Good Friday to one and all. It’s another absolutely awesome weather day across Kentucky and this trend looks to carry us into the upcoming weekend. Beyond that, a few changes do start to show up. We will look at those and take a look longer term for the winter ahead.

Here’s what you need to know about the weather through the weekend and into early next week. It’s awesome. Got it? Ok, good.

A weak front shows up by the middle of next week and brings the chance for a shower or two with a quick-hitting shot of cold air…

Temps should rebound quickly behind that as we eye a possible bigger dip in the jet stream for Halloween week. That may spawn a healthy storm system to close out the month.

As we get deeper into fall, it’s time to start looking more and more into the winter ahead. The first thing we look at is the state of the oceans across the globe and there are two things that stand out. The first is the developing La Nina in the equatorial Pacific and the other is the continuation of the massive marine heatwave in a huge area near Japan…

 

Those two players and how the interact with one another will be huge for the winter ahead. In terms of the La Nina, this should strengthen into the weak to moderate category. Notice how the forecast models show the main ENSO region to peak around -1c below normal before bouncing back in the spring…

NOAA put out their winter outlook on Thursday. While this isn’t technically a forecast, they do give probabilities for above normal or below normal temps. They also have an “equal chances” category. Here’s what they came up with for December through February…

That’s actually not a very warm looking forecast from them. My only concern with that is the persistent normal to slightly below normal temps from the Mississippi Valley to the east coast. That has been pretty common since the start of Summer…

There’s something to be said about persistence in a pattern.

The precipitation outlook from NOAA has normal to above normal chance for our region…

 

I do think we see a lot of precipitation this winter.

Make it a great Friday and take care.