Good Wednesday, all.We have one more chilly day to get through before our pattern takes a walk on the mild side of life. Thermometers are set to head toward the low 60s late this weekend into early next week. As that’s taking place, a strong cold front will be marching our way to put an end to the mild period.

The forecast for the next several days is pretty straightforward. Temps today will stay in the 40s with partly sunny skies. Readings will rebound toward the low 50s on Thursday then keep trending up through the weekend.Temps should hit 60 or better for a few days through the first few days of next week.

60s in December? Oh no!!! Can we just go ahead and cancel winter? I mean… 60s in December NEVER happens around here… right? Out of the past 41 Decembers in Lexington… 33 of them had temps of 60 degrees or better. Even the historic winters of the 1970s had 60s in December. Moral of the story is to chill. 😉

Speaking of chill… that’s exactly what the models are suggesting happens around here by this time next week. The GFS shows the deepest and coldest solution…

The GFS Ensemble Mean has more of a broad trough swinging through, but is still rather cold looking for a day or two…

I think the GFS is overdone with the trough as I expect it to be more transient. That should be followed up by a deeper trough sometime during the December 7th- 14th time frame. That’s the one likely to get the real deal winter started. 

On a related note… It’s the time of year when the weather complaint department goes into overload. The common complaint is that it never snows around here and we don’t have winters like we used to. How about we use Lexington as a point of reference to debunk that myth:

– The winter of 2010/11 was the 9th snowiest on record with 27″ of snow.

– The calendar year of 2010 was the 8th snowiest on record with 34.3″.

–  February 2010 was the 5th snowiest on record.

– December 2010 was the 5th snowiest on record.

– 2009/10 had an average temp of 30.4 degrees with 23.7″ of snow. That was the coldest winter since 1978/79.

– 2010/11 had an average temp of 31.5 degrees with 27″ of snow.

– 09/10 and 10/11 were the coldest and snowiest back to back winters since the 1970s.

As you can see, some of our recent winters have been great for snow and cold. I think some people have unrealistic expectations about how winter goes around here. This is Kentucky, not Michigan. 😉

Have a great day and take care.