Good Monday, everyone. The weekend winter storm that cut across the Ohio Valley is just the beginning of what is likely to become a very harsh winter pattern for much of the country. It’s a setup that is locking in for the long haul and it has a rather extreme look to it.
Let us begin with today and roll things forward. Low-level moisture is hanging tough and that means a few periods of light snow and flurries, especially central and eastern Kentucky. Patchy freezing drizzle is also possible and all this may cause some slick spots on area roads. Here’s regional radar, but much of this may not even show up on radars…
This low level moisture likely takes us into Tuesday with a few more flakes potentially flying around. That’s followed by a weak boundary dropping in from the northwest on Wednesday. This may have a mix of snow showers, rain showers and freezing drizzle with it…
Another system then rolls in from the west on Thursday, likely bringing a cold rain with it, but it may be a close call with a little frozen precipitation…
The ability of this system to pull down cold air behind it will be a big determining factor as to what happens with our weekend winter storm potential.
Winter weather lovers want that system to pull the boundary farther south into our region so the next storm follows along that front as it sags southeast.
This is exactly what the GFS shows
Obviously, that’s a big hitter in our region as arctic air surges in. If there’s snow or ice on the ground, it gets beyond frigid…
The new version of the GFS brings one low across Kentucky with a lot of rain and freezing rain, then brings a second low with snow. Bitter cold follows…
The Icon offers up a similar setup to the regular GFS…
The European Model has a ton of rain to a ton of freezing rain then some snow…
The Canadian Model is very weak with the Thursday system and it shows with how it handles the weekend storm. Notice the big differences from all the other models…
At this point, all precipitation options are on the table for the weekend. Heavy rain, sleet, freezing rain and snow or a combo of the 4. Once again, that’s about as much as I can tell you guys at this point.
I have a 4 day weekend away from work so I will throw random updates your way later today. Make it a good one and take care.
Thank you for all your hard work Chris.
If this weekend’s cold is not as strong as the succeeding fronts that the models show at the end of the month and February, we are in for a lot of frozen pipe alerts!
Yikes!
When arctic air screams in as looks likely this weekend, IMO, I think the ice threat is lower but more likely a flash freeze up with rain to quick mix to snow. This is not the big ice threat setup…maybe beyond this storm when the arctic is already in place, we see above setup withers EURO but this is not it, again IMO! I am going with GFS
Still, flash freezes can create extremely dangerous roads, even with the overall freezing rain threat lower than what the EURO shows.
Looking at those temp maps you can see that the snow pack is laying in the usual parts of Kentucky. This will be one time I’m glad to miss out on significant snow here in SE Kentucky if it will keep those brutal temps north or us.
Enjoy your time off Chris! Thanks for all you do!
He is going to need it soon. What an incredibly, extreme and active pattern starting late this week!
I hope we CASH IN…..TIME WILL TELL
I finished calculating the totals for my Euro/GFS challenge. In a mild upset, the GFS won this challenge. The Euro just plain overshot on totals at several locations. While the GFS was mostly conservative, based on the random sample that I used from 4 states before the storm started, the grand sum of the differences went to the GFS. And this, despite the GFS missed badly on the St Louis totals compared to the Euro.
I am curious to which model runs you used for your calculations.
last Tuesday from CB’s presentation of the runs of the Euro and GFS
We just finished installing our outdoor wood furnace this weekend. Just in time!
Usually not a big fan of of the NWS in the past in terms of their forecast discussion and how conservative they are talking about forecasts and potential for impactful weather until it is just about or literally happening especially regard to winter precipitationand possible winter storm impact. Have to give them props though today w the last paragraph or two of their forecast discussion today…..unless of course CB wrote it for them? Ha ha! Kidding aside much better that they at least are alerting the public a meaningful weather impact could affect the area this coming weekend details to be determined but also not to not get caught up in model to model runs especially this far out. Hmmm we have heard that somewhere before. Props though to NWS!
can you post a link? I would like to read! thank you!
https://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=LMK&issuedby=LMK&product=AFD&format=CI&version=1&glossary=1
And here is NWS Wilmington’s discussion:
https://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=NWS&issuedby=ILN&product=AFD&format=CI&version=1&glossary=0&highlight=off
and here is Jackson’s paragraph for discussion.
Lots of attention will be paid to a much stronger system that will
impact much of the eastern half of the country next weekend. The
main wave with this system isn`t expected to move onshore on the
west coast until late Wednesday. Thus, models are a bit sketchy on
the details regarding this system. However, it does appear that
most of the first half of this system will see eastern Kentucky on
the warm side of the system. This means we will see a pretty good
helping of rain. Depending on the exact track, we could be looking
at locally heavy rainfall somewhere in the region. Unlike, other
systems this winter, this one, could actually phase with the
northern stream jet and allow for a surge of the coldest air of
the season southward into the Ohio River Valley by late in the
weekend. This would allow rain to transition over to snow Saturday
night and Sunday. Enough wrap around moisture could be in place
to produce some light snow accumulations for the second half of
the weekend. Cold air will continue to pour into the area on
Sunday and Sunday night with lows possibly getting into the single
digits by next Sunday night. Plan to introduce a mention of
accumulating snow into the HWO this morning.
Cold chasing moisture..Dreaded wrap around snow..lol..Pretty much about to lose a whole month of best climo..Hopefully spring starts showing up around 15th of Feb.
This has backside flurries written all over it.
Haha. So, more heavy rain and an inch of wet snow left behind. And, a hyped cold pattern that probably lasts a week with most of the snow action up north in the Midwest, or far NKY. Yeah, color me unimpressed.
Chris is not hyping anything.
Jeff, with all due respect, If I won’t to whine, just let it be man. I know darn well it doesn’t change things. Regarding the upcoming pattern-we will see. I like Chris and I know he does a great job, but man he is really building this up. He’s not the only one though. So…
Ok, fair enough. You be that guy who is not going to wrap your external pipes, not check your car/truck battery, not change your wipers, not have additional heating sources ready in case power goes out. As for the rest of us, we’ll be ready…just in case
Thanks for posting the link! Those last paragraphs do sound a lot like CB.
Well dang it, I was hoping we would make it through without the brutal cold like we had last year.. I know a lot of you wish for it but it causes so many problems with water, heat, etc.. it’s so frustrating to lose water this time of year. There were thousands of folks without water the entire month of January last year. Here’s hoping this cold blast doesn’t last long.
Here’s to hoping the Euro model is way off base. That is an ugly map.
Enough with the rain already, can we turn off the faucet? Did anybody check out the comments from last evenings post?
Here’s hoping we finally get a big snow. Did anyone see the comments from last evenings post?
I like the looks of this weekends setup better than that of this past weekends (Minus the ice)! Obviously the models will continue to change a ton but I am looking forward to tracking.
Good grief, more rain coming for weekend for most of us folks… snow for eastern half of state
Holy moly..Check out the icon for precip..Probably all rain..lol
https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/?model=icon®ion=us&pkg=apcpn&runtime=2019011412&fh=72
sry..this one
https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/?model=icon®ion=us&pkg=apcpn&runtime=2019011412&fh=174
Yep
Ridiculous the amount of rain we have received in south central KY. Yeah, griping don’t change things, but nothing wrong with venting.
For once I might buy into Schroeder’s theory of climate change.
Seems this could be like 2009 rather than 2003, so mainly ice and then a snow topping. We probably want this one to miss like the others have so far.
2009 was much worse for ice.
Could this be Chris’ “Bold Prediction” of flooding/ice/snow all in one storm?
Stay tuned!
GFS doesn’t look to impressive..Maybe a couple of inches and wait for it,,wait for it..More rain..I’m at the point would like to see 2 inches of ice instead another drop of rain..LOL
https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/?model=gfs®ion=us&pkg=apcpn&runtime=2019011412&fh=174
How pathetic is the weather in KY, that with the “impressive” cold supposedly coming, we (the entire state, not just the counties bordering the Ohio) cant even cash in on a nice snowfall. There’s something terribly wrong with the once again wet picture the models are painting…
Honestly the weather has been terrible for months. Non stop rain. Oppressive humidity that lasted until early October. More rain in late fall that led to historic records being broken. No slowdown in the rain. With our without the cold, it’s just a miserable pattern.
Yes, and by far the most miserable weather pattern I have endured in my life with STILL no end in site. I’ve already conceded to the fact there will be little if any snow in my area….I just want the rain to completely disappear for a few months.
For sure. Heck, I could deal with the “blowtorch” warmth if it were lead to a few sunny days to break up the parade of gray rainy days. It’s depressing.
NWS LMK “Long range guidance continues to vary on the overall
track and evolution of this system, which will be crucial to the
type of weather we see” = We don’t have a clue yet but something may happen.
Look at this link if interested. Note the track shown on the Candian model. Might be an outlier or not getting a handle on it and will shift South on the next run.
http://ohiovalleyforecastingcenter.com/ohio-valley-major-snow-possible/
Note that the post was from Jane 13th!