Good Tuesday, everyone. A potent setup looks to arrive just in time for Christmas and is giving us our best chance for a true White Christmas since back in 2010. It’s the combination of an arctic front, a wave of low pressure along it and an upper level low that try to deliver the goods to our part of the world.
Let’s kick this off with some fresh thoughts from your friendly weatherdude. The latest trend on all the models is a good one for snow lovers across the region. The trend is for a slower moving front with a stronger wave of low pressure developing along the Appalachian Mountains. You know, something like this map I made several days ago…
Here are some key takeaways…
- Winds are likely to be a big player along and ahead of the arctic front on Wednesday. Gusts from 40-50mph will be possible.
- That southwest wind will boost Wednesday temps deep into the 50s.
- As the arctic front arrives, temps crash quickly into the 20s. A 20-25 degree drop in an hour is possible.
- As the arctic front moves into eastern Kentucky Thursday morning, low pressure is likely to develop along the boundary. This slows the system down and keeps moisture around longer.
- A band of snow develops right behind the front across western Kentucky Wednesday night and grows in size and intensity as it moves into central and eastern Kentucky.
- This will put down accumulating snow as it moves through. How much for any one location depends on where you are and how long and strong that band is over your house.
- With rain in front of all this and temps dropping quickly into the 20s with snow falling, we can ice things up pretty darn quickly.
- As the main snow band exits eastern Kentucky late in the day, light snow develops areawide as the upper low moves over us. With arctic air around, some pretty good ratios will show up.
- I can even see a few snow squalls developing.
Given everything I’m seeing as of this writing, here’s the updated look at the snowfall potential through Christmas…
I’ve opened that up and expanded it west to account for the current trends. Obviously, not everyone sees a lot of snow from this, but the area in red has the best chance. I may upgrade some of this region to a Winter Storm Threat later today.
Let’s do a status check of the models, and I have a lot of them to share.
THESE ARE COMPUTER MODEL FORECASTS ONLY AND CAN CHANGE DRAMATICALLY FROM RUN TO RUN
Here’s the NAM through 7am Christmas Day…
The snowfall map from that run…
The short range Canadian through 7am Christmas…
The regular Canadian through the entire event…
The GFS…
GFS wide view for snowfall…
The Kentucky view of that same map…
The EURO continues to adjust farther west as well…
That’s still missing out on the upper level low snow. The EURO has jumped a lot in recent days.
The GFS Ensembles average snowfall(10-1 ratio) from the 21 members…
Check out the percentages the GFS Ensembles are spitting out for at least 1″ of snow by Christmas…
What about 3″ or more of snow?
So again, everything from a coating to several inches may show up, but it depends on where you live. That First Call later today will hopefully shed some light on it.
Since I’m always looking ahead, there’s a messy system moving in here late Sunday into Monday. There’s also a growing signal for another big storm system right around the New Year.
As I’ve been telling you guys… The pattern is nothing like what we’ve had around here for several years.
Updates come your way later today. Have a good one and take care.
Even when we have a better than average pattern it is still hard for the majority of this state to receive a low grade snowfall.
But I do like my chances of seeing a lot of wasted “ white” melting chemicals on the roadways here in Louisville.
WOW!!!!!
Thanks Chris, I like what I’m seeing, but it’s all about timing. We will have to wait to see if that cold front slows down or may become stationary over East Kentucky and that could shift the heaviest snow back North and West with East Kentucky getting more rain than snow with flurries at the end ?
I’ve seen setups like this before and it can overachieve. We shall see.
This potential looks to be our best chance for a significant snowstorm in many years.
Early morning 06z GFS.Cut snow total’s in half still looks good.
https://www.pivotalweather.com/model.php?m=gfs&p=sn10_acc&rh=2020122206&fh=90&r=us_ov&dpdt=&mc=
Kuchera
https://www.pivotalweather.com/model.php?rh=2020122206&fh=90&dpdt=&mc=&r=us_ov&p=snku_acc&m=gfs
Don’t see a lot of the ones who use to comment on this board.Terry,Bubba etc.Also Schroeder’s pal from Louisville that rode a Harley.Forgot his name.
I believe his name was Prelude. I did see a comment from bjenks last night.
I am guessing that the GFS latest run has the wave moving across the state a little faster.
Looked like the low developed early in Alabama.Before it looked like it was in East Tenn. before popping.
I miss the old posters. Guess they have given up on winters much the same as some of the rest of us
Speaking of people who have gone into the dark.
Does anybody know what has happened to John Belski? I see he cut off his FB page & Twitter thread.
I don’t watch local news that often, Did he retire?
JB retired several years ago. He would still very occasionally fill in for w/e weather for Ch. 32. He did have a blog on the Ch. 32 website, but he didn’t post that often. Now that you mention it, I HAD missed his fb posts and was thinking just the other day why he hadn’t chimed in on this rare Christmas snow.He usually posted about snow on fb most.
Nam moving west.
I’m with Derecho and WWtWiB — Let’s go old school and bring the seniors, the posters and commenters from last winter and years before… Are they all sitting on the couch watching Matlock under and electric blanket?
I’ve posted occasionally throughout the years. Just nothing exciting the last few winters.
Looks like the Gfs pop the low in WV.Snow totals down.Would think we would want the low to become more amped and the low to develop sooner.Of course if it becomes more amped snow would probably move more westward so EKY totals would probably go down.