Good Sunday, folks. More rounds of showers and storms will target the bluegrass state today and into the start of the week ahead. Just like the past several days, some storms may be strong and put down too much rain. By the middle and end of the week, the pattern changes, but will still feature a daily threat for a shower or storm.
As usual, we begin with today. You’re going to get plenty of dry times, but any storm that goes up may be strong or severe. The same goes for any complex of storm working in here from the west and northwest. Here’s today’s Severe Weather Outlook from the Storm Prediction Center…
The same can be said for the storms floating about the region on Monday…
Heavy rains will continue to bring a flash flood threat to the region. Obviously, it’s not raining all the time, but you know the drill by now.
Looking into next week, storms become more scattered, but the chance for showers and storms is with us every stinking day. I know you’re shocked.
All of this is going to continue to add to our incredibly wet year that has our rainfall numbers WAY, WAY above normal…
Don’t worry, as soon as it doesn’t rain for a few days, the garbage drought monitor will tell you that we are abnormally dry and beginning a drought. 🙂
The temperature trend for June to date as been cooler than normal across Kentucky and across much of the country…
The numbers next week are closer to where we should be to wrap up June, but there has been a growing signal for another cooler than normal shot around the 4th of July. Several of the Ensembles have been hinting at this and now the operational models are going that way. This is one heck of a trough on the GFS…
Summer? What summer?
Here are your Sunday storm trackers…
Possible Watch Areas
Make it a great day and take care.
Not a fun Summer for anyone. Two feet of snow fell yesterday somewhere in the great state of Colorado, Rockies. I guess they will be playing in the snow on the fourth of July out there. I never heard of that much snow even in the high Rockies for early Summer. Getting back to the Ohio Valley weather, dense fog this morning and maybe when that lifts later we will see the Sun before that complex of storms in the southern plains gets here later. Hopefully, not severe ?
A week break from rain can’t come soon enough. Pop up t-showers are fine, just no deluge on a daily basis. Heat and humidity are music to my ears.
And sweat to my body LOL
On this date in history back in 1944 was the so-called Appalachians Tornado Outbreak. West Virginia alone had at least 133 fatalities, by far that state’s deadliest day from tornadoes since records started. Maryland and Pennsylvania were also hard hit, including an F4 just outside of downtown Pittsburgh PA.
Rugged terrain can often interfere with tornado genesis, but in this 1944 case it appears there were ideal conditions over adjacent flat topography including Ohio. The storms then moved southeast (a rather unusual direction) into northern West Virginia where the twisters traversed the mountains with little trouble.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1944_Appalachians_tornado_outbreak
But on average climatologically, the tornado threat thankfully becomes a reduced threat during the summer months for more southern states like Kentucky, Tennessee and into the Deep South. Neither KY nor TN have ever recorded a single tornado fatality during the month of July.
Also on this date in history was when West Virginia experienced its horrific flood event that centered on White Sulphur Springs, WV just a few years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_West_Virginia_flood
Unlike tornadoes, flash flooding can remain a significant threat well into the summer for our area. Areas near Johnson County KY were the target of devastating flooding in July of 2015. A somber reminder to take NWS flood warnings seriously.
I live in the hills north of Campbellsville, Kentucky and the terrain is rugged and the only funnel cloud I’ve seen in the eleven years I been living here was late last June. Definitely rotation but no touch down but was heading towards E Town.
I stumbled across an interesting online article about a decade ago. Can’t remember the source and I’ve been unable to find it since. Sure wish I had at least bookmarked the link. Anyway, in rugged areas very close to flat terrain, that rugged topography can still get many strong tornadoes. Examples were tornado prone rugged areas of eastern Oklahoma, the Ozarks in Arkansas and Missouri, and rugged areas of Alabama…. all are very close to flat terrain.
On the other hand, storms moving northeast into southern West Virginia go over so much rough terrain that tornadoes in southern West Virginia are relatively rare. But rare exceptions can occur as was the F4 tornado that traversed southern West Virginia during the m-a-s-s-i-v-e April 3-4 1974 Super Outbreak.
Same in Harlan…just too many mts west of me. Areas like West Liberty are both closer to the flattered terrain to the west and lower in elevation than Harlan. Sometimes, the mts are so bad in Harlan that literally the entire state will see severe weather and it want even rain here as the storms are fully shredded by the time they reach Bell co. If you like storms, YOU WOULD HATE HARLAN….AMOUNG OTHER REASONS FOR NOT WANTING TO LIVE HERE, LOL
For Kentucky, tornado records going back to at least the 1880s show that areas that are both east of I-75 and south of I-64 have fewer and few tornadoes, although the March 2 2012 outbreak (including West Liberty) was a big exception. The higher elevations of southeastern KY are indeed especially lacking in stronger tornadoes.
But all other areas of Kentucky are more fair game for twisters.
A meteorologist at NWS Jackson KY mentioned back in 2012 that the March 2 2012 tornadoes moved in a more west to east direction rather than southwest to northeast so there was seemingly more relatively flat terrain for the storms to go over. This with the off the charts shear (and maybe lift, I’ve forgotten since 2012) made for a once in a lifetime outbreak in east Kentucky.
One of the few ways I see big tornadoes reaching southeastern KY is possibly to have a setup similar to the June 23 1944 outbreak mentioned earlier in today’s blog. Other than a few other examples like the 1988 F3 in Middlesboro Ky and the 1933 F4 at Pruden TN that then sputtered just shy of Middlesboro, not much (thankfully).
Have a great Sunday afternoon and evening everyone !
Well, to be fair, the new norm seems to be flooding rains every other day so that garbage drought monitor is just sniffing out dry conditions when we get an abnormally long 3+ days of dry weather…. lol
Yea, it’s been so very wet for so many years that I briefly checked out KWC blog posts during late summer into fall 2016. All that chat about how much we need rain, getting too dry, starting to get little brush fires, etc 😉 . Actually, there was a brush fire less than a mile from my parents’ home near Chattanooga, and other areas of TN and KY, then the horrific fires that autumn at Gatlinburg.
That second line of t-storms in western areas of Tennessee and Kentucky seems to mean business. Besides all the Severe T-Storm Watches, there have been a slew of Severe T-Storm Warnings and even a few Tornado Warnings even though the SPC has the tornado risk as low. Take care everybody.
Good to see the western line losing some of its punch. In its most recent update, the SPC had reduced the size of the Slight Risk area of potential severe weather. Several of the Severe T-Storm Watch areas in TN and KY have either been cancelled or shrunk.