Good Friday, everyone. Heavy rain is working across Kentucky early today with more rounds on the way tonight into Saturday. That’s when we also run the risk for a little winter weather to show up on the backside of low pressure working across the state.
In case you guys missed the winter forecast, the Kentucky Weather Podcast has the highlights and I talk about the whys behind the outlook. Give it a listen…
Let me begin with today and roll forward. Heavy rain is falling early today, especially across the southern half of the state. The rain will slow down from north to south as chilly air moves in, keeping us mainly dry from later this afternoon into the evening.
Here’s regional radar to be your early Friday BFF…
After a break into tonight, rain quickly returns early Saturday and continues through the day. That’s when low pressure works in from the southwest and rolls across the eastern half of Kentucky. Once the low passes to our northeast late Saturday, colder air sweeps in and could change the rain to some light snow or snow showers into early Sunday.
After a small hiccup in seeing this system, the NAM is back and showing the flake chances…
With that low, you’re going to see a big temp swing across the region. Check this out…
Gusty winds will add to the chill…
A seasonal chill will be in the air for Sunday as skies become partly cloudy.
As expected, the storm system for early Thanksgiving week continues to give the models fits. There continues to be a pattern with more energy than the models can handle. That’s a theme for the next week and change before arctic air takes control of the country once again.
The GFS went from a powerhouse plains storm to the weakest storm of all rolling into the Great Lakes…
The European and Canadian Models are similar with a stronger looking system than what they were showing with prior runs…
The systems coming in behind that are also wearing the models out and this will be the case until we get arctic air to flex some muscle. The signal continues to be strong with this one…
December has a chance to be our coldest and snowiest since 2010.
I will have updates later today, so check back. Until then, make it a good one and take care.
Chris: You really put together a very well thought out forecast! As always, we shall see, but I agree with with your prediction and greatly appreciate your time and dedication at WKYT and for this blog.
I know I am an outsider in saying this, but I am grateful for this rain event today and upcoming wetter pattern as it is still a little dry down here in Harlan, and this should prevent any forest fires….been blessed with almost 0 fires, especially considering how dry we were back in August and September:)
Your an outsider no doubt 😉 but we still need today’s rain desperately to make up for the past several months except October.
I agree with you Terry.
Thanks, Chris! I’ve checked out your winter predictions for years even though I’m outside the traditional WKYT viewing area.
It goes without saying that our part of the world has wide extremes in weather. The month of November is no exception.
On one end of extremes, there have been a few amazing November winter storms. The events of Nov 21-22 1952 are quite notable. Knoxville was buried under about a foot and a half of snow. Cars (no Interstates existed in 1952) and p-a-s-s-e-n-g-e-r trains were stranded south of Lexington well into Tennessee, including many people going to the UK-UT football game in Knoxville. BTW, ColdRain posted recently about another winter storm (November 1950) and I felt that link would be good here, too.
https://www.weather.gov/jkl/appalachianstorm1950
Comparison between the 1950 and 1952 events.
https://tennesseewx.com/index.php?topic=3071.0
On the other side of the extreme coin, November is on average a secondary tornado season for Kentucky and Tennessee. On roughly this date in 1992 was an outbreak that began in Mississippi and later included an F4 near Carrollton KY. November 2005 was especially active including an F4 at Madisonville KY. As Schroeder touched on earlier, November 2005 included the Henderson KY/Evansville IN twister that tragically hit a mobile home park. More recently were the Nov 2016 tornadoes in Tennessee in the wake of the widespread forest fires.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_1992_tornado_outbreak
Thanks, Chris! I’ve checked out your winter predictions for years even though I’m outside the traditional WKYT viewing area.
It goes without saying that our part of the world has wide extremes in weather. The month of November is no exception.
On one end of extremes, there have been a few amazing November winter storms. The events of Nov 21-22 1952 are quite notable. Knoxville was buried under about a foot and a half of snow. Cars (no Interstates existed in 1952) and p-a-s-s-e-n-g-e-r trains were stranded south of Lexington well into Tennessee, including many people going to the UK-UT football game in Knoxville. BTW, ColdRain posted recently about another winter storm (November 1950) and I felt that link would be good here, too.
https://www.weather.gov/jkl/appalachianstorm1950
Comparison between the 1950 and 1952 events.
https://tennesseewx.com/index.php?topic=3071.0
On the other side of the coin, November is on average a secondary tornado season for Kentucky and Tennessee. Starting on about this date in 1992 was an outbreak that began in Mississippi and later included an F4 near Carrollton KY. November 2005 was especially active including an F4 at Madisonville KY. As Schroeder touched on earlier, there was the Henderson KY/Evansville IN twister that unfortunately hit a mobile home park. More recently were the 2016 tornadoes in Tennessee in the wake of the forest fires.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_1992_tornado_outbreak
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_outbreak_of_November_15,_2005
Twisters in aftermath of Gatlinburg TN fires.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_outbreak_of_November_27–30,_2016
I did a little write-up the other day about the tornado outbreak that affected many in the Midwest around November 17, 2013. Many in western Kentucky will remember it, because a former uranium enrichment plant received EF-2 damage near Paducah while at times other locations experienced EF-3 damage
Nov 17 2013 sticks out in my mind. I was newly married and we were visiting her parents in Bowling Green.
We heard live reports (maybe via Twitter?) of the Paducah tornado p-a-s-s-i-n-g within sight of the NWS office/airport there.
At one point, all of us were on the back porch watching two different cloud layers at different altitudes doing rather impressive directional shear (roughly 20 degree difference). Then the tornado sirens went off although the detected rotation was in the far northwestern end of Warren County well away from us in Bowling Green. We were still prepared to squeeze into the crawlspace (many homes in the area have no basements due to the water table and/or rock layers below) but fortunately we did not need to take shelter.
Thanks TennMark for all your great information on past severe weather events.
This has nothing to do with the weather but I feel it should be noted. On this day November 22, 1963 the people of our Great Country The United States of America suffered a Great Loss. I was in the sixth grade when the news came out that cold rainy Friday. Very Very Sad Sad day that I will never forget.
Thanks Chris for your efforts on the blog. I enjoy my morning reads. Here’s hoping for a snowy cold winter!
Rain has now moved out of my county. With this event I recorded 1.29 inches in my backyard.
I saw the temperature outlook for December yesterday on the weather segment of a Chicago TV station news broadcast, and surprisingly, it shows much of the country – including the Midwest – averaging above normal for temps for Dec.
Chris showed a few days ago here on KWC about the blocking high that’s going to develop near Greenland in early Dec. that’s going to send waves of cold air across most of the country for at least the early and middle parts of Dec. If this happens, there’s no way in heck temps are going to average above normal for the month.
This will be interesting to follow to see what the temp trend will ultimately be.