Good Thursday, everyone. We have a frigid day in progress across the bluegrass state and this cold air will play a role in the next system rolling into town. That arrives later Friday with snow and rain and that ushers in another messy weekend in the bluegrass state.

Let us begin with the precious present. Temps to start us out today will be in the single digits for parts of the north and northwest. Low to mid  teens will be common for the rest of the state. A leftover snow flurry will be around for southeastern Kentucky.

Our weekend system throws clouds our way on Friday as moisture pushes in from the west. Low level cold air will be hanging around and this air is dry in nature. With low dewpoints … sleet and snow will likely break out on the leading edge of the main precipitation shield. This can put some accumulations down Friday night and early Saturday morning.

Light rain will likely take over as we go into Saturday, but that won’t last long. The low goes by to our northeast and we get a change to light snow Saturday night with snow showers into Sunday. The GFS matches the forecast we’ve been talking about…

GFSWith this storm not being as strong as it looked a few days ago, temps on Sunday won’t be as cold as I once thought. Instead of low 20s we will be talking about upper 20s.

As we watch the northwesterly flow after this… a system dives in here at some point by the middle of next week. This shows up well on the GFS at 500mb…

GFS 2

That can bring a round of light snow to those along its path. It will also bring about another shot of very cold air. Check out what comes in behind it…

GFS

That moves through and sets the stage for a very interesting setup by next weekend… the weekend before Christmas. Another MAJOR arctic attack will be diving into the country, but this time should be aimed farther east than the last one. That could also fuel another prolonged winter weather event for much of the country… again, centered farther east and south than the last one. Check out the flow upstairs for that weekend…

GFS 3With this kind of a pattern, it significantly ups the chance for major cold and snow around here from just before Christmas through the new year.

Have a great day and take care.