Good Saturday, everyone. Clouds are thickening quickly across the state as our messy system rolls into the Ohio Valley. This will bring winter weather into parts of Kentucky this evening into early Sunday, with another round of snow waiting in the wings starting Sunday night. In between those two will be some plain old rain for a spell.
Here’s a breakdown of how things look to play out through the opening few days of February.
- Rain works into western Kentucky this afternoon then the precipitation moves into central and eastern Kentucky this evening and overnight.
- The leading edge of all this is likely to be snow or a wintry mix, with the best chance from north central Kentucky through the east and southeast.
- Accumulations are likely in this area, but heftier amounts will likely be confined to the far north and northeast. It’s a fine line between snow and NO snow.
- The far southeastern mountains may get in on some of the action, too.
- Rain takes control from the southwest Saturday night and early Sunday as low pressure works right across the region.
- That low then moves into West Virginia and gives up as a monster storm develops on the east coast. This is when colder air surges back in from the northwest, changing the rain to snow.
- Wraparound snow bands may be a little stout from time to time through Monday night. That’s when snow showers and squalls kick in across the eastern half of the state.
- Accumulations are likely with the wraparound snows with lighter amounts in the west and heavier amounts in the east. Some pretty good totals may very well show up.
By map making program isn’t cooperating tonight so I’m going to keep this map out for this front end setup…
I do think areas north along and north of the darker blue can get in on a few inches of snow, with lighter amounts south of it and heavier amounts north.
If we look at what the models are suggesting for the front end snow potential, we find a similar overall theme, but with a few differences in the details…
EURO
NAM
GFS
Canadian
The wraparound light snow, snow showers and snow squalls kick in Sunday night into Monday morning for most of the region. This action then hangs around the eastern half of the state through early Tuesday…
Check out the EURO total snowfall from today through Tuesday…
Much of what that model sees across Kentucky comes from the wraparound stuff from Sunday night through early Tuesday. I will get you guys two different First Calls (program willing) out by early afternoon.
Temps climb behind all this by the end of the week, but the overall pattern signal is for cold to continue to overwhelm the pattern across the country. This is average GFS Ensembles temp departures from normal from the end of this week through Valentines Day…
I will have updates later today, so check back. Until then, here are your radars to follow the action in from the west…
Enjoy your Saturday and take care.
Winter Storm Warnings are out for all of Northern IL, including the Chicago Metro area, from Saturday afternoon through Sunday afternoon, so everything seems to be on track for the biggest snowstorm here in several years. All the computer models are in agreement on large snowfall totals throughout the Chicago area.
The large area of snow is predicted to move into the area early in the afternoon today and move SW to NE across the area, quickly becoming heavy. East winds with gusts around 30 MPH will also develop.
Many areas could also see enhanced snowfall by Sunday evening from Lake Michigan.
We’ll see how all this evolves later on today.
Just plain cold rain hee in sky .ugh
Just plain cold rain here in wky
Rain Snow line well far north of Ky.
So much for going to IKEA this weekend- reschedule! Roads up there are bad enough with contraction, yet alone snow.
It seem that the sustained cold air keeps pushing out with each outlook. We are starting to run out of sustained cold air runway.
Construction
That GFS temperature model needs to look at the Ventusky Weather Site showing this morning that the Arctic Air in Western Canada is retreating again and increasing into Europe and Asia, however part of the Arctic Air is moving into New England.
Rain moving into our area doesn’t look to be that heavy like the last rain event.