Good Sunday, folks. It’s another frigid day in the bluegrass state with temps running WAAAAAAYYYYY below normal. This frigid air is about to ease up a bit as we start the new week, but a big storm system looks to impact the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

Let’s go ahead and take a look at how the week is shaping up as of right now:

  • Monday starts frigid and ends with temps returning to the 40s for the entire state. Skies are partly to mostly sunny.
  • Tuesday will see a little more clouds as a system passes to our south. Temps hit 50 or better for most areas. BTW, normal highs are in the middle 50s still.
  • The busy travel day on Wednesday looks good across the region with a mix of sun and clouds and temps in the 50s.
  • Thanksgiving Day will find clouds increasing and temps in the 50s. Rain should develop at some point during the day, but the timing of this is still a work in progress.
  • Black Friday finds colder air sweeping in from the west with the chance for rain and snow. The extent of rain and snow depends on exactly how the late week storm system evolves.

So, let’s talk about Thanksgiving Holiday weekend potential.

 

Let’s start with the upper levels as we watch a piece of energy working into the Pacific Northwest. This dives across the Rockies and into the Plains states and plays a little game of hookup with a smaller piece of energy hanging around the southern Mississippi Valley. As these get join forces, they dig out a deep trough in our region and across the eastern half of the country.

The models continue to handle this differently, though. Until they get the upper levels fully resolved, the models will struggle with the actual weather conditions they’re spitting out at the surface.

Here’s the Canadian Model…

This is what it looks like at the surface…

The EURO and GFS seem to have traded biases with their recent runs.

The latest run from the EUROPEAN became the most progressive of the bunch and has a rather wimpy system…

The reason it’s turned so progressive is that it’s bringing another trough across the country quickly behind it…

The GFS continues to be a lone wolf in taking that energy toward Mexico instead of into the Plains states. It eventually brings it northeastward into our region by Sunday and Monday…

I bash the GFS a lot for good reason, but that’s really a strange solution for this model as it doesn’t fit any biases. That alone makes me wonder if this thing is onto something or just on something.

We will know soon if the GFS is out of Cheech and Chong movie or if it’s straight as an arrow. What’s your call?

As we get into the following week, we see some more weather drama for the closing days of November. We are likely to see a bounce back in temps, but for how long? It’s a really chaotic looking pattern across the Northern Hemisphere and that means medium range models are going to really struggle.

I do expect a transition toward another full blown wintry pattern as we get into December. As a matter of fact, if we look into early December, the GFS Ensembles are going with blocking showing up across Greenland (-NAO). That would likely mean a trough digging back into the east…

The pattern taking shape for December is likely to go into the tank at some point, once again. Just look at our fall pattern, folks. There has been no shortage of cold. We had frost and low 30s in the last week of September. October had a few major shots of cold. And the current run of frigid temps for November.

As I said way back in early October, the coldest air relative to normal in the northern hemisphere was on our side of the North Pole. When fronts work through here, they’re able to tap that air and this is why it’s been so darn cold.

I expect this to continue into December with the chance for severe cold at some point.

I’ll give you updates later today so check back. Have a great Sunday and take care.