Good Tuesday to one and all. Our pattern is about to undergo a rather drastic change as we leave the boring days behind us for a more exciting brand of weather. This will include heavy rain and a blast of arctic air and some snow before the week is over.
Today is one heck of a nice day with temps in the 50s and partly sunny skies. Clouds will roll in from the southwest tonight with rain quickly developing. This is from a strong low pressure that will ride right on top of us into Wednesday and bring heavy rainfall to our region. Many areas may pick up an inch or better of water through Wednesday night.
The wintry portion of the show gets started on Thursday as an arctic front swings eastward across region. The arrival of the front will be during the morning hours in the west and will reach the east by late afternoon. Temps ahead of the front will spike toward the low 40s, while temps behind it drop into the 20s. Winds are going to really crank during this time, leading to a colder feel.
The European Model continues to be rock solid with the upper level low closing off across the Ohio Valley Thursday into Friday. This has several pieces of energy rotating around it and each of these create lift, which in turn creates bouts of light snow and snow showers/squalls. Here’s the Euro for Thursday Evening…
Check out how strong that upper love is on the top left panel. Now, check out the Relative Humidity levels on the bottom two panels. That’s the look of widespread light snow and squalls behind the arctic front on Thursday evening. The model then shows snow showers and squalls into Friday and has the clipper playing some role in our weather later Saturday.
The Canadian Model mimics the Thursday and Friday forecast from the European. Check out the coverage on the snow from this model…
There will be a fluff factor will come into play as that is a heck of a cold shot. 850mb Temps are forecast to -16c to -18c across our region.
How about the GFS? It’s still in the process of getting its act together and is just now figuring out there will be a closed upper low across our region…
Two things should happen with the GFS and NAM over the next few days. The temp forecasts from them will grow colder and they will begin to show more precipitation.
The GFS Ensembles are much wetter than the poor GFS…
How much snow will you get where you live? That’s still to be determined as we have to wait and see exactly how it all plays out. You are not going to get a big snowstorm out of this and there was never a chance of that happening.
Speaking of snowstorms… the phantom snowstorm on the GFS has disappeared. This is why I keep trying to get you guys to look at ALL the models. 😉
Canada is about to go completely into the deep freeze over the next week and that air is just itching to come south into much of the United States. The European Model really wants to unleash the beast…
That’s some wicked cold entering the northern plains!!
I will have another update later today. Have a fantastic Tuesday and take care.
Thank you Chris for all your updates and forcasts!!! I’m still holding hopes for an old school snowstorm this winter. I like what this next system is looking like it shows some potential, yay!!! Thank you Chris for being so great at what you do and keep up the amazing work!!!!
Watch out for freezing fog this morning downstate…Bowling Green and points east…Black ice will be occurring on untreated area roadways
CB,
Please get your site manager to see why your new site is such a system resource hog. For several years I have followed and posted to your blog with phones and also tablets for the past year with zero issues. The new site seems to kill those type of devices and posting is problematic and very laggy.
Not sure if it is all the info or the ads, but something is causing issues.
Thanks!
i have 0 problems with my infuse 4g
Droid 3, Razr, Thrive and View, all lag like evil, especially when doing messages. No such isssues until the update, but I am using a desktop agent for all devices. Will test in phone/tablet modes. Point still is, the blog based on CPU and ram load is much heavier than the previous site.
Odd, since it seems less busy than the previous.
my torch has a lag period with the new site as well…but chris said the bugs would be worked out
In all seriousness, the “old” site was horrible for me. My phone (EVO 4G) struggled with it, as did my older smartphones, and my PC would also load slowly unless I was on high speed broadband. To me, the new site is a little improvement. Still laggy… still trying to load too much crap.. but an improvement over the old site.
Noticed that my work computer goes into complete meltdown with the new site. It locks up every time i log on.
Sounds very interesting!!
Can someone please enlighten me…
Chris had a statement that ALL the models should be watched…Does the NWS only use one model to base their forecast because it seems they have been all over the place. Not sure if it is because one model run will have snow and the next will completely lose it…???
Contrary to popular belief, we use a multi-model approach when putting the forecast together. At IND, PAH, LMK, JKL, Days 4-7 utilize a blended model approach (50 percent of the previous forecast plus the latest CMC/GFS/Euro…where the euro is given double weight). So in theory, the blended dataset should not flip-flop as much as it would, say if you loaded in a new GFS run each time. However, if significant model changes occur, you can still get some shifts. All forecast offices have the same datasets and can adjust them as needed based on the lastest runs. Its not a “load and go” type system. There is quite a bit of Meteorology that goes into the process.
In addition, we utilize bias-corrected model data in both the short term and long term forecast. Bias-corrected means that we take observed data and compare with each previous model run. We know which models have been performing too cool/too warm, too wet/dry and then we can load in model data that has those biases removed. We can see these biases on a single run, a period of runs over the last 7 days, and a period of runs over the last 30 days. The bias-correction is updated 4 times a day for most models and twice a day for like the GEM and Euro.
Finally, we also use consensus and bias-corrected consensus model datasets. These data sets contain ALL model data, both raw and MOS, blended into one dataset. There is also a weighted model dataset that utilizes the three best performing model runs…though it also contains a double weight on the Euro since it typically verifies better than anything.
So, while a forecaster may talk about the GFS in a discussion, that does not necessarily mean that the GFS run is used outright. There is quite a bit of other model data that goes into the forecast. So the common perception that the NWS “worships” the GFS is simply not true.
So for my area in Harlan County…yesterday evening we had snow from Thursday afternoon through Sunday. Today, snow for only Thursday night/Friday morning.
Did all of the model data change or what happened? From what I have read some of the models don’t pick up as well and some tend to over do things. I’m not being smart or critical, I’m just trying to understand this. Thanks…
Wes, I understand where you are coming from here. However, I’m not sure what changes occurred if any in the data that led to that forecast revision. Perhaps last night’s data had something in it that led to the forecast change.
Yep, composite forecasting tends to work better, as long as regressing/weighting in regards to what models are the closest to reality.
Even then, certain parmater changes create bias in model results, so different type systems and their origins can create mixed results, if not accounted for.
Agreed. At NWS-PHI the model blend is a popular GFE tool. However I should point out that HPC guidance is also taken into consideration as well at the Philly office, mainly b/c of there access to the Euro ensembles and different resources they have. Often my approach is to look at all of this then make adjustments when doing the long range, the model blend tool can be adjusted to given any model any weight, including HPC for each variable at the Philly office. Another key element is making sure the forecast is in good approximation with surrounding offices. One note is slight chance pops for days 4-7 do not show up on the website you look at but are in the forecast, at least that’s the case at PHI. I would say the weekend forecast may warrant a slight chance of snow flurries based of the ECMWF but let’s get through Thursday’s light snow chance first.
Mitch, we’re not using the model blend tool in GFE. This is something specific to central region. We actually have blended datasets that we import into the grids. We also have access to the Euro Ensembles as well, but they are not currently a part of the blend tool…yet.
Some is better then none I saw
Chris, Why then did yesterday you post GFS shows a storm, with a ? If your taking the stance (several times now this year) that it should be thrown out the window, then it would be nice if YOU go ahead and throw it out the window for this blog! Why R U teasing us with it 7 days out (yesterday u did)? I cant beleive that we (I guess I can only say I) read and get worked up over “light snow or snow showers a possiblity! Man I’m straved for some SNOW!
Me too! I am a busy mom and do not have time to sit and watch models, study them, decipher weather mysteries. I just want things in plain terms….Chance for a good snow, no snow, may have a big snow coming LATER on… I love this blog and check it daily. Maybe I am too weather illiterate for this blog?
To me, it just seems like we can’t get the upper air pattern over the northern conus to cooperate. We need to get some more meridional flow into the picture, and the modeling keeps bottling it up just to our north. We’re going to stay on the fence temperature-wise until we can get the flow to become less zonal. And just when it looks like that might happen, the models pull the rug out from under us. I’m starting to lose a little faith in January producing a big snow here.
Well, CB did finally mention big snow in his blog this winter, but not in the context we are used to seeing. My family is planning surprise ski trip, but even a lot of resorts are having to use snow machines.
Rough winter for snow.
Look at all the cold air that is bottled up in Canada. It can stay right where it is if there will be no snow to go with it. Once again…..cold/dry, warm/wet. Nothing to see here…move along to spring please!!
i may be wrong but chris says he does not get paid a dime to do these blogs and while that may be true to a certain point, it is not totally true if u will. i think he does get something per the number of hits that he recieves especially the blogs that allows advertising. advertising means money, the more hits that u get the more people sees the advertisement and hence u get so much per hit. correct me if i am wrong but i think sometimes things r hyped up on here for this reason. this may get a lot of neg. feedback and i will eat my words if i am wrong or if corrected. companies will pay u to advertise their product so the money goes somewhere based on the number of hits recieved in a day, week, month or year, etc.
I dont think those “insinuations” are necessary.
i am not insinuating any thing, i have read where chris says he does not get paid a dime for these blogs and he does things on his own time and while that may be true, it may be on his time and that the blog itself does not bring in any money, the advertising money does bring the money per hits. i did not say this was wrong nor am i condeming him in any way and if people like myself want to read and help support him. there is nothing wrong with that but i do think imo that he does hype things up just like other mets that do weather blogs.
most people on here r winter weather lovers and chris usually does 2 post a day in the winter if not more but in the summer usually he only does 1 post and at most 2 because most people do not care about thunder storms and they r out enjoying the weather. that my friend is the difference. another thing is with the pending “artic” cold snap, daytime highs in the 20s is cold but i have seen worse but it seems every one is getting excited because we have not had any winter weather to speak of and just because we r going to have 3 or 4 days of days in the 20s and 30s with maybe an inch or 2 of snow is not any thing to get excited about. heck, people up north would laugh at us for doing this. also why even bring up the lowly gfs like he did yesterday if it is not his model of choice but only his model of trash.
Why does it matter one way or another to you what CB does on and with his blog? And if he is “hyping” to get clicks that makes him a good businessman. This place is full of teachers wondering if there’s going to be any snow days (including me). The only way he could appease all of us would be a live blog for 22 hours a day. Quit worrying about the politics of the blog and the hypocrisy of CB’s feelings on the GFS and enjoy the updates and the community. It’s science, just not rocket science.
Toney, there are those of us who read Chris every day, winter or summer. And he always sniffs out the possibilities of severe weather at least a few days before other mets. Yes, advertising does help, but, there are also the fees associated with hosting a web page, which is what most of that ad money goes to pay, keeping it from coming out of Chris’ pocket.
Chris is just the best meteorologist in these parts, and I am glad he does the blog, for all of us amateur weather lovers. I have learned a lot from reading and learning to study the maps. That alone is worth it to me. IF it were a paid subscription blog, I would certainly subscribe. You are certainly entitled to your opinion, as am I, and so we agree to disagree and go on. But in this case, I really think you are wrong. No harm intended.
He hasn’t had advertisements going for all that long so I would say that if he makes any money, it isn’t much at all, especially considering the time he puts into it. I’ve mentioned hype on here before and maybe he doesn’t hype it up. I believe Chris realizes how much we love winter, as well does he. So if there is a chance, even small, for snow, he’s going to tell us about it.
Toney, I highly doubt that Chris is over hyping on his forcast. While he may make some money off of this, I can’t blame him if he does. He has put a lot of work into this for a few years now and if he is getting $ he deserves anything he gets.
I agree with toney. Great site but their are a lot of teasers that get thrown out there. The don’t get locked in on one model comment is bad when we are always being teased with the 7 day GFS model.
I love Chris and this blog so I hope this is only taken as honest feedback. But the fewer bold statements that are made the better the blog will be, especially during our snow drought winter.
CHRIS, WXMAN, MJ OR ANYONE ELSE:
Being that we still have 2 months of winter to go, this may not be the right question to ask, however, it seems most of the country is snow free. Assuming the rest of the winter will remain warmer than average and little snowfall, how could that affect our spring and summer seasons this year? What do winters like this in the past lead to typically? SOrry if this post is a bit confusing…
What a horribly depressing winter for all of us snow lovers! It no doubt is sad when we all are starving for a simple “ankle biter” snow (meaning 4″ or less). At this point, we would all be jumping for joy to see this, lol. It should help us all a little, when we see that places like Minneapolis (10″), Detroit/Green Bay (6″), Buffalo (5″), Chicago (2″), & Boston/ Milwaukee (1″) are ALL WELL BELOW their current average for snow. These numbers are just unreal when you really think about how much theses cities usually get every year. It is just one of those years, I guess. Time to schedule a trip to Colorado, ha…
I think other countries are stealing it…lol
Nope – not other countries. The snow’s all right here in the good ole USA… in Cordova, Alaska. All 18 feet of it…
Exactly, =-P how rude!
Alaska are the snow hogs this year, but maybe this will cause more Ice to form in the Artic areas and cause more snow for us in future winters. Silver (I mean white) lining 🙂
yeah, some town in alaska was buried under 18 feet of snow, thats unthinkable..
while we are all snow starved west texas is setting snowfall records !!
Midland Tx. yesterday set a new daily record of 10.4″ !! and seasonal snowfall stands at 19.3″ !!! while Buffalo NY only has had 3.8″ !! and most of Ky has’nt even seen snow on the ground !!! crazy weather to say the least…
I can’t believe the totals for Buffalo. I used to live there…by this time we would’ve had at least ONE big snow..if not 2 or 3!
even though alot of ky has not seen its first 0.1” or greater snow i think thursday many areas could get another .25 to .75 inch snow, but looking at the next 7-10 days until January 20th or so there appear to be no accumulating snow events on the horizon. my guess is lexington finishes the month with 0.5 to 1 inches of snow. i think it would be hard to beat the overall 2.1 record because i think we will get enough tiny snows to add up to atleast 4 or 5 inches by the end of march
Lexington has to make it to Jan 30th w/o a measurable snow for a record. It’s possible. I’d say 50/50 Thursday afternoon/eve then another lesser chance this weekend.
Thanks for the update, Chris. Wow! It looks like I am going to go from knee deep waders to snow boots over the next few days! While I know you are not taling about a big snow, still, with the cold and windy conditions, and snow on wet ground, it will not be pleasant for anyone who works outside.
I do know that I will be glad to see some cold weather. We really do need it for the bugs and pests to be killed out. (And if we could manage to get a couple of good snows in, that would be alright too! ) 😀
Looking forward to your next update! By the way, Chris, our local radio used TWC for their forecasts, and they are calling for rain and temps only falling into the 40s on Thursday. No mention at all of the temps tanking or snow possibilities…even flurries.
Thursday. No mention at all of falling temps, or the possibility of snow.
I know it’s tough not to complain people, but we have to let past be past and move on. My advise is file ‘depressing + winter’ into a 2011 folder. I am lovin’ the roller coaster look through all the models…that we’re losing the La Nina gradually…and it’s all up from here with plenty of winter left. Forget the 2.1″ record…too much of a circus that stat. It’s not how you start, but how you finish. Anywho, consider what the mets at KPAH are saying on their latest AFD about early next week:
“THE 00Z GFS ALLOWS THE ARCTIC FRONT AND THE UPPER-LEVEL DISTURBANCE TO INTERACT OVER OUR REGION MONDAY NIGHT INTO TUESDAY. THIS HAS THE POTENTIAL TO BE A SIGNIFICANT WINTER STORM SYSTEM…BUT AS HAS BEEN THE CASE MANY TIMES THIS WINTER…THERE ARE A LOT OF MOVING PARTS AND IT WILL TAKE SOME TIME FOR THE MODELS TO FINALLY LOCK ONTO A REALISTIC SOLUTION. WILL HAVE TO WATCH THE MODEL TRENDS CLOSELY FOR
EARLY NEXT WEEK.”
just the words significant winter storm…makes me wanna go buy a new sled…:)
Ok lets dream a bit……… It would be nice to hear Significant winter storm to impact the region. as artic air invades the region, area of low pressure moves out of the gulf states resulting in snow,which will produce significant accumulations for most of the area. most areas will see 8-14″ with locally higher amounts (especially in Bubba’s back yard ) lol…:)
ahhhh…what a dream…lol…
trying to hook ya up Bubba, even if it is only a dream….:)
Next winter will be a lot better for the OH valley! Already forecasting ahead.
am I the only one who finds it just a bit strange that throughout each winter, Louisville’s local Met’s from FOX/Wave3/WLKY/WHAS can ALL have 4 different forecasts for the exact same city? lol…I will give an examply….next Monday, (which if you go by what Chris Bailey is saying, is supposed to be the start of a period of cold and snow chances up into the first part of February) there are 3 different temp forecasts: WLKY: Sun HI: 44 Low: 22, Mon HI: 50 Low: 31, Tue HI: 55 Low: 48 (Wow, seems like the cold air has retreated back to the arctic, right?) WHAS11: Sun HI: 39 Low: 30, Mon HI: 44 Low: 33, Tues: ??
WAVE3: Sun HI: 41 Low: 26, Mon HI: 40 Low: 28, Tues: ?? Just saying…
Of the 3 mentioned above, I may be Bias, but, I always have thought Wave3 was a cut above the rest. It seems the other stations MET’s rely waaay to heavily on the GFS. I never hear them talk about any other models. But, Wave3 will talk about the various set-ups, model variations, NAO, NO graphs, Ohio Valley factors, etc…I feel CB is obviously more edgy than most, yes. I do appreciate that Wave3 weather team at least interacts with us & tries to explain the breakdowns, much like CB.
Since I mentioned my like for Wave3 so much…I will copy/paste what Brian Goode (who I view a a modern day version of the great John Belski (JB): all snow lovers should really like this post:
Brian Goode WAVE TV I agree Amanda, I raised my thinking of the season snow total to 28″ through April 1st. I think the storm track allows for a significant winter storm/s. The cold air has been sitting idle for some time and is about to interact with our SW flow that has been so strong this year
how is that for a winter comeback!?!
I think it’s pretty obvious now that Thursday will be a cold, snow showery day with slick roads around similar to last Monday. The road crews will be out in full force (unfortunately) but we’ll probably still see some accidents and problems from people not paying attention.
For which area is this?
All of Kentucky east of the Green River Parkway…just like what we had last Monday.
And, while I’m losing faith in January, I’d like to point out that there is still a lot of Winter left to go. With all that arctic air bottled up at the U.S./Canada border, it’s just a matter of time until it honestly does unleash on us.
Thanks…I appreciate all the folks that understand weather and can share their ideas with those of us that don’t. That’s what makes this site fun.
where is greenriver parkway? :/
Natcher Parkway
As of now the state has used just 5,000 tons of salt, this time last year we had used over 225,000 tons.
To those complaining about the speed of the site, it is most likely the widgets on the side of the page that show his twitter and the weather. The have to pull information from somewhere else, which is likely causing it to slow down, perhaps a lot depending on how your browser handles those requests.
The ads are also possibly slowing it down.
We should all just start telling Mother Nature we want spring showers and warm and NON SEVERE thunderstorms…….try reverse psychology on her lol maybe that would work.
by no means am I asking for destructive thunderstorms that do damage or kill before someone puts their two cents in 🙂
How we looking for thursday guys? Noticed jkl is up to 60% snow likely thurs night
Here is what Jackson NWS. It seems that they may be a little bit more optimistic
BY LATE AFTERNOON…STRONG CAA WILL TRANSITION THE RAIN TO SNOW ACROSS THE AREA WITH SOME LIGHT
SNOW ACCUMULATIONS LIKELY ACROSS OUR EAST AND SOUTHEAST COUNTIES.RIGHT NOW…GOING FOR CLOSE TO 2 INCHES ABOVE 2KFT…WITH UP TO AN INCH ELSEWHERE. THE MAIN THREAT WILL LIKELY STAY EAST AND SOUTH OF
THE WEATHER SERVICE OFFICE IN JACKSON. GIVEN THE STRONG CAA…AND SNOW LIKELY FALLING AFTER DARK…ROADS WILL LIKELY BECOME SLIPPERY
VERY QUICKLY. THIS SITUATION WILL HAVE TO BE WATCHED FOR POTENTIAL IMPACTS ON THE AREA
I think they’re still too conservative do u?
I hope so. I think that the NWS usually errors on the side of caution so not to alarm the public. Seems like this usually works for them but sometimes it blows up in their face. It weather so nobody going to be perfect but I feel that Chris B.has as good of a track record as any meteorologist.
High of 50 next wednesday. Cold not staying long
Saw the first wasp of the season 🙁
my point/click forecast from the NWS in JKL has more snow chances worded in it since Dec. of last yr…lol…
50% snow showers thursday night
flurries on friday
rain/snow mix 30% saturday night
monday night 30% rain/snow
tuesday 50% !! chance of rain/snow…
thats about the most enthusiastic forecast ive had all season…LOL…
I was out in my back yard last week looking around and noticed I had 2 tulips about 1 1/2″ out of the ground. poor things, they don’t know if they should grow or lie dormant.