Tornado Watch #46 for Central Kentucky

A Tornado Watch is in effect for all of the Bluegrass of Kentucky until 1:00PM today.  Here is a look at where the watch box is located:

 

 

 

The line of thunderstorms that came through this morning was round 1.  The line moving through western KY as of 7:45EST this morning is round 2.  It is producing many tornado warnings, and from what I understand some of them have been verified.  Round 3 will occur around lunchtime or after today.  This will likely be in the form of a severe squall line that develops along the cold front itself.  It will have potential to produce wind damage and tornadoes...so we must watch it closely.

 

Stay near a NOAA weather radio today, and know your plan in case severe weather threatens your area!

 

 

 

-Shawn

 

Leap Day Tornadoes?

The active severe weather pattern I expected from March-May has gotten off to an early start, and here comes our second shot at strong storms in just two weeks.  Do Leap Day tornadoes only happen every four years?  ;)

 

Tonight, a warm front will push through Kentucky bringing some heavy rain and a few rumbles of thunder with it.  This will mostly occur overnight when most of us are sleeping.  Then on Wednesday, after the warm front has pushed through we will see our temperatures soar into the 60s and perhaps close to 70 in many areas as we sit in the “warm sector” of the system.  Moisture with this system will be higher than with the last one we saw.  Wind shear will also be high because of the negative tilt of the cold front as it approaches from the west.  This will set the stage for a potentially severe squall line to push through Kentucky sometime Wednesday evening as the cold front finally approaches.

 

The latest severe weather outlook for Wednesday once again finds central KY right in the bulls-eye.  Be careful tonight and especially tomorrow and keep your eyes on the weather.  I personally think that the key to how bad this becomes will be how much sunshine do we see during the day on Wednesday.  Do we see clouds all day tomorrow following the warm frontal rains?  If so, it may hold the severity of the squall line down.  Do we clear out and see sunshine most of the day tomorrow before the cold front sweeps in?  If so, then I think we have big problems on our hands.  Will be interesting to see how this thing plays out.  One thing is for sure...it’s becoming apparent more and more that this Spring is not going to be boring weatherwise.

 

 

 

 

-Shawn

A Sign of Spring: Tornadoes

Good morning everyone.  It’s no secret that I’ve been getting increasingly worried about Spring 2012 turning into another destructive severe weather season.  From the looks of it, things are about to get kicked off to an early start. 

 

With temperatures soaring into the 60s this afternoon, and plentiful moisture funneling into the Ohio Valley on strong southerly surface winds, the main ingredients for t-storms will be with us.  A low pressure system in the Plains will move into Illinois and Indiana this afternoon, pushing a cold front into KY by evening.  This will serve as the “spark” to ignite the fire, and thunderstorms should erupt by evening across the Commonwealth.

 

The Storm Prediction Center is the agency that monitors the entire nation for severe weather.  They issue watches for severe thunderstorms and tornadoes when needed, but something else they do is issue daily outlooks for severe weather.  These outlooks highlight the areas in the nation where severe weather is most likely to occur.  I want to show you the tornado threat chart for today.  Notice that there is a 10% zone on the map.  We don’t see this very often.  This zone means that there is a 10% chance of seeing a tornado anywhere within 50 miles of a given point.  10% doesn’t sound like much..  but we’re not talking about the chance of rain here..  we’re talking about the chance of seeing a tornado and 10% is starting to get fairly significant.  Owensboro to Elizabethtown to Lexington and then northward from there to the Ohio River...including Frankfort and Lawrenceburg are all in the bulls-eye for this possible outbreak today.

 

 

If there is one fly in the ointment today, it’s instability.  Instability is a measure of the tendency the air has to rise.  It takes rising air to build tall, strong thunderstorms.  Since it IS still February after all, instability is marginal.  You really have to rely on the sunshine this time of year to build any decent instability.  Currently, it looks like central Kentucky may see thick cloud cover today, and this may limit instability.  So this is not the perfect setup for severe weather..   it’s just a really good one.

 

 

Don’t get caught off guard..  like I always say, if you don’t own a NOAA weather radio go get one.  Houses are more likely to be destroyed by storm than by fire...yet we all have smoke detectors, right?  Go get a weather radio!

 

-Shawn

Fifty Miles Makes the Difference

Well, the Lexington area dodges another bullet.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, 50 miles makes all the difference in the world with these Winter systems.  The weather modeling was taking a good guess at where that storm was headed, and it did a pretty good job all things considered.  We knew all along that southeastern KY was going to see the worst from this storm, and visible satellite imagery this morning confirms that.  Just look at the large swath of snow from Corbin to Prestonsburg to Pikeville.  Numerous crashes and power outages were reported from those KY counties that saw the snow.  This is a cool image courtesy of the NWS office in Louisville.

 

Here in the Bluegrass, we saw the snow skirt us just to the south.  Not a flake fell here, and many folks don’t mind one bit.  We now see Spring coming around the corner and I think a lot of people are just ready to get on with it.  What a mild and snowless Winter this has been!

 

We do still have 4-6 weeks of potentially cold weather left though, so don’t go getting out the shorts and tank tops just yet.  After a relatively mild week again, we may see more cold move in for the upcoming weekend.  Then beyond this weekend we’ll be staring March in the face and our “wildcard” month will be upon us.  It is going to be really interesting to see where March takes us.  I can’t wait.

 

Note the heavy snow in portions of Kentucky:

 

 

Shawn

 

Our first Winter Storm

Good evening everybody.  Our first true Winter storm of the season is just hours away now.  This storm is currently creating havoc on the Gulf coast.  Tornadoes are spinning up with the powerful thunderstorms down that way.  We are going to be on the north side of this storm system, and so that means rain and snow for us.

The model runs coming in today have been predicting a slightly farther south track for the storm.  This means that the areas in Kentucky seeing the action are going to be farther south as well.  Yesterday it was looking like a significant accumulation of snow was going to be likely for most of us.  Today it's starting to look like only the southern and eastern counties in Kentucky will really get the deep stuff.

Rain will break out late tonight and should change to mostly snow by the time we wake up Sunday morning.  Snow showers will likely be ongoing for much of the day Sunday.  Temperatures will fall through the 40s tonight and into the 30s by morning.  Sunday night, temps. will fall even more and really ice over any remaining water on the roadways.

Winter Storm WARNINGS will be issued this evening for southeastern Kentucky.  The Bluegrass of Kentucky will likely see Winter Weather Advisories posted.  Here is my updated snowfall map:

Winter Storm Update

UPDATE #2:  As of 10:00 Saturday morning..  the GFS model is trending a little farther south with the low.  Meanwhile, the brand new run of the NAM model maintains it's thinking from yesterday.  The GFS would therefore keep our snow totals lower...while the NAM model which is farther north with the precip. sheild AND has a colder look to it would plant a big snowstorm in Kentucky.  This is a REAL headache to forecast!!


As of right now, I'm still pretty happy with my outlook map (below).  I still believe that snow totals are going to work out very close to what I'm showing on my map.  No changes will be made at this time.  Stay tuned!






UPDATE:  As of 15:00 (3PM) this afternoon, here is my first call for snowfall.  This would primarily be Sunday.  Please excuse the rough drawing.  No, my 4 year old did not make this map for me.  :)  

You can click on any images for a slightly larger view.

The rest of the previous discussion follows:

Here is what the models are showing today.  It looks like we could still see our first real snowfall of the season on Sunday.

The NAM model has gone hog wild and is painting big snow totals for Kentucky.  The GFS model has been a bit lighter with snow totals because it wants to keep our temperature profiles at the surface a bit warmer, but the new 12:00 run today has not come out yet, so I’m waiting to see what it is doing with the storm.  But, here is what NAM shows as of now:

The pinkish color would be 15-17” of snow, light blue 7-12” of snow, dark blue 5-8” of snow, and the green shaded areas in Kentucky 1-4” of snow.

So, by the current NAM depiction of this storm, Frankfort stands to see a few inches maximum, while Lexington may see 3-5” of accumulation on Sunday.  London, Corbin, Pikeville...they would all get just totally hammered.  Louisville to Cincy would see only a very light snowfall.

The reason the NAM model is showing higher totals is because it thinks the cold air will wrap in behind the low more quickly.  It also believes that dynamic cooling will occur in the heavier snow bands, which means the storm will basically make it’s own cold air.  Both of these things are very possible...so maybe the NAM model is onto something here.  We have seen those scenarios play out before.

This bears watching over the next 24 hours.  Winter Storm Watches will likely be posted by the local NWS offices tonight.  If you need bread or milk, I strongly suggest hitting the store TODAY.  :)

-Shawn

Our First True Winter Storm?

Let’s get right to the point.  For a few days now, the weather modeling has been keying in on a low pressure system developing somewhere in eastern Texas tomorrow.  This storm would then deepen, or strengthen in lay terms, as it moves toward the Appalachian Mountains.  It’s starting to get close enough to game time now that I’m taking the models seriously.  Maybe this is for real.

As this storm gets stronger, it will be able to pull colder air in from the north, while spreading Gulf moisture up into Kentucky from the south.  This is THE classic setup for snow in the Ohio Valley and Appalachian region.  The question though, as always, is....   exactly what path will the low take?  Every 50 miles north or south makes a huge difference in what type of precipitation we will see.

Here is the CURRENT depiction from the GFS model, valid this morning.  As you can see, it is starting to change the rain over to snow for almost all of Kentucky by dawn on Sunday.  This chart is valid at 8:00 Sunday morning.  After seeing rain through the night, we’d see it start to come down as snow by the early daylight hours Sunday under this scenario.  Will this pan out as shown?  It’s still too early to tell.  Don’t get excited just yet.

The new 12:00 run of the GFS model will be available to look at in a couple of hours.  I am anxious to see where it takes the low pressure center.  If the low goes farther south, we get colder but see less snow.  If it goes farther north, we see more precip. but it’s too warm for snow.  We really need that perfect timing and perfect track to get a snowstorm here.  Stay tuned!

UPDATE:  The 12Z model data is in and it's very similar to the 06Z data.  The chart I posted above looks pretty much the same in the latest charts.  

The way I see this right now is as follows:  For Lexington and most of central Kentucky...  look for rain to move in late on Saturday.  This rain will increase in coverage and will become more steady after midnight and into Sunday morning.  Sometime around dawn on Sunday, the rain will gradually begin to change to snow.  The snow should end around noon on Sunday.

It stands to reason that we could see a light accumulation of snow on Sunday.  Right now I do not see this as being a catastrophic snowstorm for us.  However, the storm of February 1998 taught me that the process we call Dynamic Cooling can sometimes throw a wrench into the works.  A "dusting" was expected with that storm, which took on a VERY similar look to this upcoming storm..  but we woke to 8" in Bowling Green and almost 20" in central Kentucky.  So we will have to approach this forecast very carefully.  I'm going with 1-3" of snow right now.  But stay tuned......

-Shawn

Map courtesy of Weather Underground

Spring 2012 Outlook: Another Year of Twisters?

My Winter outlook, issued back in late November, called for a relatively mild December with increasing cold and snow chances in January and then a mild February.  That prediction has pretty much been spot-on, except that admittedly I thought it would get a little colder in January than what it did, but so far most of what little snow we have seen happened in January.  Winter as a whole has been mild so far, checking in as the 6^th warmest winter on record.  To this point, it has also been the least-snowy winter we’ve ever recorded.  People who dislike snow are really enjoying this.

 

In my outlook, I mentioned that March would be the wild card.  It could be a brutal month with snow, ice, and cold temperatures or it could be warm with tornado outbreaks.  I still think this is true and it could go either way... but I am increasingly leaning toward the tornado outbreak scenario as being the more likely outcome.

 

Let’s not forget what a horrible year 2011 was.  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that 552 fatalities from tornadoes were confirmed in the U.S. last year, making it the 2^nd most deadly year in our recorded history from tornadoes.  The year also brought the single highest number of tornadoes ever recorded here, and also set the record for the most fatalities caused by a single tornado which occurred in Joplin, Missouri.  The atmospheric flow created by the La Nina conditions we saw combined with the low pressure pattern over North America turned out to be the perfect recipe for thunderstorm outbreaks.  We also saw a lot of large cities struck by twisters last year which is a little unusual too.  It was the kind of year that most citizens of the south hope to never see again. 

 

My fear is that we are going to see that happen again, and it could be just months away.  The problem is that we are once again in a La Nina winter, except this one is following a more textbook look of a La Nina than what we saw last year.  There are many variables that come into play when setting up the weather of a given season, but let’s focus on just a couple of basic reasons why things could get extreme again in the next few months. 

 

For the past 8 to 12 weeks, the mean position of the jet stream has been one with a trough digging into the southwestern U.S. and then a streak from Texas toward the Great Lakes/Ohio Valley region.  This is predicted to continue by the Global Forecast System weather model, as you can see in the image I’ve posted valid February 15^th.

 

 

The darker blue shading indicates where the speed of the jet stream is really howling in the upper levels of the atmosphere.  This is sort of like the “railroad” that storm systems generally will develop along and follow.  The reason we’ve seen so much rainfall this winter (2011 also finished as the wettest year ever recorded in Kentucky) is because of this position of the jet stream.  It keeps directing storms to track directly into the Ohio Valley.  Typically, you see this pattern change every few weeks.  This year has been uncanny.  The jet stream has basically remained in this flow regime for the entire season.  During the middle of Winter, what you get is a lot of rain in this case.  But if you have this setup in the March-May timeframe, it’s a recipe for thunderstorms and lots of problems.  My fear is that we may see this atmospheric flow continue into Spring.

 

The other thing is the temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico.  The waters there are the fuel that powers our thunderstorms here.  For the same reasons that our winter has been extremely mild, the Gulf waters are also running very warm.  Water temps. are in the 70s down in the Gulf right now and this warm water will be primed and ready to create powerful storms this Spring when southerly winds bring the evaporation northward into the Ohio Valley.

 

 

With plenty of fuel, and a storm track persistently spinning up storms and pushing them into Kentucky, the stage could potentially be set for another year of tragic tornado outbreaks and severe weather damage.  I am personally going to be reviewing my homeowners insurance policy in the next few weeks, and I strongly recommend that anyone who still does not own a NOAA weather radio should go and purchase one.  The Midland WR-100 or WR-120 are excellent choices and are easy to find for under $30 dollars at stores such as Kroger, Walmart, and RadioShack.  Now is the time to prepare and plan in case the weather this Spring does indeed go wild on us again.

 

 

-Shawn

 

 

Maps courtesy of NOAA and Wunderground.com

Is It Winter Or Spring In Kentucky?

Is this Winter or Spring?  We’ve just come off of a beautiful week, about as nice as you can possibly hope for in the dead of Winter, and it looks like we’ve got another nice one coming up! 

 

Temperatures today will go well into the 40s under plenty of sunshine.  50-degree readings will be a common feature again this week, with plenty of chances to see clear skies.  A quick moving disturbance will shoot through here on Wednesday morning.  Temperatures early in the morning are running close to the freezing mark, so a snow/rain mix will be possible but it will not cause many travel issues.  Skies should start clearing again later on Wednesday.

 

So get out and enjoy this nice weather.  It has been a mild Winter so far.  There are indications that starting next weekend, temperatures may start to cool off to more normal values for this time of year.  Here is a look at Saturday..  notice how at lunchtime on Saturday we are only in the 20s!

 

 

 

 

 

-Shawn