Finally... some rain.

Back in the Spring, I never thought I'd be saying this... but we need rain.  The first 14 days of June have proven to be bone dry here in Lawrenceburg, as well as most areas in the Bluegrass.  In fact, it's been 19 days since we had any measurable precipitation at all here.  The yards are turning brown and are getting a McNugget-like crispyness to them.  After record setting rains in April and into May, we are now praying for some moisture from the sky.

It looks like that might finally happen on Wednesday.  An area of low pressure will organize just west of us and move northeastward just  north of the Ohio River tomorrow.  This should be a good enough spark to finally break the sky open and create rain here in central Kentucky.  In fact, some strong storms could be possible.  That's something we'll have to keep an eye on as the Storm Prediction Center has the entire state of Kentucky in the Slight Risk zone for severe weather as of right now.

I'm going to try and post up a nice radar image to follow the rains here:

Looking ahead to the weekend, it appears that we might actually see another good shot of rainfall from Friday into the first part of next week as a frontal system may stall out in the Ohio Valley.  This would allow multiple complexes of thunderstorms to ride along the front and attack the central Kentucky area from the northwest.  One thing I've learned in my years studying weather in Kentucky is that you always have to be cautious forecasting rain in the Summer.  The models seem to pick out what should be a good rain-making system and then that type of setup never materializes and the forecast for rain becomes a bust.  So I'm sort of a "gotta' see it to believe it" kind of guy when it comes to heavy rainfall in the Summer.  But...  I'll just throw it out there that the GFS model in particular is showing a LOT of rain over the course of the upcoming weekend.  With training systems repeatedly moving in, it could possibly turn into a nasty weekend.  But.. we'll wait and fine tune that forecast later.  And if it does rain, we do need it so no complaints here.

This is what the GFS model is currently showing for Saturday afternoon:

You can see that it's wanting to stretch rainy weather from Minnesota all the way to South Carolina as storms ride along that front.

It's been a crazy year weatherwise.  From record cold and snow, to record rainfall, to tieing all-time record high temperatures in June with zero rainfall... we've seen it all this year.  I'll start looking into the July-September forecast soon.  That is always the part of the year when it gets hot, humid, and dry here...so it'll be interesting to see where we go from here in 2011.  Will this wild pattern continue?

Keep the NOAA weather radios ON and set to alert mode tomorrow.  (Really, they should be 24/7).  If you don't have one, pick one up at Kroger for $29 bucks... or if you can afford to spend a little more..the Midland WR-300 is awesome and is just a little bit more.

-Shawn