Good Thursday to one and all. It’s an absolutely frigid early January day across Kentucky as we await the arrival of the next winter storm. This blows in late tonight and Friday with several inches of snow across the Commonwealth.
Let’s begin with the weather out there ahead of this storm.
Freezing fog and frigid temps and wind chills start the day. Roads are still pretty darn messy, so stay safe if you’re out there driving early on. Some rays of sun will be noted through the afternoon as temps reach the 20s for highs.
Winter Storm Warnings are likely going up today for much of Kentucky. Here’s a look at the current warnings and advisories across Kentucky and surrounding states…
Here’s a quick breakdown of this new winter storm:
- This storm won’t be anything as impactful as the last storm but will still have a big travel impact.
- Low pressure develops along the Gulf Coast and rolls northeastward toward the Carolinas from tonight through Saturday.
- This system throws ample moisture into our region that will also interact with a cold front moving in from the west.
- The snow moves into southwestern Kentucky later tonight then spreads northeastward across Kentucky Friday.
- The snow winds down from west to east Friday night with light snow and snow showers for Saturday.
- Several inches of snow will be likely across the state.
- The floor on this looks to be 3″ or 4″ for most of Kentucky with the ceiling being up to 8″ in the west and south. Again… the 8″ would likely be the absolute worst case scenario.
Here’s my New Call for Snowfall…
The HRRR is pretty aggressive with our storm system. This animation starts late tonight and goes through 7pm Friday…
Here’s the snow forecast from that model run through 7pm Friday…
The NAM Fam is also pretty juiced up. The Hi Res NAM goes through 7am Saturday…
The NAM is even more amped up…
The Canadian is a little more tempered with pretty uniform snowfall numbers…
The GFS isn’t as amped up with this run and likely has some issues…
The EURO is fairly consistent…
Once this storm moves away, we watch a series of clippers dropping in from the northwest next week. Each of these can put down some accumulations as arctic air surges back in…
Temps have the chance to reach 0 or below at some point next week as this harsh winter pattern continues.
Temps have the chance to rebound for a day or two by late next week into the following weekend, but that’s only temporary. The signal is there for another big winter storm or two as we hit the week of the 20th with crushing arctic air likely fighting right back in. The Ensembles have a frigid signal…
The snow signal for the next two weeks is also very strong…
Looking longer range toward the end of January into the start of February, the EURO Weeklies continue to look pretty cold and seem to be growing colder as we get closer.
The final 7 days of the month are pretty darn cold…
While not as cold, the first week of February is still showing up colder than normal…
I’ll have your normal updates through the day, so check back. Until then, I have your tracking tools including our Kentucky Weather Cams to watch the flakes flying across different parts of the state…
Have a great Thursday and take care.
Dislike
It’s strange also that although it’s approaching warning criteria… it’s at the very least winter weather advisory criteria… I wonder if it’s because it’s difficult to have so many products out at one time? Possibly why they’re holding off? A cold weather advisory… a freezing fog advisory…a special weather statement, etc… I haven’t read their forecast discussion
I’m just not getting the absence of winter storm watch in the main east counties Pike, Martin, And Johnson. By looking at the data it looks to be in the same range of snow as floyd and letcher counties. It historically snows a little more in Pike than it does in most other places, maybe i’m just not seeing the big picture somewhere though. I just want one big snow, snowman building snow then bring on warm and sunny. The cold makes my bones hurt.
Despite having no snow cover locally, the temperature at my PWS dropped to 13°F last night. Though the CPC confirms that we are currently in a La Nina condition, with a 60% chance of it persisting through March, the current Polar Vortex intrusion has made this La Nina winter not typical at all!
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.shtml
I guess our snow in the east has been cancelled no watch or anything lol
There’s still a chance, Crystal, if the low intensifies or if it slows down. However, the odds that it slows down are kinda slim, since the jet stream winds in the upper atmosphere, which help to steer weather systems at the surface, are forecasted to be very strong, and moving in a west to east direction. I’m hoping that you get some.
But here in BG over the past few years, we’ve seen nearly every system either go to our north or change to rain. It will be interesting to see how people in our area react to 4 to 6 inches!