Good afternoon, folks. Confidence continues to increase on a significant Kentucky impact from a major eastern United States winter storm over the weekend. We get an opening act light snow event on Saturday, but Sunday looks to be when the main show takes the stage.
Thanks for your patience while KWC was down over the past few days. In addition to dealing with hundreds of thousands of page views a day, as the site was undergoing repair, it was hit by a malware attack. Hopefully, things get back to normal before the day is over. This thing might be the death of me before it’s over. ☠️
Ok, let’s get back to our Winter Storm Threat for the weekend.
Here’s an updated breakdown on how things may play out:
- A WINTER STORM WATCH is now out for much of central and eastern Kentucky. This will likely get moved around a bit as we get closer and will be upgraded to a warning. Winter Weather Advisories will also be issued for other areas of the state.
- A period of light snow moves into the state tonight and early Saturday. This will then expand farther east during the day and should be good for some light accumulations. That’s especially the case south of the Interstate 64 corridor. Overall, this isn’t a big deal.
- A band of heavier snow will impact areas of far western Kentucky during this time.
- Low pressure moves into the Tennessee Valley and weakens Saturday night and early Sunday. A stronger low then develops across Georgia and into the Carolinas and rolls up the eastern slopes of the Appalachian Mountains.
- This puts areas of central and eastern Kentucky in the line of fire for potentially heavy snow and some sleet and freezing rain Sunday into Sunday night.
- Several inches of snow will show up in this area, but there’s going to be a super sharp cutoff on the western slide of the accumulating snows. This looks to show up near the Louisville and Cincy areas, but this is still subject to change.
- Given the fact this will be a heavy wet snow, some power issues may show up for any area getting 4″ or more inches of the white stuff.
- Snows taper off Sunday night with snow showers putting down additional light accumulations for Monday.
Here’s a look at my First Call For Snowfall…
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gray/3VWA2XNTMFC2HN7VT5KRTTAUZM.png)
Keep in mind, this is not the final call and changes will surely be made as we get closer. The forecast is complicated by the potential for sleet and freezing rain to get mixed in. The more of those two we get, the lower the snow totals.
I will have updates later today and will also use WKYT.COM as my backup to KWC should the site go down again. Of course, I will also have the latest on WKYT-TV starting at 4pm. I leave you with your radars to track the system in from the northwest…
Make it a great Friday and take care.
It’s really good to have KWC back, with images. It’s looks as though South Central Kentucky may come out on the low side of the estimate. This is especially true if we get brief switchover to sleet or freezing rain, which is common with these heavy, wet snow events.
Speaking of heavy, the biggest difference between this event and the last week’s is that shoveling this snowfall will be a good deal more strenuous, So be careful…an hour or two of shoveling is not an exercise program, nor does it replace one, so resist the temptation to have your shovel fulfill your “gonna lose some weight” New Years Resolution. Your heart will thank you!
Joe, just looked at the GFS model and there has been a shift to the northwest, but it is too early to tell what will happen with this Storm.
My doctor told me NEVER Shovel Snow, but when I was younger I cleared many driveways.
Holy moly looks like NAM is way south..
Only takeaway I get from Nam is pretty much falls in line with the Rgem and CMC..Hopefully Izzy just keeps moving East and out of the state..Freezing rain,Snow no fun..Also being stuck on I-64 for 10 hrs no fun either.