Good Monday, everyone. We have a quick-hitting light snow maker getting ready to impact parts of the region. This zips in and out of town in a matter of hours and now everyone sees snow from this. The focus then shifts to major rain events and the potential for flooding later this week through early next week.
Let’s begin with the light snow potential. This mainly impacts areas of southern and southeastern Kentucky overnight into early Tuesday. Here’s the First Call For Snowfall…
That’s another really sharp cutoff on the northern and western edges of this, so go easy on me if it doesn’t work out exactly right. 🙂 A few cancellations and delays will be possible.
The setup late this week into next week continues to feature a big deep trough across the western half of the country with a mild ridge off the east coast. This pattern puts our region in a moisture rich southwesterly flow as several storm systems roll through here. The end result will be a lot of rain…
The first system throws waves of heavy rain and thunderstorms our way from late Thursday through Saturday. Flooding rains will be a good bet during this time. The forecast models are spitting out a ton of rain with this initial system…
Canadian
ICON
EURO
GFS
Again, the placement of the heaviest rains will vary from run to run, but it’s the overall theme that’s important and that’s for a lot of rain. This is also a setup that can deliver some stronger thunderstorms to our region, especially on Saturday.
Additional heavy rain makers should follow this up as we head into next week, with the next one arriving by Monday or Tuesday.
Overall, this is a very nasty looking setup for potential widespread flooding across the Ohio Valley and the Tennessee Valley.
I will have updates later today. Make it a good one and take care.
I wish we could send all of the forecast rain to Australia.
This.
definitely
I am not for sure the temps will support snow accumulation in Harlan but we will see with fingers crossed. As far as the rain, it appears the trend is farther west on the models, matching the closer proximity of the jet stream in the middle of the country, starting to show little for SE KY. If I can get a nice SE dry wedge again, I may be spared from much rain here as the models are starting to correct to. Then again, a set-up like this often features new lows that pop up farther east and can still hit SE KY hard…we will wait and see.
If we get 4 inches, here in the Lou area, and then two more heavy rain makers close behind it the flood walls will be going up. Way to early in the season for this. Prayers to Australia as well.
Did Lexington have its warmest year on record in 2019? There are a lot of incomplete/missing series of data from past years, primarily the winter months (how convenient), skewing the data. But, it looks like Lexington did set the mark, based on a complete set of data for last year.
Of course, I would expect CB to red-tag the data for equipment malfunction at the BG airport. He really believes Lexington’s climate record will be adversely affected by this ‘anomaly’.
But for the record, Louisville 2019 was its 5th warmest year; Bowling Green had its 5th; Frankfort 8th. That’s just for central Kentucky.
Point is, it was warm all over the region, including Lexington. Even if there was no issue with equipment, Lexington still would have easily had a top ten warmest year. 2012, 2016, 2017 were also top ten warmest years in most of the climate records above. Lexington’s climate record is not adversely affected.
It’s really not the spring and summer causing it either. It’s not like we are having blowtorch summers. The lack of sustained cold in Meteorological winter (Dec-Feb) is what is skewing the the temps. The downside of it is lots and lots of rain.
Ummm yeah the summers as of late have been absolutely blowtorch. Just check the record books to see how many summer temperatures records have been broken within the past 10 years.
If the climate record for any location is based on data collected from the area’s weather equipment, then yes, faulty equipment can indeed adversely affect an area’s climate record. It sounds like to me that you do not believe that the device used at BG Airport is faulty.
Can’t say for sure. If it is faulty, then the NWS should be required to disclaimer that there are Quality Control issues with the existing equipment or else replace the faulty equipment. If this is a recent problem, a few years, I still don’t believe it will materially affect the overall climate record, since other nearby locations are reporting similar results.
Similar is not a scientific term. Even 1 degree of difference between what instruments show and the actual temperature can skew data. It certainly creates a potential public hazard if they are showing the temp as 33 degrees with rain but its really 32 with snow.
Where’s the snow?
Temporary “least of all evil” (still not good though) news for southeastern KY it may look like, and southern WV, perhaps. However, 1 to 3 inches of snow is predicted for my area on Tuesday, and that is still not good with the forecast rain next weekend, and also the saturated ground. Plus, the current forecast is still calling for the 1st rainstorm next week, and probably a 2nd one (that’s what they’re now saying sad but true) as well. Still not a good forecast, and not a good situation. I really feel for central KY right now….