Good Monday, everyone. We have a mild and damp day taking shape as we kick off a brand new week, but Old Man Winter is about to fight back in. A light snowfall is ahead for parts of Kentucky as cold air surges back in.
Speaking of cold air, we are coming out of one of the coldest first weeks of December ever recorded in our region. The bullseye of below normal was centered right on top of us…
This is the coldest I could find for Kentucky in looking through the past 40 years. The only year that had a similar spatial distribution of temp anomalies was from the first week of December 2010…
2010 was one of my analogs for the winter forecast, so there’s that.
The weather out there today is damp with steady rains moving away early on as lingering light showers remain. Temps are in the 50s.
A cold front moves our way Tuesday as showers ramp back up and become fairly widespread. This front slowly pushes from west to east with rapidly falling temps behind it. Low pressure develops along this boundary Tuesday night into Wednesday and where it develops is the key to who gets light snow a light snowfall. There’s also a couple of disturbances moving in from the west that will bring pockets of light snow and flurries to many Wednesday afternoon into Thursday.
Now that the GFS has come west, I actually like what it’s showing with the overall evolution…
Let’s deal with the Tuesday night and Wednesday morning light snowfall potential. I’m still highlighting eastern and southeastern Kentucky with the greatest risk of a snowfall…
This will probably require a First Call for Snowfall map at some point later today, but mainly for eastern Kentucky. Keep in mind that isn’t for the periods of light snow coming later Wednesday into early Thursday.
Here’s what the GFS is seeing for snowfall…
The Canadian Family looks more reasonable now…
The NAM doesn’t see much coming from the Tuesday night and Wednesday morning system, but it shows some decent pockets of light snow later in the day…
The EURO has a similar line of thinking as the NAM…
This is a healthy, but quick-hitting, blast of cold air. Wind chills late Wednesday into Thursday morning are likely to hit the single digits again…
Temps bounce back up as we hit the weekend, but this is ahead of another system rolling in with mainly rain. Temps may tumble a bit again a few days later with another weak system early next week…
The setup for Christmas week is likely to feature a trough getting back into the eastern half of the country, bringing another round of colder than normal temps in the run up to the big day. The Canadian Ensembles look like this for the 5 day period before Christmas…
The EURO Ensembles only go out through December 23rd and aren’t as cold but still have a colder than normal look for the 5 day period…
The EURO AI is much colder during this time…
Meanwhile, the GFS Ensembles decided to go full blown heat miser with ZERO colder than normal numbers anywhere in the country…
Yet, the very same GFS Ensembles looked like this with the run just before this…
You rarely see control runs show that big of a swing from run to run. Ensembles just do not flip like that without something being off with the model.
I’ll have updates later today, so keep checking back. Until then, you know the drill…
Thanks Chris. According to the Mesonet, we had .88 inches of very welcome Rain. I hoping this Winter, during the mild periods there will be a lot more.
Have a Great Day Everyone !
I don’t usually put much faith in ensemble forecasts and long-range forecasts in general, but for a large chunk of 2024, the GFS forecast model has been out of touch with reality. The model’s basic methodology has much in common with the Euro and Canadian, but I believe that our warming climate is partly to blame for the GFS model’s wild swings, because it is unable to rationalize the extremes in temperature and humidity we’re seeing today. It is expecting “normal” data, but what it receives these days is anything but normal.
Well said Joe.