Good Tuesday, everyone. A HUGE weather change is blowing across Kentucky in the form of an arctic front. This front is ushering in an early season extended period of cold weather. As I’ve said, it’s a pattern that looks straight out of the heart of winter.

Let’s start with today’s front and take it from there. The temps will be the big storm of the day as we may end up with a 30 degree difference from west to east. Parts of eastern Ky may hit 70 this afternoon as the west drops through the 40s and into the upper 30s. That drop in temps will then work eastward along and just behind the front. A gusty line of showers will accompany this front…

Current temperatures

Colder winds will then blow overnight into Wednesday. Most areas wake up to upper 20s and low 30s with a recovery toward the low 40s. The real cold arrives Thursday and may bring a few snow flurries with it. Highs Thursday and Friday will likely stay in the low and mid 30s. Lows by Friday may drop all the way into the upper teens and low 20s.

From that point, it’s all eyes on the potential for some weekend snow. The models continue to advertise a system coming from the southwest and skirting by to our south and east. That’s usually a good track for some flakes around here. The recent runs of the GFS are pretty bullish on the potential for snow around here. Here’s the current version of the GFS…

GFS

Here’s the snowfall forecast from that run…

GFS Snow

There is a new version of the GFS that’s set to take over from the current model. It’s running as a parallel version until it fully takes over later in December. Here’s what it shows…

GFS 2 GFS Snow 2

It offers up a similar solution to what the current GFS shows. Notice the increased resolution in this model run compared to the “old” GFS… it really shows up with the snowfall forecasts. Speaking of those snowfall forecasts… they vary greatly from run to run so don’t get too attached to them. 😉

With both models putting snow on the ground, they are also going to show some very cold mornings that follow. Here’s the soon to be “old” GFS…

GFS Temps

The newer version looks even colder…

GFS Temps 2

In order for temps to get THAT cold, you would definitely need snow on the ground. That is most certainly NOT a given, so let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. It’s only Tuesday and we have a lot of model twists and turns to go through before the weekend. As I’ve been saying, the cold is a certainty, the snow is not.

Still, we are tracking the potential for winter weather way earlier than we normally do.

I will update things later today. Have a great day and take care.