Good afternoon, everyone. A developing storm system is moving our way and will bring a wintry mess to much of the region later tonight and Wednesday. Once again, the type of precipitation you get outside your house depends on where in the state your house is located.
Let’s get started with a rundown of my latest thoughts:
- Temps are have been running colder than model forecasts since Monday.
- Dewpoints are still well down into the 20s.
- Northeast winds continue in our region.
- Those three above argue for a colder solution tonight as precipitation moves in.
- The models are a bit weaker with the lead low into the lower Ohio Valley. That means less warm air advection showing up and a better chance of winter weather.
- The northern half of the state is likely to see the most winter weather with snow and a mix likely. Farther south, an initial mix likely goes over to rain for much of the daylight hours Wednesday.
- A Winter Weather Advisory is likely for the northern two-thirds of the state and into the mountains of southeastern Kentucky. The timing on the mess moving in will likely lead to issues for the Wednesday morning commute.
- The northwest flow behind this will combine with a disturbance to produce light snow across central and eastern Kentucky Wednesday night and Thursday. This setup is often underplayed on the models and I do expect light accumulations from this as well.
Here’s the First Call for Snow/Winterfall for the initial system tonight and Wednesday…
This is for the light snow maker that follows that up Wednesday night into Thursday…
In terms of what the models are showing, snow lovers need to grab the pom poms and cheer on the Hi Res NAM…
The NAM isn’t too dissimilar…
The GFS continues to trend colder with more wintry precipitation…
Here’s the freezing rain signal…
The Canadian Model…
The EURO continues to be the off model…
If we look ahead toward Christmas, the signal for a bigger system and cold continues to show up as a deep trough dives in here…
EURO
CANADIAN
The surface maps will catch up, but moth models show some snow preceding the cold…
EURO
CANADIAN
There is room for a much bigger system during this time.
I will have the latest on WKYT starting at 4 and going through the evening. I will also have another KWC update, so check back. Until then, here are your radars to follow the increase in precipitation to our southwest…
Have a good one and take care.
The setup is usual as it has been for the last two winter 64 andnorth th of it is the sweet spot. Oh well maybe next time!
Seems like next time never comes.
Schroeder I’m looking at the rader and it’s 4:45 central time and notice the snow is south of us headed to western ky were I live just maybe we may get something out of this small system.
Yeah, Chris pointed that very same scenario on the 6:00 weather tonight.
Thanks Chris, on the water vapor loop you can detect where the surface low pressure is moving out of Oklahoma where they had several inches of snow.
There is a trough running form Hudson Bay southwest through the central part of the country. Kind of an odd set up, but it was enough negative energy to phase with the surface low to make a snowstorm for that area.
At the same time Polar air is moving into the Northeast and the surface low coming through south Kentucky will phase with the Polar air just to our east and will explode into a classic Nor’Easter.
It will be interesting to follow the next few days.
Thanks Chris, looks pretty sad on the snow accumulations for my county of Taylor.
I’m going to focus on the Nor’Easter. A very interesting set up about to unfold.
Real time temperatures are trending 5 degrees or more colder then models– have you notices ??