Good Thursday to one and welcome to trick or treat time in the bluegrass!!!! Many cities through the area will be holding the famous pilgrimage for candy tonight so get ready to see ghosts and goblins making the rounds. If you city picked tonight for trick or treat… they hit the weather jackpot as conditions look awesome!
Some little ones will be making their rounds Friday evening and that looks good too. It is Halloween Saturday that looks like it could be on the damp and chilly side. I can remember as a kid not caring what the weather was like because I wanted one thing and one thing only… CANDY! 
Let’s get into greater detail now about the weather for the next several days and into the first week of November.
As mentioned… today and Friday look great with mild temps and partly sunny skies. Highs today will warm toward 70 in most areas with low 70s likely on Friday. A nice breeze will be with us today with winds really kicking up Friday ahead of a strong cold front that crosses the region during the first part of Saturday.
Some of the models had been going rouge in trying to develop a strong low along this front and moving it right on top of us through Saturday night. The GFS was the prime culprit in showing this but has since thrown up the white flag and surrendered to the rest of the modeling world. It now shows what everything else shows… a weak wave moving northward along the front that moves through early Saturday. Take a looksy…
GFS Saturday Afternoon
With this setup… much colder air moves in during the day from west to east behind the front. Highs will come before daybreak in most areas as afternoon temps fall into the upper 40s as showers slowly taper off from west to east. When the rain ends at your house is till up in the air. 
Seasonably chilly air moves in behind our front and the European Model has been consistent in showing this…
The complete forecast looks like this…
Temps for Sunday will hit the low and mid 30s to start and recover only into the upper 40s to low 50s for the first day of November. Temps for much of next week should be on the chilly side as a northwesterly flow continues. A weak system will dive in here around Tuesday and that’s something we will watch. Beyond that… the GFS goes out on it’s own yet again. I have been talking about this a lot in recent days because the model differences are pretty substantial.
The European wants to keep systems rolling into a trough across the eastern part of the country. You can see a more impressive push of cold moving into the country by next Wednesday morning…
Now check out the differences aloft between the European Model and the GFS for next Saturday November 7th…
European
GFS
Those forecasts look NOTHING alike as the European says keep a tough and cold in the eastern US while the GFS says go warm with a ridge.
The pattern across the Pacific Ocean is throwing the models for a loop as they are really not sure on what the heck to do with everything that is going on. If you are looking purely at which model has the best physics to handle all of it and make something close to a correct forecast… the European Model wins running away. That’s not saying it is correct, though.
One thing to ask yourselves… at what point over the past few weeks or even this whole year as the pattern given us a look like the GFS is showing? The short answer is it hasn’t! There is something to be said about persistence in pattern forecasting. At least until it says the ride is over.
Another update coming later this afternoon. Have a great day and take care.
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thanks for keeping us updated CB! and yes, those two maps are very contradicting to one another will be interesting to see which, if either is right.
Good morning everyone. I don’t know which I wish would go away, more rain or chilly temps. Okay, both can leave and give us a prolonged Indian summer.
My other half asked me if I had heard about getting 2-4 inches of rain this weekend. I told him I hadn’t. He asked me what Chris was saying about it as the weather channel was indicating it was ark building time. 🙂 I felt so wise, I told him Chris said to disregard the GFS model.
Shane…you still around?
Yeah, what’s up?
I wanted your opinion on November 7. Chris thinks polar bears are about to move into KY at any time. I think we are going to see temps. start trending milder compared to average. You seem to be in the middle most of the time. What is your take on that weekend?
Well, our trick or treat is on Saturday night, as far as I know….since my kids are grown, I don’t pay that much attention..I just buy candy and have it ready. 😉
I am guessing that this front that is headed our way will probably bring down most of the leaves, right? So, in our neck of the woods, if you want to see the glorious fall colors, my advice is to take a ride today and tomorrow, or you may miss them. Chris, I am going to send you some pictures of this area later tonight.
Looking forward to the next update!
The fog is ALMOST completely gone here
i see no reference to polar bears i must have missed that 😉
I think that’s a bit of an overstatement about Polar Bears in KY :P.
Anyways my personal take on the situation… GFS is going to zonal for this next week. Chris was spot on with his assessment that we haven’t seen that kind of flow around here in a long time.
The Euro is showing troughing, but just judging by the height lines I wouldn’t expect anything brutal cold. However looking at the latest run of the Euro, it’s not showing the big time troughing for next Saturday.
http://www.ecmwf.int/products/forecasts/d/getchart/catalog/products/forecasts/medium/deterministic/msl_uv850_z500!Geopotential%20500%20hPa!216!North%20America!pop!od!oper!public_plots!2009102900!!chart.gif
It to is going with a Zonal flow, but look how different that is from one run ago. That shows me that even the Euro is having a heck of a time handling the overall pattern.
Considering the models are having so little consistency I think it’s going to be pretty hard to put a forecast together for next Saturday. I hate forecasting out of the 7-day period… but I’m going with how the overall pattern has been the last few weeks. That pattern has been a frontal system rolling through about every 3-4 days or so.
So going off that, what the models are showing… and a little of your favorite gut instinct. I think we see rain for Halloween, the models are passing another week front through Tues/Wed… Saturday or Sunday would be the time for another system to pass if the pattern holds. Temps would probably be about 5-10 degrees below average if a system moves through for highs.
At this point though I think it’s really too far out to be guessing what’s going down with the models in the tiz they’re in… but that’s my take on the situation.
Just wrote a wall of text but it got caught in moderation. Hopefully Chris will approve it later. Shorthand of it… models are in no agreement at all, the ensembles have no consistency… it’s a craps shoot. Following the pattern we’ve been in… next Saturday would be about the time another system would move through considering we’ve been seeing them about every 3-4 days as of late.
I’m teasing.
NAM says we bottom out at 48 this weekend. GFS says 45. WRF is coming in afterwhile, but last night’s run looked similar. If those are our 7:00 temps, then the afternoons won’t be bad at all. My prediction of 58 for gametime Saturday night (from 8 days out) is still looking great.
So right now you’re just going to play it safe and not really make a call. It is tough, but sometimes you have to use what you know about the patterns we see here. I still think the Euro is nuts and should be thrown in the trash. But we shall see. I would like to see a DRY Friday for a change!!
I actually have a call in the comment that got moderated. I think we will see a front passing through, so rain in the forecast with highs 5-10 degrees off averages. If you want a specific forecast for Lexington I’ll say “, 40% Chance of Showers, otherwise Mostly Cloudy, High of 56, Low of 47.”
Could be a soggy afternoon or evening for folks near the TN boarder… widespread showers going up through TN along the warm front. None of the models were showing that at all.
Once again a comment caught in moderation. You want a forecast for next Saturday, Mostly Cloudy with a 40% chance showers. Highs in the Mid to Upper 50’s with lows in the mid to upper 40’s.
I agree. Maybe a slightly lower POP, but otherwise I agree. I really do hope it’s a nice weekend (I’m going to be camping in a tent).
gonna wash my car so it will rain 😉