Good Wednesday, everyone. We have an arctic front ready to blast the bluegrass state tonight and Thursday, and this looks to unleash a pretty stout winter pattern around here. The system coming behind this for the weekend continues to take on a colder look, leading to an increased threat for winter weather.

I’ll start with a quick recap of the arctic front moving in tonight…

  • There will be a few flurries behind this front late tonight and early Thursday.
  • Temps drop Thursday as the cold air crashes in from the northwest.
  • Northwesterly winds will bring clouds and some flurries in here into Friday.
  • Highs by Friday stay in the 20s with lows Friday and Saturday mornings deep into the teens.
  • Wind chills will be a big player and could reach single digits during the morning hours. Ouch.

The trend on the weekend system is for a flatter and colder solution on most of the models. We have talked about this being the likely scenario, and the models are going back toward what they had several days ago. Remember me talking about how they sometimes lose things in the 4-7 window, then bring them back under 4 days? That looks to be happening again.

The GFS has a messy setup with snow, rain and a mix from Saturday night through Monday morning…

gfs-3

The snow map with the GFS continues to edge southward…

gfs-snow-2

The Canadian continues to be weaker and colder…

canadian

The snow map from that particular run…

canadian

The European Model continues to be too strong with this system, but is trending weaker and colder. The model shows a lot of Ohio Valley accumulation, but can overdo that if there’s a mix.

euro

Don’t get too attached to any snowfall map from this far out. All I can say is, we have an increasing chance for winter weather this weekend and it could put some snow on the ground for some areas of Kentucky. If I can get more specific later today, I will. Since when am I a winter weather wimp? 🙂

In about a week from now, a massive arctic outbreak may engulf the country. It could be introduced by some snow…

euro-2

Check out back to back morning temps behind that front on the European Model…

euro-3

The GFS sees the brutal cold, too…

gfs-temps

It also sees another massive shot coming a few days after that…

gfs-temps-4

With all these massive arctic shots showing up, one could assume some decent snows would fall across much of the country and into our region. The Individual runs of the GFS Ensembles say you would be correct. 21 different model runs go into making up the Ensembles run. It then averages those out for one forecast. The folks at WeatherBell have given us a look at what each of the 21 runs shows individually. Check out the individual totals over the next 2 weeks…

gfs-snow

It’s awesome to see this December pattern go toward what we have been talking about for the past few months. Now, let’s see what all it can actually deliver.

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