Good evening, folks. Big changes are pushing into the region and this could cause some travel issues for Thursday morning. This continues to look like the beginning of a very harsh period of winter weather around here and across much of the country.

Our front swings in tonight with snow showers and squalls developing early Thursday. Much of central and eastern Kentucky could pick up a coating to 1″ of wind blown snow. Locally higher amounts are possible for areas getting in on repeat intense squalls. These will reduce visibility and cause slick roads early tomorrow.

I’m still watching for the potential for a band of light snow and flurries by Friday afternoon and evening. That continues to show up on the NAM future radar…

NAMThe next arctic front rolls in for Valentine’s Day and will likely include much better coverage of snow showers and squalls. That will be directly behind the arctic front and travel issues are likely once again as winds blow the snow around.

Temps may rise just ahead of that front and then TANK as soon as the boundary slips trough. Wind gusts of 30-35mph will be possible and that means wind chills going below zero Saturday evening into Sunday morning.

Basically, I have no changes on how the next 4 days of weather plays out.

What happens beyond that continues to get my attention. I posted several days ago that the pattern for next week looked primed to produce a winter storm from the midwest into the Ohio Valley. This potential is still showing up on the various computer forecast models.  The European Model snowfall forecast for the next week…

Euro SnowThe late afternoon run of the GFS has a similar tone…

GFS

The European Ensembles for the same time…

EuroIf you really want to have some fun with the models, let’s expand the European Ensembles to show what it thinks will fall over the next two weeks…

Euro 2The theme on the model is for busy, busy winter period from the Rockies due eastward to the Mid Atlantic States.

Your friendly disclaimer: take the model forecasts with a grain of salt from this far out. 🙂

I will have a full update later tonight. Until then… track away…

Take care.