Good Thursday, folks. The focus continues to be on a big storm system rumbling across the country that will impact our region Friday and Saturday. This will bring the potential for severe storms and heavy rains back into the bluegrass state.

Here’s how this system looks to play out around here:

  • The system arrives Friday and carries us into the first half of Saturday.
  • Scattered showers and storms will be noted from Thursday evening into Friday.
  • A powerful cold front sweeps in Friday night and brings a line of heavy rain producing thunderstorms with it.
  • Some of those storms may be strong or severe and the greatest threat may come during the overnight hours Friday into early Saturday.
  • Damaging winds will be possible during this time.
  • Tornadoes will also be possible and a few could be strong.
  • The faster moving system decreases the general flooding risk, but we still have a flash flood risk.
  • 1″-3″ of rain may show up during this time.
  • Temps may flirt with record highs from Friday afternoon into the wee hours of Saturday.
  • Temps Saturday crash quickly with temps falling into the 30s in the late afternoon. Wind chills make it feel much colder.

The Storm Prediction Center has much of the region in the severe storms risk for Friday…

That risk moves east on Saturday…

The forecast models continue to show wind gusts in excess of 50mph showing up…

Once this system blows through, things turn seasonably cold for Sunday but we mild it up quickly after that. Temps for the middle of next week should return to the 60s. But, a cold front looks to crash the party by the end of the week, knocking temps down to normal…

The GFS is going toward the colder look developing as we head into Christmas week…

I continue to check out runs of the CFS just to see what kind of signal we can take from the seasonal model. Last night, I showed how recent runs of the weeklies showed a change taking place Christmas week into early January.

I decided to look at the CFS monthly forecast from the early Wednesday run of the model. Here’s what the CFS Ensembles average temp forecast looks like for January-March…

That has a slightly colder than normal look around here with much colder than normal to our northwest.

The control run of the CFS for the same 3 month period has a much colder look…

I will see you with updates later today. Have a good one and take care.