Good Monday, everyone. Heavy rain and thunderstorms are slowly moving away, but we are still dealing with the high water impact. There is another possible high water maker later this week, but the overall pattern is changing and will give winter fans some action to track.
The torrential rains will end this morning, leaving behind a general 1″-3″ with locally higher amounts. Several areas are experiencing flooding to start the day and many of these areas are in the counties I talked about needing to be under a watch to begin with.
River flooding will also become an issue today. Here are the current warnings…
Here are your early day radars…
Chillier and drier winds will blow today, but a few rain showers may still be noted across the north and east. Colder air then drops in from the northwest and may be accompanied by some flakes through New Year’s Eve. Some of the models continue to bring some snow showers across central and eastern Kentucky during this time…
The new year starts on a seasonal and calm note, but that doesn’t last very long. Another storm system comes our way from the southwest for Thursday into Friday. This is likely to bring another round of heavy rain and possible high water issues.
The GFS is likely too far strung out with the energy and gives us less rains. It does show the cold and snow wrapping in behind the system by Saturday…
The Euro has more rain, but also shows the weekend change to snow…
The Canadian sees the same thing…
We need to watch the next system diving in behind that early next week. The models continue to go back and forth on a phased system or a non phased system. The Canadian shows more of a phased potential…
I will have updates later today. Until then, make it a good one and take care.
This was about the best example of rain shadowing I have seen in a few months: I received a whopping 0.90 in for this event while areas just 30 or so air miles to my west received 2 to 3 inches of rain. Talking about skimmed! Anytime a strong low wraps up far to my west, I get the warm, dry down sloping SE winds that really shear rain away until the front slams on top of the App mts. This was one of the best model forecast too as it clearly showed the down sloping for the counties along the VA border on every single major model.
Also of significant importance but only observed by distant Mesonets and local observations, was how warm it go down here due to the down sloping wind. The best example was the Letcher Mesonet that hit 74 yesterday! It was the same in Harlan; however, again, I have to keep my own data as the Black Mt Mesonet is not even close to showing accurate temps for the valley locations in my county. It was almost a late April feel, deep into the 70s yesterday.
As far as next week goes, it is interesting to watch but, and a big IF we get any thing accumulation wise, it will be a short lived cold shot with a nasty return to this same overall pattern for a while, based on the overall oscillations that is…screams very wet and very warm for most of January. Hopefully, we can get a quick winter shot of snow next week. We will watch and see.
Don’t fall for it snowlovers…. haha. If you see green, change the screen to …rain, trends
Kick the ball Charlie Brown…
Well, Louisville will not make the top ten warmest December list. But, Lexington appears to be a lock. Bowling Green and Frankfort are right on the edge (if the month ended today, they would be in). Remember, temperatures were still well into the 50s at midnight for these locations, so another possible double-digit above normal day today, but tomorrow’s temps might offset that.
Nevertheless, a very mild December overall. January will have to go in the ice box to offset these numbers, and the first week is not looking too promising.
I’m sure Chris will not be highlighting these statistics, since he hyped the cold for December.
Jackson will be in (but climatic data only goes back to 1981). London will be right on the edge, it will be close.
CB, looks like three years in a row of not much snow. Just let go and take it easy 😉 Well, if not for the rain. Would have been nice if it actually was there when we needed it this past summer.
Hard to believe it was four years ago since the big snow. Went from three record snows in less than one year, to not much.
Beginning to look a lot like last year.Pacific ridge showing up on the ensembles is a horror with trough in the west and a SER with probably record breaking heat after the 10th.A stout +++++AO and NAO.MJO not moving into cold phases.Carbon copy of last winter.Maybe we track tornadoes instead of snow.HA.HA.It’s long range so hopefully it will change,If not after this little bout with cold January is toast so says Sherman.
GEFS teleconnections AO+ and PNA- seems to indicate coldest air west of Rockies. But, the Euro continues to paint a deep shot of cold air from the Icebox capital across the western Great Lakes plunging south all the way to northern Florida by about the 8th of January, still a little bit outside the Euro’s comfort zone.