Good Saturday, everyone. Another history making winter storm continues to have a huge impact on the weather across Kentucky. This storm continues to put down accumulating snows early today before pulling away to our east.
This was a mega snowstorm for much of Kentucky. Many areas picked up more than a foot of snow with several areas reaching 15″-18″ of snow on Friday alone. This amount of snow caused all kinds of issues, including stranding thousands of motorists along a shutdown Interstate 75.
Some random thoughts from an overworked mind…
– Let me start out by saying a BIG thank you for all the reports and tweets. You guys continue to be the backbone of everything I do, and I just love our weather family that continues to grow and grow. Thank you!!
– Wraparound snows continue across much of central and eastern Kentucky early today. As a matter of fact, many areas will pick up additional accumulations after I type this. Another 1″-4″ (locally higher east) will be possible through Noon. That could bring snow totals in some areas to 20″-24″. WOW!
– The snow tapers off this afternoon as the east coast blizzard pulls away. Winds will still be gusty and the drifts will continue to grow. Waist deep drifts are a good bet.
– Temps tonight will absolutely tank with a deep snowpack. Zero is possible If we can clear the skies out.
– I’m beyond thrilled with the snowfall forecast I had out. Things worked out about as good as I could have asked for. I’m also happy with the week away heads up I gave you guys on this potential storm. I know the usual suspects were talking their garbage, but are back in hiding after ANOTHER failed “gotcha” moment. They can keep obsessing with me and I’ll just keep doing my job. 😉
– Does anyone remember my BOLD prediction from my winter forecast back in November?
– This winter storm was the third system to drop a foot of snow across Kentucky in less than a year. Think about that one for a minute. 3 historic snowstorms in 11 months. That’s never happened in recorded history, and you we may never see it again in our lifetime.
– I spent a lot of time since last summer writing about how this Super El Nino was unlike anything we’ve ever seen. Telling anyone who would listen how different this was from the past Super Ninos. Can we finally put that argument to rest? This winter has been the polar opposite of the last big Nino of 1997-98.
Ok, enough randomness. Where do we go from here? A deep snowpack keeps cold air in place, so take the under on many forecast temps for Monday. That’s when a cold front moves our way with a mix of rain and snow showers…
Much colder air comes in behind this front into Tuesday, and we have to watch for low pressure to try and develop along this front. The Canadian is showing the potential…
I’ll give you a better look at next week and beyond with updates later today. Until then, let’s track what’s left of our wind driven major winter storm…
Hamburg Area from WKYT Studio
Lexington
I-75 @ Winchester Road
Lexington
I-75 @ Iron Works Pike
Lexington
I-75 @ Clays Ferry Bridge South
Between Lexington and Richmond
US 60 @ US 127 Frankfort
US 60 @ US 460
Frankfort
US 60 @ Chenault Road
Near Millville
I-75 MP 127
Georgetown
I-64 MP 97
Winchester
Mountain Parkway near Slade
I-71/I-75 at I-275
Near Covington
I-275 at Mineola Pike
Near Covington
I-275 approaching KY 20/Airport
Near Covington
Bluegrass Parkway Bardstown
I-65 MP 32
Downtown Louisville @ 2nd & Broadway
Louisville
I-64 @ I-264
Louisville
I-264 @ Freedom Way
Near Louisville International Airport
I-75 at MP 36
London
I-75 at MP 23
Corbin
-65 @ 234
Near Bowling Green
Natcher Parkway MP 5
Near Bowling Green
US 41A Gate 5 Fort Campbell Entrance
Fort Campbell
I-24 MP 4 @ US 60
Paducah
Louie B Nunn MP 3
Near Glasgow
Stay safe out there and take care.
Get you some much deserved rest
Great job CB! I’m almost 90 miles from Lexington, but I enjoy reading your blog. I got about 4 inches of snow in New Albany, IN. I hope this winter has a few more storms for the Ohio Valley.
I’m in Southern Indiana, too (Floyd County, Indiana) and have been following CB for quite some time, now. I trust him so much more than our local Louisville media. (There is one Lou. Met I like, but that’s about it.) Chris is always the first one I turn to, and I read his blog almost every day.
17″ here in Charleston. Absolutely amazing. It’s still pouring the snow. Thanks for all you do Chris. Oh yeah first! Lol
Chris I think we all need to thank you for all the hard work that you put into this blog and you do it all for nothing I do not comment on here much but I want to thank you for everything you do for us and I want to thank you
Sorry my keyboard is acting crazy tonight
Yeah. I hate it when my punctuation keys go missing, too.
The feburary 18 2015 storm , i measured 10 and a half inches , or somewhere around there.
March snowstorm i think i had 3 or 4 inches .
This one i measured 15 inches earlier. The dome is colapsed.
Get u some rest chris, thank you , and your team for all that you do.
Thank you, Chris, for all your hard work! You go above and beyond the call of duty! You gave us lots of warning about this storm so we had lots of time to prepare. I’m still looking for those people who said that we weren’t going to have much of a winter. I guess they’re buried under a snow drift. Thanks again!
So who are “the usual suspects” that are hating on Chris and his forecasts??
GT
Thank you for being the best meteorologist ever! We were well prepared because of your forecast. I always start my day off reading your blog as well as your tweets from across the state!
I don’t like all the snow, but I am SO happy that Chris was proven right on his forecast. You are appreciated Chris Bailey!
I am technically out of your viewing area and can’t see you on the TV. But you are still close enough to give a great forecast for my area. You still have a following in WV. Awesome job man. Keep up the great job and I hope the blog continues to grow. Big thanks again.
Thanks to another blogger for telling me that I can access Chris online by going to the WKYT site. Look for “Live Streaming” for the times you can watch when they are on the air. During Friday, I would have Chris on my laptop and local met on the television. Bet you can guess who I listen to more!
Thanks again, Mr. Bailey!!
I know who I would listen to. And it is not any of my locals in the Hunt/Chas viewing area. It is Mr. Chris Bailey.
We picked up another 3 inches overnight in my part of Georgetown, making my total in the 9-10 range. Another Lexington forecaster stated last night the snow was done, with little or any additional accumulation. Again, the forecast was dead on. We had 10 on President’s Day last year, was in the sweet spot with 18 on March 5. Now wondering when the kids MAY see school again.
18″ here along Interstate 64 in Putnam County WV halfway between Huntington and Charleston. The forecast Chris put out was spot on!!!
I’m glad the winds did not materialize down here.the trees don’t need any additional help falling
Andy did you get any snow?
About 4 or 5 inches
Andy I’m glad you got some snow wish you had got more
Around 10 inches in Harlan now with some lingering light snow, and it looks like it may last several more hours.
The posts and tweets have been so active and at times hard to follow; THEREFORE, DID ANYONE GET OVER 20 INCHES YET?
Where i am in Lawrence Co. it was 19.5 at last measure hours ago. Snow has finally tapered off. Gonna do another measurement and let you know.
Close to 18 inches here in rural greenup county
Close to a foot in most locations in Leslie County, with totals over a foot in highest elevations. Backlash snows have increased totals significantly overnight with additional accumulations likely.
Thank you Chris for your hard work!
good work CB, its still snowing here in athens oh
Thanks CB! Hated to see you leave WV but am so grateful that you still include us in your forecasts. Awesome job weather dude!
Thanks CB for what you do. I live far part of West ky near Evansville, ind and there’s three different meteorologist in this area and none of them couldn’t pin point what’s gone happen. That’s why I keep up your work. We ended up about 6 inches far more what our local weather man were saying. God Bless You!!
Evansville mets basically repeat whatever the models say. The snow ended up more north than what nearly every model was predicting. Glad it did. Rodger in Dodger
Rodger the Dodget i gues I should give our local mets props too. Because this storm had everybody on it heels as weather what’s it’s gonna do
You have a met in Evansville by name of Wayne Hart by chance?
Yes he’s the best we got
Folks there been some talk of what we had experience the last two winters. They haven’t match what happened back in the late 77,78,79 winters not even close. Those winters were brutle that we haven’t experience since.
Thanks Chris for all your hard work. Get some much needed rest. This blog is the best and I appreciate all you do. You are the only weather station and weatherman I trust to get it right or tell us what you think may happen. I haven’t remeasured since last night I will comment again on our totals here in northern Clay county. Thanks.
I had more snow on Wednesday with 3.6 inches than i did yesterday with about 2 inches in Louisville. I’m happy for those who hit the jackpot. About 5.6 inches for the week is nice.
Well I watched..and waited..and hoped that this historic snowstorm would have graced my back yard in se tn. I had mostly rain until late last night when snow finally arrived this morning we have 1-2″ with ice underneath.. Congratulations to all those who got the proverbial “BIG ONE”… I hope winter is not like Kentucky basketball ONE AND DONE!!.. HOPEFULLY we will see some snow LOVE here before winter is done…thank Chris Bailey for all your hard work and dedication!! It doesn’t go unnoticed in our weather world!!…
Oh and by the way ..just because he was a part of our weather world on wkyt and wsaz Mr. Todd borek is with the weather channel now .saw him on their this past weekend! Congratulations Mr. Borek!
Chris – Thanks for all of the hard work. I think I have read every single blog post you’ve made since day 1 when it was on WKYT’s website I believe.
You’re right! I did not think of it this way – but it has been “LESS THAN A YEAR” that we have had 3 major snowstorms..
For Lexington I think the Feb storm was 15, the march storm was 17, and this storm was right at 7 (at least officially)
Oh, and about Todd – I was watching TWC yesterday too and I saw him on there.
Was watching video of the 1994 storm and that was soooo much worse. -21 during the day in Louisville, lots of people trapped on multiple interstates (not just a small section of a single one) in dangerous temps and snow. I hope we never see the likes of that one again. Kids, back in the day, you knew things were bad because the Gov. would shut down entire road ways across counties to prevent traffic on them and to keep people safe. They could and did arrest you for driving on a road that was shut down.
Speaking of…
” This amount of snow caused all kinds of issues, including stranding thousands of motorists along a shutdown Interstate 75.”
Saw people complaining on social media about this and looked up some footage to check it out.
What in the blue hell was WKYT thinking when they sent that poor reporter on a kamikaze run to get herself put right in the middle of the log jam of cars in Rockcastle I-75 yesterday. At the 11pm report, she’d been there stuck in the car for closing in on 12 hours and no idea when it would be over. Like everyone else, she had to keep turning off the car, and thus the heat, to not run out of gas. Oh and she was also alone. She did a professional job on her report on the 11pm but man, you could see she was close to being in tears.
The kicker was that the anchors didn’t even mention how bad her situation was or hope that she makes it back okay. They were too worried that some other reporter in Lex had to wear a hat because her hair was being blown around. Aww, poor baby.
If she was my SO, sister, etc., I’d be handing out some beatings.
Berea reporting in. I stopped counting after we hit 16 yesterday, so a quick window look this morning says we added to that total overnight.
S.O.S (sick of shoveling).
The 30+ winds didn’t make it to Berea, so we had that going for us last night, which is nice.
On air, CB was questioning our storms feasibility of being called a “blizzard” by comparing it to the “true” blizzard that area like NYC would be getting today. This post looks like he’s counting it as his BOLD PREDICTION, so I guess it did end up qualifying.
That’s probably good because it means he doesn’t think we’ll have a better one to qualify and that’s great news to me!
WKYT weather people were excited at noon about Lexington’s single day record for snow being beaten yesterday. I guess it didn’t happen or there would have been a mention of it. Shame, it was close.
CB should be happy with this storm. The ultimate totals did go wayyyy higher than his first or second call but he did point out he was being conservative on purpose. He did a great job on it and his effort in staying on top of things was phenomenal.
It is interesting that a certain “reasonable” other met around here is secretly a snow fanatic and goes hyper active at work when it snows substantially. You’d never know it by their forecasts.
Lexington’s official single day record for snowfall on January 22 was 9.4″ (1966), well within reach for some in the county though.
Ole dude is good at this weather gig, well done sir!!
A tale of two stations (met teams). I am not getting the stark differences in both snow totals and temperature estimates for next week. The Voice of Reason channel appears to be fitting snow totals to their forecast since this morning appear to be grossly understating totals overall.
WKYT forecast temperatures to not go above freezing, but the Voice of Reason channel has temps every day above freezing- in the low and upper forties. How can two stations in the same local market / city have such starkly different forecasts?
The same with the weather channel forecast low 40s every day and one day even above 50!
Of course the national sites are canned with minimal congnitive effort, but a local site and apparently fitting snow totals to their forecast?
That is lame to 11.
cognitive
Yeah, they give terrible forecasts. But it has to be pointed out that a lot of people do view the weather channel through various means and they should try to be a little better.
They do have much warmer temperatures but then again they had much warmer temps. leading up to this storm and the day of even.
I do wonder how two stations in the same market could be so different on temps.
TWC has 50s here on Monday LoL
Yeah and go check out those 2 week to a month forecast from AccuWeather.. 50s thru end February…:-)…lol
I swear they are such a joke. Might as well be cartoon channel for all they are worth.
Louisville met has high of 40 for Monday. I was kinda surprised since there IS snow on the ground (varied totals in the county).
That was fun!
Nothing to see down here move along…next storm please…lol
Bowling Green official total of 12.2″ yesterday was the snowiest January day on record and the 3rd snowiest day ever for any month. The 14.8″ monthly total now stands as the 6th snowiest month of January.
I had 12″ at my house. I was a little surprised to learn last night that my total and the airport’s were the same. This is our first “official” double digit snowfall since March 22nd, 1968. Wow!
My in-laws in Bowling Green have also been measuring around 11 to 12 inches around their home, with some ice from earlier freezing rain at the bottom. They are thankful to have power.
Nashville TN officially got 7 inches of snow although other areas in town measured up to 10. Still, this 7 inch mark is the most snow Nashville has received in 13 years – if well short of the all-time record of 17 inches.
Nashville did escape much of the freezing rain on trees and power lines that places just to the north received (with some power outages) as Nashville had a rather rapid transition from rain to snow. Unfortunately, the rain made impossible pretreatment of the roads for snow, so rain water froze with the snow falling on top. Largely as a result, traffic ground to a halt in many parts of town. While plows and salt trucks continue to dig the city out, nature is going to help out as temperatures are forecast to warm into the 40s into next week.
Mike! Cool stat!
Imagine all of the years of snow record keeping (all of those horrible winters of past we have heard about) and in 2016, it beat all of those years… Crazy
Thanks for the great work Chris. Looks like we picked up another 2-3 inches overnight here in Lexington.
In looking at the radar where does the snow go that is in TN right now?
What has happened to coffee lady? I miss her.
Yea, she would be in the area of the heaviest snow so perhaps she and her family may be dealing with that.
But she has been posting recently, though.
16 inches at hagerhill ky near Denver in Johnson co
10 inches here this morning with around inch of that being solid ice.
We have 16 inches of snow here in the northern part of Clay county. It is still snowing here. It hasn’ let up since it changed over to all snow at 6 yesterday morning. Thank you Lord for giving us this storm us snow lovers have been praying for.
Thank you Chris, you’re the man! It continues to be very ruff in western Pulaski. Rescue Squad picked up my husband to take him to Dialysis. When he called to let me know they had made it, he said there were trees in road going out of the neighborhood and the main road were just as bad. THE RECOVERY FROM THIS STORM is going to take a long time. Does anyone know how long the Governor’ State of Emergency will last? Just praying of electric doesn’t go off again, we spend 5 last last night…..truly this storm is #historicsnowstorm.
Check out this article from USA TODAY:
Model behavior: Computers saw blizzard coming
http://usat.ly/1RDTJa2
Thought that was a cool link for people to read. Thanks Chris! You did an amazing job with this forecast!
Just curious about something as I’m new to the blog. I posted last night asking who “the usual suspects” were that Chris referenced in his blog post. It posted immediately, but this morning I see it’s been deleted. Anyone have an idea why it would be deleted? Don’t know if there were replies as I didn’t come back to read until a few minutes ago.
Thanks
GT
GT, your comment is still there, towards the top of the comments section. I just saw it. And even though I read regularly here, I am not certain who they are referring to as the “usual” folks, other than “The Voice of Reason”, so I am of no help…Sorry
Grazie, CB!
Thanks Chris you are right still snowing here,I guess it will wrap up soon.Stay warm!!
Thanks Chris you did an excellent job keeping us posted a week ahead of time, and keeping us updated all during the storm. I live in southeast Barren County and we got 15 inches here. I have been telling people for over a week now about the forecast and they look at me like “that’s not what the local guy says”, but now they know. I have only been here for 7 years, and lived in Bourbon Co. all my life, so I followed your forecast before I moved and seen no reason to stop. Again thank you.
It be interested what mature nature will bring for the rest of winter. We still got February and March to go. Can’t leave out April either. Sound like we’re gonna get break as warm temps are forecast.
suns out here
It is still snowing in Pine Knot !
Wondering if this will be our major storm for the season or if more is on the way?
I guess back to school on Monday … don’t want to miss too many more days … I enjoy my summers!
My wife wishes. We have 18 inches and nothing has been done to the road here and apparently plenty of the backroads are like that. So we are surely to be out Monday and I would bet Tuesday due to the temps not clearing enough.
Chris bold prediction was validated for the second winter in a row.
So much love and respect for you here in Louisville. We definitely lost out with this one. Only 1.5 at my house. I hope Feb brings what Chris has said it may. This snow lover is far from getting her fill.
I know this is lTe to the party but have to say a great big THANK YOU to you Chris, and the whole weather team at WKYT for the amazing work done during the storm. And you personally for not being one to go with the flow. You kept saying this was one to wTch and could be a shut down snow. Thanks fir facing us prepared. Niw get some rest before you have to track something else! Stay warm weather friends, and gave a great night.