Good afternoon, everyone. I don’t have a lot of time, but I still wanted to drop by for a quick update on the system moving in Friday night and Saturday, and for the systems lined up beind that into early next week.
Rain and some snow will overspread the region Friday night into Saturday morning. The early part of this system is now within the range of the HRRR model and the current run shows rain going over to wet snow by Saturday morning across much of central Kentucky…
That’s pretty far south with the snow potential and it has to do with the model showing heavier precipitation. In this setup, the heavier the precipitation, the better the chance for some colder air to be pulled down changing the rain to wet snow for a time.
As far as the other models are concerned, the EURO continues to be the farthest south with the chance for accumulating snows…
The GFS jumped to northern Kentucky seeing the best chance at some accumulations…
The NAM went from nothing to showing accumulating snow along and north of Interstate 64…
It also has a touch of freezing rain…
Once again, the Canadian models have the most freezing rain…
That’s likely well overdone, folks.
Here’s the snow map from this run and it also targets the north…
I’m going to put out a First Call for Snowfall on WKYT at 4pm today. As you can see, much of the region won’t be seeing much at all with rain and a mix as the predominant weather type. Still, some slush will show up for some areas and I’ll try to tackle that.
A weaker system zips through here late Saturday night and Sunday with another round of light rain and light snow. The best chance for another light accumulation appears to be in the north…
The next storm system arriving late Monday and taking us through Wednesday continues to slowly trend farther east. The latest GFS brings a thumping snow to northern Kentucky to start this system before it goes to rain then back to snow…
I’ll have another update later today. Have a great day and take care.
Boo-hiss on the cold rain. The only thing worse is ice. Thanks Chris for your dedication to this blog. I read it every day but hardly ever post.
Thanks Chris for the update. Seems the coming system may be changing ?
Have a Great Afternoon !
Looking like the artic outbreak may finally happen this time.
I don’t see it, All I see is temps. slightly below normal. (Long Distance Models)
Still two non-event rains as mentioned a few days ago
From the perspective of South Central, the HRRR model has been much more accurate than the NAM, Euro or the GFS. It continues to show the weekend system as an all rain event in the Warren County/Bowling Green area, and I feel strongly that the following storm will layout in similar fashion. With the exception of short term models like HRRR and NAM, our whacky climate continues to significantly degrade the performance of medium and long range forecast models. Also, our climate anomalies seem to be wreaking havoc with Dr. Cohen’s Polar Vortex analysis, as indicated in his most recent blog post:
https://www.aer.com/science-research/climate-weather/arctic-oscillation/
Welcome to Fencetucky.. somethings never change.
Isn’t that the truth?
Our strong El Nino is not behaving as we would expect, with the real puzzler in my mind being the Great Lakes, which, at this point in the season, have the highest ice-free percentage in recent history. As of January 2nd, only 0.35% of the Great Lakes was ice covered! Though not as significant as the Gulf of Mexico, the Great Lakes do influence our weather to some extent, and they may be the canary in the coal mine for our freaky weather.
Exactly, we are in uncharted territory so to speak, and parts or SW Canada was snow free as of a few weeks ago too. This pattern is definitely a work in progress. Will be interesting to see how this works out .
If the lakes are open for business it could open up the opportunity to see an over performing Clipper system.
It might be our only chance to see a 2-4” snowfall. LOL
If a significant polar front switches on the lake effect machine, we may not see western sections of Michigan and NY State until May! In all seriousness, El Nino is supposed to enhance West to East flow, and some of the biggest lake effect seasons in recent memory occurred during El Nino years.