Christmas update

The Euro model, which was pretty solid going into early this week, has now abandoned the idea of a big storm rolling through Kentucky this weekend.  So now, there are officially no models supporting the idea of a white Christmas for the Bluegrass.  The only frozen precip. we may see will come in the form of a few flurries on Friday night as shown on the latest run of the GFS model:

It wants to kick up a little precipitation diurnally during the evening Friday, and then that dies off after sunset.  But even at that we're looking at a high around 42 degrees so snow flakes will be very hard to come by.

Sigh..  it's tough.  We looked to have a good shot at putting something down this year, but our hopes are fading fast as now the models are all keeping this weekend mostly dry.  Oh well, at least travel will be safer this way, and we have 3 to 4 MONTHS of winter ahead of us.

By the way, as of 12:30 in the morning, just a few hours from now, we are at the winter solstice.  That means that the sun is directly over the Tropic of Capricorn (23.5 degrees south latitude) and tomorrow will be the shortest day of the entire year, in terms of daylight.  Each day from now until June will get longer and longer!  Yay!

Merry Christmas and a Happy 2012.


-Shawn

Tuesday Christmas weather update

Good morning.  A very quick update on how things are playing out for the Christmas weekend coming up..

The weather modeling is basically in two camps this morning.  Some show energy moving through west to east early in the Christmas weekend, which could at least put flurries or light snow into the air for Christmas Eve, and then Christmas Day stays dry.  The GFS and MRF models are in this camp.  The other camp says that we get multiple waves of energy moving up from the gulf toward the east coast or appalachian mountains throughout the weekend.  This would give us chances for on and off rain, but it would keep our temperatures slightly too warm for snow.  The Canadian (CMC) and European (ECMWF) models are in this camp.

Just for fun, here is the latest MRF chart valid Christmas Eve:

The solid black line is the freezing line about 5,000 ft. up above us.  Kentucky is firmly in this zone.  At the same time, precip. is backfeeding from a strong low moving through the Carolinas.  This model shows snow in the air on Christmas Eve for Kentucky.  It is currently the only model run that is this bullish on a scenario like this playing out.

The point is, we are now only 4 days out, and every computer model is showing something completely different.  Winter is ALWAYS a very tough season to forecast weather in..  but this year in particular has been horrible lately.  This is the worst I've ever seen the models perform.  You simply cannot say for certain what the weekend will bring.  At this point, dry conditions, rain, and snow are all possibilities.  It's a weather guy's worst nightmare.

I will update again tonight on what I personally think is going to actually happen this weekend.  I'm going to look over the model runs this afternoon, and then tonight I'll take a stab at what we will honestly see play out. 


-Shawn

White Christmas for Kentucky?

Good Sunday afternoon.  I thought I'd post up a quick update on the weather for next weekend.  Today's run of my favorite weather model, the good old American GFS, is sticking to it's guns on developing a storm on the gulf coast this weekend, and then shooting that storm up the east coast the day after Christmas.  This most recent run actually brings a cold rain to us on Christmas Eve, then dries us out briefly before bringing in a mega-storm late Christmas night.  Check out the chart valid 11:00PM Christmas night:

You can see the low as it is strengthening near Atlanta, GA Christmas night.  The next several hours of this model run shows this low getting stronger as it moves toward Virginia.  On this chart you can see that the freezing air is already moving into Kentucky as the precip. is increasing from our south.  That's a textbook recipe for SNOW for us. 

Taken literally, today's GFS charts would mean a big time snowstorm for Kentucky counties that are east of I-75.  Travel on I-75 Christmas night into Monday morning would be severely impacted due to the harsh weather and the lack of manpower out clearing roadways (it IS the holidays afterall). 

Folks west of I-75 would see snow too, but it would not be a massive snowstorm for us.  It is important to remember that we are still a full WEEK away from this storm, and details on it will change as we get closer.  This is obviously not set in stone.  But the point is, the chance for a white Christmas for some of us is still on the table.  If you plan on traveling in eastern Kentucky next weekend, you'll want to keep a close eye on this one.

It's all a matter of the track of the low and the strength of the low.  We need a STRONG low to pull the cold air in rapidly from the northwest, and we need it to track toward western Virginia.  If we can get those two things to come together next weekend, we'll be looking at everything WHITE.  Stay tuned...

-Shawn