Good Sunday, everyone. It’s another seasonally cold day in the bluegrass state, but our focus is on a series of cold fronts marching toward the region. The front later next week has the chance to bring a little rain and snow to parts of the state. Speaking of winter weather, I have a little sneak peek into the winter ahead.

Today and Monday are good looking days, but the seasonal chill is in the air. Once into Election Day, a weak front looks to drop toward us early on and could bring a shower to the north. Otherwise, things look pretty good for voters.

A stronger front roll in here by Thursday and should have a developing storm system along it. That means rain increases, with the potential for some snow as the front slips by and the storm system moves to our east. The Canadian has been performing well of late and shows a plausible scenario…

Check out the temps behind that system…

The wind chills from the Canadian are way down there…

The GFS is slowly shedding it’s progressive bias in these types of setups and is coming around to showing our system, but it’s too far south…

The GFS continues to see the potential bigger system coming in behind that one and unleashing some nutso cold…

As you can see, we have some early season winter action to track this year.

Let’s talk a little about the upcoming winter and where we stand as we start November. The current state of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans continues to feature water temps above normal…

You can see that warm pool of water showing up near the Gulf of Alaska. While similar to what was showing up at the same time in 2013 and 2014, there are differences in placement and magnitude…

2013

2014

Those aren’t bad matches for either the Pacific or the Atlantic. If you recall, both winters started early, took a bit of a break then came on strong for the second half of winter and gave us a lot of snow, including historic snowstorms. 2014 also gave us snowflakes on Halloween. Hmm. These also match some of the analogs I used based on September. Remember how those same analogs had some late October snows? Those worked out very well, so it’s interesting to see the current state of the oceans also match up with recent years that gave us similar conditions to the analogs.

The new seasonal JAMSTEC is out and it shows a continuation of that warm pool in the Gulf of Alaska from December through February…

The corresponding December through February anomalies suggest a busy southern storm track with ample cold air available…

As always, we shall see.

I’ll throw you another update, so check back. Make it a good one and take care.