Good Monday to one and all. Our Christmas Eve Eve finds temps starting to recover in our part of the world, kicking off a milder look and feel that takes us through the upcoming weekend. As the clock gets ready to strike 2025, a very cold and active winter setup arrives.

Temps out there today hit the 40s for many under a mix of sun and clouds.

Christmas Eve and Day continues to find the chance for a few showers showing up around here, but this doesn’t look very widespread at all…

Temps reach the 50s for the second half of the week as we get set for another storm system to move in here with showers and a few thunderstorms for Friday. That will be followed up by another low on Sunday. Much colder air comes in behind this to wrap things up this weekend…

That begins the change back to winter as we close out the year and kickoff 2025.

The driving force for this massive turn to winter, and the increasing potential of a harsh winter period, is major blocking showing up. I’ve talked in detail about this over the past few weeks as it’s been fairly well advertised to those of us who look at that kind of thing.

If we look at the pattern on our side of the globe for New Year’s Day, you can clearly see the blocks going up from the west coast to Alaska and another huge block from near Hudson Bay in Canada to Greenland…

Notice how the cold trough is starting to expand for our region and across much of the United States.

By the end of the first week of January, the blocks are starting to play a game of hookup from the west coast of the US to Alaska, across the North Pole and into Greenland. As they do that, heights lower much more across the United States as much of the country goes into the deep freeze. Look how much more expansive the trough is compared to the map above…

That’s a pattern that can take things to the winter extreme if it verifies.

The EURO Weeklies were the first to show the possibility of this pattern and they are very consistent with this. What makes the Weeklies so impressive is they show the average of roughly 100 different members or runs. As you get farther out in time, models like this smooth things out. Knowing that, the look from the Weeklies is very stout.

Here’s the first week of January…

The second week…

 

Now we are to the part of the model where it smooths things out, but it’s still showing a significant trough for week 3 of January…

It continues to smooth things out in week 4, but you can see where the trough is…

It’s even holding that signal now into the start of February…

What will be the direct impact for Kentucky and surrounding areas? It’s obviously way too early to tell, but we have not seen a prolonged cold and active winter signal like this in several years. Some of my primary analog years for the winter forecast like 2020, 2010 and 1995 are in good pretty good shape right now.

I’ll have updates later today so check back. Have a magnificent Monday and take care.