Good Saturday, everyone. Low pressure is working across the state, bringing gusty rains and the potential for some snowflakes to fly by tonight. This continues to be part of the hyper-active pattern I’ve been yapping about and things look busy into Thanksgiving week. The tail end of the big holiday weekend sees changes settle in and those will likely lead us into a lot of winter weather for December.
Rain increases quickly from southwest to northeast this morning and could be heavy at times, especially in the southeast. Winds will also be gusty with one heck of a temperature spread from one side of our low to the other.
Regional radar should be rather colorful today…
The potential is there for a comma head of snow to develop on the backside of our low, but much of that looks to be north of the Ohio River. Still, that may deliver a glancing shot to far northern Kentucky. As the upper low moves over central and eastern Kentucky this evening and tonight, some snow showers and flurries are likely to fly…
Can some areas get a some slush from that? Sigh… It’s possible, I suppose, but don’t hold your breath on it.
That action moves away fairly quickly on Sunday, but chilly temps remain. Gusty winds through the weekend will make it feel colder than what your thermometer shows.
As we head into Thanksgiving week, we continue to see the models going back toward the big plains storm idea. I warned you this would happen with the models… They can’t handle all this energy, especially during the seasonal change period.
Here’s the low on the GFS…
For us, that looks to be a big wind maker from Tuesday into Wednesday…
This will also produce showers and a couple of thunderstorms as the front moves in. Colder air comes in behind that, but it’s only a seasonal brand of cold that takes us through Thanksgiving Day.
A weak system coming out of the southwest tries to make a run at us on Wednesday…
That likely falls apart, but it bears watching. From there, we have to watch the setup coming late in our holiday weekend. That’s when another big storm system develops in the plains and pushes east. This storm will be the catalyst to unlock arctic air into the first week of December. You can see this on the GFS…
The European Model is very similar…
Things are likely to get very interesting in December.
One more time (I promise), 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…
I will have updates later today, so check back. Have a good one and take care.
I will gladly take some more bonus flakes, all be it likely no accumulation except maybe on top of Black and Pine Mt.
Hopefully December will be colder. For snow lovers we still need that Subtropical jet to phase with the Polar jet over the southern Rockies to get training snowstorms through the rest of the Winter. One can only hope that this weather pattern will set up. If this weather pattern doesn’t happen, in my opinion the coming Winter will be a repeat of last Winter, but maybe not as rainy.
Two takeaways from your winter weather forecast show…bold prediction for severe storms event applies ONLY to December through February? Reason for asking is because your snow prediction is being applied from November through April. If you apply the same scale to severe storms event (from November through April), this would not be a bold prediction.
Secondly, you threw out the 1939 analog, one you spoke spoke of with excitement, because more recent analogs perhaps have a better correlation to today’s climate, are you still keeping 1939 in your hand, ready to play it on a moment’s notice?
As many of us recall, early 2012 was quite active from a severe weather standpoint. Many tornado warnings were issued in both January and February of that year, especially Feb 29.
Then of course, March 2 2012 was the biggest tornado outbreak in Kentucky since the Super Outbreak of 1974.