Good Wednesday to one and all. On this busiest travel day of the entire year comes our annual tribute to one of the all-time great movies. Planes, Trains and Automobiles features Steve Martin and the late John Candy. In honor of this classic, I’ve been using that title for this very same post each year since 2005. Yep… That means you guys have been reading Planes, Trains and Automobiles for 20 years now. Wow!

The first few years of that were on the original WKYT blog I started. A few years later, Kentucky Weather Center was born and that’s where the PT and A post lives on.

This wonderful movie is set around Thanksgiving with Steve Martin’s character trying to get home to Chicago, but a snowstorm derails all that. Throw in John Candy’s amazing character and you have all the makings of all kinds of awesomeness.

Here’s a quick look at their journey…

I’ll have more on this movie a little later on.

Let’s also talk about the weather because cold air is crashing in out there today, setting the stage for a winter flex to end November and begin December. Our cold front is racing across eastern Kentucky early this morning and has a few showers along and ahead of it. Winds are whipping around as our temps drop through the 40s and into the upper 30s from northwest to southeast today.

Those gusty winds will make it pretty darn frigid out there. Here are the wind chill numbers from 7 this morning through 10 this evening…

The chance is there for a few late afternoon or evening flurries, especially in the north and east. Here’s the future radar from the HRRR showing a couple of blue returns…

Your Thanksgiving Day is cold with temps in the upper 20s and low 30s with a wind chill in the upper teens and low 20s to start, with upper 30s and low 40s during the afternoon with a wind chill of 25-30. A mix of sun and clouds will be noted with a stray snowflake possible.

Black Friday shoppers will encounter frigid temps with lows in the upper teens and low 20s to start. Wind chills may be as low as 10-15. Highs only reach the low and middle 30s with wind chills staying in the 20s. But, it’s mostly sunny, so you have that going for you.

That brings us to the weekend and a storm system moving in from the west Saturday into Sunday. With antecedent cold air in place and pretty limited warm air advection ahead of this system, rain and some snow will be possible late Saturday. That may go to a period of cold rain on Sunday before ending as a bit of a mix or some wraparound snow showers later Sunday.

The NAM only goes out to 7am Saturday, but has a snowy look on the leading edge of the precipitation shield moving into the far west…

After some of the wildest models swings I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying a lot, we now find most of the medium range models coming up with the same solution for our weekend system. I still like what the GFS is doing with some light rain and light snow overspreading the region later Saturday with chilly rains Sunday, ending as a few flakes by Sunday night…

The Canadian Model is pretty spot on to that…

So is the EURO…

Go back and read through some of my posts over the past weeks to see just how poorly the models have been… It’s astounding. They really didn’t get a decent handle on this until just a few days before, so keep that in mind when looking at model forecasts going forward.

Another storm system is likely to develop right behind this one by early next week. This should track farther south and east meaning we will need to be on guard for a potentially bigger winter event around here.

Once again, the models have been all over the place with the entire setup, but they are slowly starting to pick up on the potential. The GFS has FINALLY given up on developing tropical systems and, as long as that continues, it means we can give the model a little more attention now.

I think the latest run is onto something with the system from late Monday through Wednesday..,

The Canadian went from taking that system so far to our northwest that we had to watch for severe storms to now showing it so far to our southeast that it barely grazes us with a little snow…

The EURO just does not handle systems coming from the southwest very well, but the model is seeing the potential…

Regardless of storm tracks, the end of November into the start of December is looking every bit as cold as we’ve been talking about for weeks now. This map shows just how cold the 7 day stretch that starts with Thanksgiving Day looks to be…

 

That map sure looks a lot like what we expect with Phases 7 and 8 of the MJO…

It’s interesting to note we are already seeing such cold with the MJO just now getting into Phase 7. Look at how the forecast takes this through Phase 7 over the next 2 weeks, then into Phase 8 in the leadup to Christmas…

Those Phases mean a lot more cold shots are coming to the country in December, and I’m worried about the potential for a severe arctic outbreak or two before we get to Christmas. Lots of snow opportunities will accompany this pattern. This is a harsh winter setup for much of the country.

Planes Trains And Automobiles John Candy GIF - Planes Trains And Automobiles John Candy Del Griffith - Discover & Share GIFs

That takes us back to Trains, Planes and Automobiles before we close. This is a must watch video with Steve Martin remembering John Candy and talking about a scene that was left out of the movie…

And as always, we have to throw in this absolutely classic scene…

I just noticed this is one of the longest posts I’ve ever written with my word count topping a thousand. Dang. I will have updates later today and I’ll have a few updates on my Meteorologist Chris Bailey Facebook Page

Until then, here are your tracking tools for the day…

Current Temps

Make it a wonderful Wednesday and take care.