Merry Christmas everyone. The big day is going to be a busy one in the wonderful world of weather as a major winter storm begins to take shape to our southwest. This storm heads our way later tonight and Wednesday and will bring a nasty mix of snow, rain, ice and wind. For that reason… the blog is now in Winter Storm Alert mode.

This is a difficult storm to breakdown, but here goes nothing:

– The models have been trending south and east with the track of the lead low into the Tennessee Valley and southern Ohio Valley. This track is actually starting to look more and more like what the models were initially showing. I suspect further adjustments on the track will be forthcoming on the models today.

– The farther south and east this low tracks before handing off to a mid atlantic low, the better the chance of snow across our part of the world.

– As of now… rain will develop late tonight across much of central and eastern Kentucky with mainly snow in the west. Some freezing rain and sleet is very possible along and north of Interstate 64 Wednesday morning.

– Heavy snow and wind will be likely across western sections of the state and blizzard conditions may develop. This has the potential to be a shutdown storm for some areas there. Far northern Kentucky near Covington may also get in on some of this. Louisville may be thisclose to that action.

– As the lead low works east, cold air will funnel in from the west, rain and mix will change to all snow in central and eastern Kentucky from late morning through the afternoon. There could be a period of moderate to heavy snow somewhere across north central Kentucky.

– Here’s the First Call For Snowfall…

Special– Those numbers and lines are NOT set in stone and I will fine tune them later today as we see what other tricks the models have in store. We will really need to watch the area from Louisville to Covington. The waffle zone may run right through this area and it wouldn’t take much to get the snow max zone to set up here. On the flip side… it wouldn’t take much to get the lower numbers here either.

– I want to remind you that a lot can still change and that will greatly impact the numbers I have out. Will the eastward trend continue and keep pushing the higher numbers east? Time will tell.

– Winds will be a major player with gusts of 30 to 40mph over the next few days.

I will have updates through the day and will be back on WKYT-TV this evening with the very latest. Let’s leave you on an upbeat Christmas note…

Merry Christmas and take care.