Heavy Rain Potential

Good Thursday, folks. First things first… for those of you that got to see some sunshine Wednesday it was AMAZING! Folks in southern & eastern Kentucky had to deal with clouds for alot longer than the rest of us. The good news is… it only kept temps in the mid and upper 50s. So it really wasn’t that bad at all. I knew those showers would hold on longer than some of the data suggested. We talked about that yesterday. Now to track the next round into Kentucky.

Another system will be coming our way and bring heavy rain potential to the area. There is a little battle in the atmosphere that will be setting up as we head into Friday and Saturday. The battle will determine the length of time that we see heavier rain. Here’s just a simple way to look at it here.

The low will first open up with showers extending well out in front of it as we move into Friday. Those initial showers will have some of your general rain potential with maybe a few moderate bands. Overall, it will be what falls from Friday morning and Saturday that has the heaviest potential.

Tracking the trajectory of the heavier rain will depend on a couple of things here.

The High

An area of high pressure will begin to set-up somewhere very close to the east coast of the United States. It’s part of the atmospheric battle. A high in that position will push the system a little more westward. If that’s that case then we’ll see some of the heavier rains take the track that I have highlighted as #1. That’s not an absolute path, but it’s there to give you a general idea of what could happen. While this path would include heavy rain potential… it doesn’t mean that we would see it for nearly as long. The heaviest axis of precip would fall across far Western Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and then back into Northern and Central Kentucky. So yes… some would see some of the heavy rain. The arrows here are used to show us how each will impact the track of this wall of water.

The Low

The area of low pressure and it counterparts will also be working against the high. If it can dig a little deeper a little faster it could alter the path of the heaviest rainfall. The low would be quicker to bend the swath of heavier precipitation rather than taking it more westerly. That would mean some of the heavier rains would be in Central Kentucky from the onset and for most of the duration of this event. Even some of our data is picking sides on which area really wins.

With the GFS you can see that the heavy rainfall meanders a little more easterly than the other two runs. It then catches up to where the others have some of the heaver rainfall. All of them have a very heavy swath in parts of Kentucky. Again, the reason that this 1-3″ is such a concern is because of the very wet conditions that we have already experienced. Expect any flood prone areas to see water issues. If some of the isolated high amounts dance closer to 3 or higher we could be looking at worsening conditions. I do want to say that I am not onboard with any of these yet. I’ll post my own version of this Thursday night. Almost like my First Call for snowfall.. I’ll draw it out by hand.

I keep mentioning that we haven’t seen the last flake of snow for this season. With some of the cold that comes our way next week AND some moisture that wll be lurking in our area we could see some of that try to come together next week. It’s nothing impressive at this point, but it’s just the thought of tracking more cold and a flake or two after seeing 65 plus in some cases on Monday.

Temperatures will run below normal next week. This image shows the odds of that happening and it’s actually one that I agree with. How low do we go? At this point our average high varies across Kentucky, but it generally from 53-58 should cover most. I think we are around 5-10 below average by the second half of next week. It could be even cooler. This is an early estimation. Models have not handled this warm up very well at all. Some are too high and some have been too cool. It’s finding the median and riding along it that will keep you in the realm of possibility.

I’ll have more for you later today.

Take Care