Good afternoon everyone. A tropical air mass has moved into Kentucky bringing warm and moist aire to the sate. Look for scattered showers and storms to fire up during the afternoon… especially for areas that get the most sun. Locally heavy rains will be possible with these storms.

Have a great afternoon and take care.

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SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WATCH UNTIL 8AM FOR PARTS OF CENTRAL AND WESTERN KY

Good Thursday everyone. Our stormy pattern just could not stay away very long as it made a return visit Wednesday and will now stay hang around into the coming weekend. Strong and severe storms and the chance for more flooding rains will be the focus of the forecast in the coming days.

The rains Wednesday said a lot to me. The atmosphere continues in that “supercharged” mode and anytime it has a the slightest chance to produce rain… it does. Some areas picked up some amounts close to an inch in late Wednesday… mainly in northeastern Kentucky. Impressive and mother nature kicked the snot out of the models that missed it.

As of this writing… radar is lighting up with a big time severe weather outbreak just to our west and northwest. A squall line of thunderstorms will continue racing toward us into the first part of this Thursday. I am thinking it may hold together long enough to give us some strong or severe storms. Here is your daily dose of radars to track these storms…







Here is the latest overall severe map from the Storm Prediction Center…

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Even if the line itself weakens out as it moves in… more storms will likely crank up as we go through the day. We have a ton of moisture in the air as our atmosphere is going tropical for a few days. This means heavy rains are almost a given at this point with any shower or thunderstorm that goes up through the weekend.  Each day will feature showers and storms with Saturday into Sunday having a shot at widespread heavy rains and storms as a wave of low pressure moves across the region.

The rain forecast from the GFS through the weekend is sickening to look at as it gives some of the flood ravaged areas of eastern Kentucky some 4″ of rain…



IF that map is anywhere close to being right… well… I don’t even want to think about that to be honest. I can tell you that If I am a forecaster at the NWS I am strongly considering doing something out of the ordinary and putting out a long duration Flood or Flash Flood Watch for the areas that received the worst flooding this past weekend. Why? Well, why not? Let’s say one thunderstorm develops over Breathitt County, for instance, at any time the next few days and dumps a quick inch of rain. It will cause flash flooding and it would do the same in a number of counties right now.

The rains will begin to shut off later Sunday allowing for some very chilly air to move in and hang tough into Monday.

I will have updates as needed through the day so be sure to check back. You can also follow along on Twitter which appears in the top right hand corner of the blog page. Sign up to receive updates through your cell phone free of charge!

Have a great day and take care.