Good Friday everyone. We’re rolling into the weekend with some showers and chilly temps working into the bluegrass state. The weather we have out there today will be MUCH different from the weather we have to end our weekend. Indian Summer arrives in Kentucky early next week and hangs around for a while.
Clouds and scattered showers will rotate into the state from the northwest today. This isn’t a total washout kind of day, but you should hang on to the umbrella to be safe. The highest rain chances are across the north. Temps today may spike into the low and mid 50s ahead of the clouds and drops, then come crashing down as the action works in.
Saturday’s weather looks chilly with readings mainly in the 50s for highs with a shower chance.
We break out of the chilly weather pattern on Sunday as readings work well into the 60s. It gets even better than that for next week as the 70s move in for a long stay.
I wanted to use a lot of this blog post to talk about the winter ahead of us. We’re getting to the time of year when many folks put out a winter forecast or begin to gather thoughts on how things may play out. I’ve held my cards much closer to the vest this year as I try not to repeat least year’s outlook where I latched on an idea VERY early and didn’t pay enough attention to the actual fall pattern.
The fine folks at NOAA are out with their official winter forecast. Here ya go…
They are basically telling us we have a 50/50 chance of seeing EVERYTHING. How on earth is that a forecast? It’s not, but let’s not beat that dead horse again. 😉
One of the seasonal forecast models I have been studying recently comes from Japan. This has been fairly consistent and has a decent track record dating back to last year. The latest forecast from it is out and it looks like this…
It’s basically saying much of the country is colder than normal with a storm track up the east coast and along the Appalachian Mountains. To be perfectly honest… this is what a lot of the things I’ve been looking at lately are suggesting. If I were putting out a winter forecast today(and I’m not), it may look something similar to the forecast model above.
I have been showing maps recently showing one heck of a blocky weather pattern we have going on across the northern hemisphere. I suspect this will carry us into winter and may try to get things started off a bit earlier than normal in November. The map below shows the cold, currently building up in Canada, diving southeastward across much of the country in early November…
Early November shows up on a lot of the analog years I’m finding as a period to watch for the first flakes of the season in Kentucky.
Got those winter juices flowing yet?
Have a great Friday and take care.
It is hard to get the juices flowing after last winters lack of snow. It seems to me that most of the early forecasts are pointing towards a cold and snowy east coast with a sou.th to north/east storm track. I will take the just wait and see approach. Thanks and have a great day
What bjenks said. If we see a trend of outlooks fading, same old-same old as the previous many years. It will take at least a shin kicker snow to bust the nearing 1.5 decade trend for a good chunk of the state. We get snow averages now by a lot of little drive-by snows that rarely breach the ankle.
History is a powerful regression tool.
Bring on the snow. Having to scrape ice off the windshield here in Knox county this morning.
1st time having to scrape for me this season
NWS Louisville is about to start the dual-pol upgrade on its LMK radar.
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/dualpol/index.php?wfo=lmk
LMK will likely be taken out of service later this morning. Two weeks are allotted for upgrades, but based on previous experience LMK may be down only six days or so. Whatever the downtime, if you’re addicted to LMK like your morning coffee ;), other radars will have to do for a while. NWS radars at Nashville, Ft Campbell, Evansville, Jackson KY, etc are available. So are tv station radars like WKYT’s First Alert Defender dual-pol radar in Lexington.
Forgot to mention that Louisville’s FAA Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (click here) is another radar that is available while LMK is out of service:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_Doppler_Weather_Radar
As an aside, the LMK radar unit is located near Ft Knox/West Point KY (the Louisville NWS office is south-southeast of Louisville). The Louisville FAA TDWR unit is near Mt Washington, KY.
The dual-pol upgrade at KLVX (WFO LMK) will not start until tomorrow 10/20/12. If the crew that does LVX is supposed to do JKL, then the JKL date will be pushed back. There were some delays at IND that prevented LVX from getting started.
NWS Jackson KY’s dual-pol radar upgrade is currently scheduled to start Oct 24, pending completion of Louisville’s upgrade. But since Louisville was postponed a few days (due to Indy’s upgrade taking slightly longer than expected), this may force Jackson to be delayed a bit as well since the same crew upgrading Louisville will upgrade Jackson.
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/dualpol/index.php?wfo=jkl
For the moment, NWS Paducah’s radar remains due for dual-pol in January 2013, time will tell if Paducah is moved up like Louisville and Jackson KY were. Once Paducah is finished, work will then turn to the radars at Ft Campbell and Evansville (both radars controlled by the Paducah office).
Except for Evansville, NWS radars adjacent to Kentucky have finished their upgrades, including Wilmington OH, Charleston WV, St Louis, Memphis, Nashville, Morristown TN, and most recently Indianapolis.(a few Kentucky counties are under jurisdiction of either NWS Charleston WV or NWS Wilmington OH)
I have learned in my few years here not to take winter forecasting very seriously. (I will rely on the look out the window and see what happened type of postcasting.) I know everyone does hte best they can and works hard, but winter forecasting seems to be very difficult, kind of a dice roll. The rest of the year seems straight forward and accurate but winter is another game with another set of rules. Perhaps the science and modelling just isn’t there yet for winter forecasting.
One good sign for ky winter weather lovers, the NOAA maps backed off their early blow torch looking maps to one that says its anyone’s guess what the upcoming winter will hold. Chris is due to nail this winters fun stuff, so I will trust in the winter weather pro to bring us some major snows this year 🙂