Good afternoon, everyone. Our winter storm continues across parts of southern and eastern Kentucky. This has been one of the weirdest storms in terms of precipitation types and locations. Where do we go from here? I will get to that in a bit.
Let’s talk a little more about the current storm. Overall, I’m pleased with how it played out in terms of the forecast. This was a storm everyone had totally written off as missing Kentucky, but I held on and Old Man Winter did the rest. As we talked about on here, this system came much farther north and west that the models were suggesting, with wintry weather into the bluegrass region and into northeastern Kentucky. This thing basically fit right into the geographical area we forecast.
The freezing rain forecast was a good one as this basically turned into an ice storm for some areas of south central Kentucky. Power lines and trees have been taken down, leading to power outages.
The snow is going strong in the southeast, but had a total bust zone around and south of London because a bubble of warm air stayed put this morning. That’s such a small scale bubble that it’s hard for man or computer to see until it’s actually happening. If we had balloon launches on the hour, every hour from every city in the region, maybe that would help, but that’s obviously not realistic. Still, it sucks for those folks in that area wanting snow. I feel ya!
As the main storm pulls away this afternoon, far southeastern Kentucky has a chance at getting in on another band of light snow and light freezing rain later tonight and early Monday. That has a chance to clip some of the area in the snow bust zone from earlier today. That may help out some and I may even have to make a map for it.
After a cold start to the week ahead, temps mild up for the middle of the week as a powerhouse of a storm rolls our way from Thursday through Saturday. This is a big rain and wind maker and may produce a few thunderstorms ahead of it and snowflakes behind it…
The following week will have another bumpy ride with a temp surge and temp drop with another storm system moving in. The pattern leading up to Christmas and into Christmas week has a chance to turn special across the country. Arctic air gets back into the pattern with an active storm track…
I will update things later today. For now, here are your tracking toys for the rest of this winter storm…
Fort Campbell
Kentucky/Tennessee border on I-65
Bowling Green
Pine Mountain
Jenkins
Mountain Parkway near Slade
Richmond
South Lexington
Morehead
Make it a good one and take care.
Thanks. Chris! Get some rest!
“This was a storm everyone had totally written off as missing Kentucky.”
Simply not true. Your spin is incredible. If this had been written off, there would have been no advisories. All the NWS offices and local mets had this in the forecast…some for more than a week. Maybe you didn’t agree with their timing or forecast, but no one wrote it off. In fact, you were the only one trying to take any small amount of model data and spin it to imply it would get into Lexington. A 0-1″ forecas? Nothing more than a simple but safe hedge, because you know that could be interpreted correct either way.
Garthe, If your not a fan I would kindly suggest you find another team you can cheer for. Who goes to a game to boo?
Garthe, youre simply an diot
Idiot
Wymt Mets completely wrote this storm off on Friday. That’s a FACT
Yep, they did.
They’re a young group currently it seems, gotta take some bumps along the way up sometimes lol.
Garthe must be a Bill Meck burner account at best or a raging fool at worst.
Party on Garthe. It’s daring to speak truth to power.
Except Garthe is a liar, and you a fool.
Another typical central ky winter on tap, ladies and gentlemen. Full of “potential “ hits two weeks out, then nothing. Plenty of cold rains though. However, a warm winter after Christmas, and an early spring may be in the fold, so that’s a positive!!!
My goodness. We haven’t even hit the first day of winter. There’s one thing that never changes each winter: the ridiculous debbie downer comments section on this site.
Another ignorant comment.
Hmmmmm, Here’s a newsflash for you Jim B… It isn’t even winter, its still fall…lol… Unbelievable…. whining about winter during the fall…lol BTW.. I received 5 inches of snow.. Yay for me 🙂 I love reading comments on this page. I actually laugh out loud a lot. Some of you winter fanatics are way out there… The worst winter fans are those that believe the long range forecasts models are set in stone and blame Chris when the storms vacate to Key West.. lol There’s a fine line between Weather fanatics and Kardashian fans…. Cray Cray…lol
If this is a indicator of the kind of storms we are gonna see this winter, with southern storms, then it could be a interesting winter. I bet we see a few hit area wide if this pattern continues thru the winter months.
I agree Jackson. People are up in arms about this storm lol. We’ve not even hit winter yet. It’s been a long time since late fall and winter has started off like this. I’m excited about the possibilities this winter.
All I want at this point is for this depressing miserable rain to move out of here and have no less than a week stretch of dry sunny weather. Unfortunately, in the rainiest year on record, I guess that’s too much to ask. Another 3-4 months (or more) of this continued misery in addition to the last 12 may be near unbearable.
Not sure where the line was but nothing in Richmond – only a touch of cold mist.
Richmond was never getting anything, so…..
A guy can dream and hope for the “northwest shift” we used to get a lot…
AND just adding to the body of knowledge – lots of “radar only” snow. Human input helps.
Remember those models showing 17 inches for Charlotte? They actually forecasted up to 8 inches and yet they get maybe an inch or less. Here’s the webcam.
https://pixelcaster.com/live/carowinds/https/cam1.html
Thanks Chris for all you do and for all the updates. Now go get some well deserved rest.
Future Radar showing some potential snow around Ashland this evening from 4-6. Could Ashland end up seeing a dusting from this after all? Someone check out that radar and chime in!
Something has to be done to predict the warm nose in se ky, surely there is a mountain top, where the nws can put a weather station to get better readings to put into the models. I mean this is an not only an issue for ky, but over the line in tenn aswell. Time and time again, we’re better than that in 2018.
Looks like around an inch has fallen here, with around 3 inches on the ridges. Not a total bust but definitely not the 21 inches some of the models were spitting out.
Closing in on 4 inches in my yard at a low elevation in NE Pike County and still snowing pretty hard.
Closing in on 1 inch of liquid since midnight in Knox This includes snow/ice melt.
I’m all for snow but if that had all been heavy wet snow or worse ICE it wouldn’t have been good for some folks.
Love the blog keep up the good work Chris.
Ended up with close to 6 inches on the lower elevations of my property but upward of 8 inches at the highest elevation on the property.
Wish it would’ve been more area wide for all the snow lovers but this snow lover is happy for a Mid-December snow.
Was smack dab in the middle of the warm pocket once again. Knox is an odd place. Usually misses out on the Lexington snows and I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve seen snows skirt by 30 miles south through Middlesboro. Some models where showing double digits snows just hours before and we pretty much have nothing. Long live the dome.
I hope at least some of my fellow snow lovers were pleased today. In Putnam Co. WV not a single flake. This Winter is already to a bad start, like last two years. Just heavy rain and backside flurries. I also more comments about the warm bubble of air in SE. Kentucky. Typically that warm wedge extends up to I64 in WV.