Good Tuesday everyone and thanks for making KWC your stop for weather. I warned you things would get a little wild this week and Monday delivered the goods. Hail producing thunderstorms rolled across the state as our pattern kicks into overdrive this week and next. We have several big systems to track for the Christmas holiday period and these will directly impact our weather.

The next system will be another wild one as it arrives late Wednesday night and Thursday. A powerful low will work from the southern plains into the Great Lakes. That will drag a cold front across the state Thursday and this is going to raise a ruckus.

Ahead of the front: Showers and thunderstorms with temps in the 50s.

Behind the front: Snow showers and squalls and temps dropping into the upper 20s and low 30s.

That’s the progression of our weather from Thursday morning into early Thursday evening. The cold air will be announced by winds gusting from 40-50mph in during the afternoon and evening and that may cause some problems.

Snow showers, squalls and flurries will then fill the air Thursday night into Friday…

That setup will produce blizzard conditions across parts of the Lakes and could cause serious problems for Chicago. Their historic snow drought could come crashing down in a big way.

Northwesterly winds will pick up moisture from the very warm Lake Michigan and keep snow showers and flurries going across central and eastern Kentucky through much of Friday. I do expect some light accumulations out of all this. Even the GFS has finally latched on to this idea…

Temps Friday will be in the upper 20s and low 30s with gusty winds making it feel closer to 10 degrees.

The next system we have to watch looks to arrive just in time for Christmas. This is likely to be a moisture laden and energetic storm that has a major impact on holiday travelers around here and for millions of people. Low pressure is likely to work into the Tennessee Valley Christmas Day and then give way to a stronger low just to our east. The Canadian Model shows this very well..

That could get very messy across our region with snow, rain and ice before snow takes over as the second low emerges to our east.

Looking ever farther down the road we find the CFS singing a different tune than the one it gave us for this month. The model correctly forecast our massive torch of the past three weeks but now says the ice man cometh as we end the year and say hi to 2013…

Β Β Here’s what it shows for the entire month of January…

Β It looks like that model is replaying the winter of 1984/85. Brrr!

I will have another update later today. Make it a great Tuesday and take care.