Good Saturday, folks. Better weather is slowly taking control of our weekend, but the focus continues to be on a winter looking pattern on the way for the week ahead. This pattern has the chance to bring the first flakes of the season to much of our part of the world.
Let’s start with today and roll forward.
Clouds are stubborn once again and may hang around for much of the day for many. The best chance for clearing will be across far southern Kentucky and way out west. Areas seeing the clearing hit the mid and upper 50s. Those keeping the clouds hang in the low 50s once again. There’s even the chance for a little drizzle hanging on, too.
Sunday sees temps rebound into the upper 50s and low 60s with a mix of sun and clouds around.
Monday may feature a few showers rolling in ahead of our massive system that may have a significant impact on much of our region. As we get closer, this system starts to come into better focus and that will continue to be the case, obviously, with each passing day.
Here’s a quick breakdown of how things MIGHT play out:
- Showers and thunderstorms sweep across the state Monday night and Tuesday as a cold front moves in.
- That front slows down as a powerful low pops on top of our region Wednesday. This will be just ahead of the powerful upper low coming in from the west.
- High winds and heavy rain will be possible Wednesday as the low wraps up somewhere across the Ohio Valley.
- This may be able to pull a band of snow into our region Wednesday night or Thursday. The extent of such winter weather won’t be known for a few days so I can’t tell you if it’s just a few flakes or something more significant.
- The CHANCE for some winter weather would then linger into Friday as our low pulls away to the northeast.
- 40mph-50mph wind gusts will be possible for some areas around the region from this storm.
- Setups like this can sometimes lead to a healthy snow event under the core of the upper low and on the backside of the surface low. That could set up anywhere from the Great Lakes to the Ohio Valley or into the northeast. It’s just way too early for anything definitive so slow ya roll, folks.
- Another weaker system may try to sneak in behind all this later next weekend.
The forecast models all continue to have a consistent theme with this setup and aren’t deviating too much with that theme. They do, however, change the details from run to run as they try to figure out the exact evolution and placement of all the players on the field.
The latest GFS shows the potential for everything I just talked about…
The Canadian has a similar look and evolution
The EURO also shows something similar but is much more progressive in getting this system in and out of the area…
The forecast models are spitting out some big winds from the Plains all the way to the east coast…
The GFS Ensembles continue to go toward another big trough getting into the eastern part of the country over the long Thanksgiving holiday period.
You can clearly see a big ridge going up along the west coast into Alaska with a trough extending from the North Pole all the way into the eastern US…
If that comes to pass, that’s a healthy signal for colder than normal temps into much of the eastern half of the country. This setup has also been showing up more and more on the European Weeklies that go trough the end of December. The weeklies have been growing colder as we get closer to December and the 30 day average temps show below normal for our region…
With the cold comes the chances for snow…
I’ll have another update for you later today. Make it a good one and take care.
One thing that you can always count on in the winter in this area every single year is the fact that there’s never any shortage of those dark gloomy overcast days….and that makes the temperature feel so much colder
Not buying into it.
Thanks Chris. I’m wishing for Sunny weather now. I guess I was spoiled with all the Sunny, mild days we had this late Summer and Fall. Yesterday’s cloudy, damp and cool weather made my bones ach for the first time in my life.
Enjoy the Day Everyone !
This unusually warm November is letting me make some meaningful repairs to my lawn, and so far, so good, plus it has also helped us from a standpoint of lower heating costs
As for what the Winter holds for us, it will probably come down to an educated guess. Warmer than normal ocean temperatures in the Gulf of Alaska over the past few Winters have caused ridging over northern Alaska and a trough over Canada, which helped funnel cold air into the Midwest, but those water temps now are colder than normal, which indicates to me that it will help to amplify La Nina’s effect. Unfortunately, that will increase our chances for a mild Winter.
I agree Joe, but we may have a few bouts of Winter weather ( hoping that it’s not Ice like we had in January 2009 ) especially if the PDO goes to a weak negative later in the Winter. Real Cold and Snowy Winter indicators start in the late Summer with the PDO going positive ( El Nino ) and the AMO going negative. This is what happened in 1976 to 1978. This is when the AO and the NAO went way negative all through the Winter.