canadian was the lone model to not go jump ship for a time early Friday. It was the first to show a more north and west system and it hasn’t faltered…

That model has a little less snow than the main Canadian Model, but has much more freezing rain…

That freezing rain signature also shows up pretty strong on the Hi Res NAM across the south…

The regular NAM is farther south and southeast with the freezing rain and snow…

That snow map is similar to the European Model, but both of these models had been a fill blown miss for anywhere in Kentucky earlier Friday. They have both been trending slowly back north and west. Here’s the Euro…

Once again, we still have time for fairly significant adjustments to the forecast.

Of course, I will have additional updates later today. Here’s regional radar to track an increase in the action to our south and southwest…

Have a great Saturday and take care.