Good Sunday, everybody. We are seeing an absolutely gorgeous stretch of fall weather setting up. This will carry us until our next system moves in here by Thursday and Friday. That system looks to bring an even chillier air mass than the one we have out there right now.

Our day begins with a kiss of frost in some of the sheltered valleys with readings ranging from 35-40 in most areas. Highs this afternoon reach the low 60s with a gorgeous sky.

Highs in the low and middle 60s are common from Monday through Wednesday and this will make for a great time to get out and enjoy the explosion of fall colors. Temps in western Kentucky will make a run at 70 or so, but that’s still really nice.

Our next system moves in on Thursday and it looks fairly moisture starved. It’s another cold front with a narrow band of showers along it and that will be accompanied by another blast of colder air…

You can see the below normal numbers here…

This may very well unleash a widespread frost next weekend.

We continue to see the trend of pushing this big positive height anomaly north into Canada, allowing for troughs to swing in here underneath it. That’s a trend showing up strongly on the GFS…

Have I mentioned this is the fall for big cutoff lows?

As you know, we can ask the computer models to find analogs to forecasts from the GFS. This is from one of the Saturday runs of the GFS centered on October 27th…

You can see the dates of the years best matching that forecast in the lower right hand corner of the map. Obviously, those will change from run to run, but I decided to take that particular run because most of the years listed have something in common… A very cold start to winter. 1963 and 1953 are double weighted on that and both featured very cold Decembers. As a matter of fact, 1963 is the 3rd coldest December on record in Lexington. Two other top 10 coldest are also on there… 2000 was the second coldest December and 1983 was the 7th coldest. 1977 is on the list and that following winter was brutal. 1953, 1981 and 1973 were all colder than normal for December. The only year to feature above normal temps was 2007.

I’m only pointing this out because of the late October pattern featuring that big positive height anomaly in Canada usually points toward a cold start to winter. I mean… we did just have a White Christmas last year, we can’t possibly do it two years in a row? Or can we? ❄⛄🎄🎅

Make it a great Sunday and take care.