Good Tuesday everyone. We have some big weather news to share with you guys. Are you sitting down? Today is actually a calm weather day across Kentucky!! I don’t know what to do with myself and am having tweet withdrawal. 😉 Let’s not get too used to the pleasant weather of today as we have a surge of heavy rain coming our way and this should transition into a wintry weekend.
Before we look ahead… we did have another tornado hit Kentucky Sunday night. The NWS in Paducah confirms an EF-1 tornado touched down in Calloway county. It had winds of 95mph and was on the ground for nearly 5.6 miles. This makes the 5th tornado to hit the state in the first 3 weeks and change of 2012. That’s just amazing!
The weather of today looks good with readings mainly in the 40s under partly sunny skies. This should be the best day of the next week or so.
A very slow-moving area of low pressure will develop across Texas over the next few days. This will throw an increasing amount of moisture our way from Wednesday through Friday. Light rain will arrive from southwest to northeast on Wednesday. The leading edge of this has the chance to start out as something frozen… especially along and north of the Ohio River. That doesn’t look like a big deal if it happens.
The bigger issue from late Wednesday into Thursday will be the threat for heavy rainfall. This has the look of a widespread 1″-2″ rain maker, with locally higher amounts. The GFS is looking soggy…
This thing is loaded with juice and could cause high water problems for some areas.
What happens behind this storm as it begins to pull away on Friday? The models are still trying to figure that much out, but there should be colder air coming in behind it with a switch to snow possible. The GFS is advertising this…
The model may be a little too quick with getting the low that far north. The GFS Ensembles average is for a slower departing low…
That will be something for us to keep an eye on as many of the models have advertised a switch to snow for a while now.
That sets us up for a wintry weekend across the state. An arctic front arrive late Saturday into early Sunday and carves out a hefty little trough. I like the look of this system as I think it can dive in and try to cause low pressure to develop just to our east. If that were to happen… this would give us a decent shot of snow. That’s a big IF at the moment, but is something to watch for in the coming days.
The GFS is hinting at that solution and the Canadian is looking the part, too.
We have a lot of weather to go through before we get to that point. I will have updates later today. Have a great Tuesday and take care.
In response to earlier post from Reg in Garrard County…………………Yes, we lost power as well early Monday morning around 3:30 or thereabouts. The wind did not seem all that strong here as the squall past and lightening strikes were few. I never did hear what the cause of power outage was….When the lights went out though for 2 or 3 minutes I was thinking uho and kinda waited for all heck to break lose, but it didn’t and I went to bed. I had been tracking the storms for a couple hours on GR3 radar so I really did not expect much when they finally moved thru here as the coverage of severe storms had been diminishing for some time.
For my location just a tad more than 1″ snow for season. I was in Harrodsburg last weekend of the snow and they picked up 3-4 inches easily. It snowed heavily from about 4pm-9pm….Looks to me the AO is going to be favorable for snow from about the 29th into the first 7-10 days of Feb…..As for individual episodes, we will see, but thru Sunday most snow activity looks to favor eastern Ky with 1 inch or less for central Ky.
But thats just my thoughts. I may be completely wrong.
Correction: Above I meant to say NAO not AO.
What worries me about this mild winter or early spring, is all the rain we have received. What happens if we have a normal, wet spring? The ground is spongy and we could be ripe for flooding. I am not giving up on winter, but I do not see any cold fronts lasting long enough to give us anything but a taste. We are at less than 1″ in Harrison County and will remember this as the Year of no Winter.
Yeah, I’m slowly getting worried about Spring more too. Last year was a La Nina Winter, and the resulting Spring was catastrophic with records for tornadoes smashed everywhere. Well this year we’re in a La Nina Winter too, except this one has followed the textbook script of a La Nina so far. We’ve seen storms taking that Texas to Great Lakes track over and over and over again. During Winter, this translates to heavy rains and a few severe weather episodes, which we’ve seen. But when Spring comes and the moisture return is greater, and the sun’s angle of incidence is greater, and air temps are greater… storm tracks like that mean trouble. It is very conceivable that we may see a horrific severe weather season in 2012 similar to what we saw in 2011.
If it’s going to be a mild winter, is it too much to ask for to have a dry stretch? My backyard has turned into a swamp. I’ll probably have to get the mower out this weekend to cut down a few areas. As for the hopes of getting a decent stretch of winter weather-I’ve given up. ready for spring. Bring on baseball season, cooking out etc.
I’m with you on a dry stretch, even if that means no snow. The horses have been up to their ankles in mud for a week now.
testing…
comments arent going through so if you see 3 of the same thing pop up from me you’ll know why…lol..
What??? 🙂
this whole site acts terrible, it has since day one. comments don’t work half the time, it locks my pc up, there are too many ads on the site – which is a memory hog. i wish we would just go back to the old way!! — just my opinion – doesn’t mean a hill of beans 🙂
I haven’t had any issues with the new sight at all. Everything runs smooth on this end and I love the new format. Only thing I do not like about the sight so far is the lack of SNOW talk. LOL. Now if more talk of winter storm warnings or blizzard warnings were the main talk this winter, this sight would be perfect! LOL. Just my opinion though.
Siberia and Alaska have been stealing our snow 😉
Even by their standards, winter has been brutal. I heard someplace (Fairbanks?) had a high of -27F…..a high! That’s not windchill.
Makes you not want to know what the low temp was!
I lived in eastern Tennessee during the great blizzard of March 1993, this nine year old thought it was awesome! Since then, my taste for cold and snow has faded somewhat, is there any hope of getting it back??
If it does come any sort of decent snow area wide the blog will die it couldn’t handle the little clipper so it for sure won’t be able to handle a decent snow unless there have been some upgrades
Wierd that you say that. I noticed that it works better on my Blackberry than the old site did.
I have had trouble also and dont know how to fix it. When I first get on to website it will totally lock up for at least a mintue or 2 then its ok. Got any suggestions?
If this, if that….maybe this, maybe that, possible this, potential that..blah blah blahdi blah blah blah. Story of Winter 2011-12 !! lol
tx CB.
Yay! Chris. I might finally get to wear winter gear for more than one day at a time. (don’t get me wrong, I love my summer clothes, too, but when you are in and out all day, its hard to know how to dress from one day to the next!) 😉 I hope we can get some wintry weather out of this, and that we can keep from floating away getting to that point with all the heavy rain possibillities.
Chris, today is just giving your tweeter a short break until you have to start using is big time again. 😉 Have a great day, everyone!
Seems to me that it will be too warm to snow this weekend…well, according to the NWS…rain/snow with highs in the mid 40’s. What’s it going to do?
This is sure shaping up to be a winter with no real good snows statewide. Nothing on the horizon a quick shot of cold air maybe some flurries and right back up to the mid to upper 40’s.
testing again…
CB rocks, but using the term “wintry” is a term that more suited for fall or spring…. since our is already winter 🙂 ……. 🙁
Meant “it is winter”. Swype sux.
Just for laughs, the cfs model has a nice clipper hitting us Sunday.
http://charlie.wxcaster.com/model/conus/cfs/CONUS_CFS_1000-500_SLPTHKPRP_19HR.gif
2011-2012….the year without a winter.
You folks that think spring begins in early Feb are in for a rude awakeining. We will pay for this mild weather at some point, probably sooner than later.
My vehicles were covered in mud after the storms rolled through Monday morning. It’s thicker than the dirt that rained down on us last year.