Headed Toward the Latter Part of Winter

Well, the new Climate Prediction Center seasonal outlooks won’t be released until next Thursday.  It’s going to be interesting to see what those look like.  The forecasts they issued late in 2012 for the upcoming winter of 12-13 had been way off.  But the new outlooks they put out in January started to show that they were taking into account what was really happening.  We shall see…

 

For now, it appears that if you wanted to make a prediction for the next 2-4 weeks worth of weather in Kentucky, it would be summarized this way:  wild and wet.

 

The AO index is running negative and is forecast to continue slightly negative through the remainder of February.  The NAO index also is slightly negative.  The PNA index is forecast slightly positive in coming days.  If you put all this together, it looks like a really good recipe for eastern U.S. storms, at least on paper.

 

We did just have a historic Nor’easter bomb New England.  And the GFS model forecasts a couple more storms to come through the Ohio Valley next week.  The first one may move into Kentucky on Tuesday morning.  It appears at this point that a lack of instability will preclude any tornadoes or wind damage.  We’re probably looking at heavy rain and a few rumbles of thunder.

 

 

 

After that system passes, we’ll see cooler but not cold air filter in behind it.  On Thursday, warmer air will start to push in from the south once again, and another storm system will develop in the Midwest and push toward the Ohio Valley.  There is a lot of uncertainty about where that system will go.  If it track south, it will be more of a rain/snow mix for Kentucky.  But as it’s predicted right now, it would move north of Kentucky and spread rain and thunderstorms into our area.  Take a look:

 

 

That system has a more dynamic look to it at this point, as it will be fed by a 140 knot upper level jet.  Right now it doesn’t look like this will be a severe weather outbreak…BUT…that possibility cannot be ruled out.  We will have to watch that system as it unfolds.  This, if it occurs as shown, would affect Kentucky around Friday of next week.  Look at the strong jet bearing down upon the lower OH valley:

 

 

There is at least some indication that yet another storm may move in around the 25^th of the month.  But now we’re starting to get too far out to reliably predict.

 

The bottom line is this…we have a lot of rain headed this way, and a lot of snow for the Great Lakes and Northeast.  The pattern is locked and loaded and in coming weeks it won’t be boring.  Snowfall is still below average here in Kentucky and I don’t see any big snowstorm chances coming up.  But we’ve still got 4-6 weeks to go where a big storm is possible.

 

It won’t be long until we’re talking about severe weather season.  And if this current pattern holds, March and April could be a very dangerous time again this year…very similar to the outbreaks we saw last year.

 

Enjoy the weekend,

 

Shawn