Good Friday to one and all. The pattern taking shape for the next few weeks is a very interesting one that can produce a lot of rain across our part of the world. That includes our Christmas week that has the look of wet instead of white. Let’s get into this wet and mainly mild setup.

At least we have the seasonal cold we have out there today. The cold may also be accompanied by a few flurries fluttering by the skies of central and eastern Kentucky. The best chance is in the north and east, and those spots may even see a true snow shower or two.

Saturday features sunny skies with upper 30s to around 40 in the east with the 40s returning to the west. Temps continue to climb on Sunday as clouds filter in by afternoon. Those clouds will put down some rain across our region Sunday night and Monday. Locally heavy downpours will be possible.

The next system the develops across the plains and pushes very mild air in here for Wednesday and early Thursday. Highs could reach the 60s before falling behind the departing Christmas eve storm. Rain is likely during this time.

GFS

Here’s what the same model run shows for Christmas morning…

GFS 2That’s basically a calm day with 30s when Santa rides into town.

Things quickly turn crazy as we get just past Christmas into the weekend. Temps are going to initially surge as a big storm system develops across the plains and slowly works our way. The latest runs of the Canadian and GFS continue to mirror one another with a healthy temperature gradient and plenty of heavy rain. Here’s the GFS setup…

GFS 5

Temps swing back and forth along that temperature gradient, but that run shows us on the cool side of the boundary next weekend…

GFS Temps

That’s Saturday afternoon on the top with Sunday afternoon on the bottom. The Canadian shows the same healthy gradient…

Canadian

If that kind of gradient does setup… if… that’s how you get cold season flood events in our part of the world. Indeed, the Canadian shows some 5″+ amounts on this latest run…

Canadian 3

The GFS through the next two weeks…

GFS 4

The European Ensembles for the next month is all over a busy pattern continuing…

Euro 3

That’s an Ensemble average of precipitation totals and that’s impressive!

All that Ohio Valley stuff is very atypical of a strong or super El Nino… but this is no typical El Nino. It’s in a class all its own, so let’s see what crazy stuff it throws us before it totally collapses in a few short months.

I will have another update later today. Make it a good one and take care.