Weekend Thaw (Finally) On The Way

  Well well, is it cold enough yet? Being buried under all of this snow is even helping bring temps down a little more which is exactly what I'm sure we all wanted. The good news is that we are set up for a weekend warm-up. I have succumbed to the season myself as well and have been suffering through a case of the flu that I would swear is never-ending. Fortunately things will be quiet over the next few days as our previous system has exited the region and temperatures slowly begin their climb so tonight's post won't have to cover too much. I do have a few topics I've been putting things together to get into for awhile now but with all the winter weather taking the top priority I put them on hold but with things quiet for the next little bit we'll take a look at some stuff that goes beyond the current forecast. In the spirit of the "surprise" snow amounts that impacted many across Kentucky and Tennessee at the beginning of this week we'll look back at the analysis I was looking at from that event as it was unfolding. I don't really view that event as a major "busted" forecast by any stretch, snow was expected, snow occurred, but there was definitely more snow than many of us were expecting, myself included. There was a clear tip-off that we were looking at an over-achiever early on in the day and that I had underestimated snow totals so we will take a peek at the fly in the ointment, so to speak, and see what it was that we saw that made us change our minds pretty quickly from 1"-3" of snow to 4-6"+.


  Enough of that for now though, it's the relief from this crazy cold everyone is concerned about. We're still going to have to get through tomorrow morning with temps across KY in the 0F to -5F range when we wake up and temps in the 10's Friday morning first but we're getting there. Observations aloft (500mb, about 18,000ft ASL) show our system along the East coast as it moves away from us. It is bringing some snow to Eastern States but it's done with us. The speed-max associated with it has also passed around the base of the upper-low and it should continue to transition and close off even more anyway. There is another piece of energy visible upstream coming into the Pacific Northwest but this will be covered in more detail in tomorrow's post when we discuss rain chances to close out the weekend.

We'll go ahead and drop down to the surface analysis for a minute next. An area of high-pressure is centered over the Mississippi River Valley in the wake of our upper-low. This broad surface-high will be what dominates our weather as we go into the weekend. As this high makes slowly drifts eastward over the coming days it will result in both calm weather with mostly clear skies and, eventually, once it gets Southeast of us, it we will see surface winds become more southerly and warmer Gulf air will push into the region.

   I've been forecasting temps that shoot a little lower than model guidance because of the snow on the ground but I think we will see temps get up to around 30F on Thursday and into the upper 30's on Friday. Much better than sub-zero without a doubt! We will see winds increase to either side of 10mph tomorrow as well which will make wind-chills a little worse but those SW winds will be slowly bringing in warmer air so just dress warm and avoid being outside unless absolutely necessary. Our warm air advection regime continues Saturday with southerly winds across the region as a surface high-pressure slides off to our West.

I think we will see temps when we wake up Saturday morning around 30, mid-upper 20's in Eastern Kentucky, and they should make their way into the mid 40's for the daily max. Upper 30's/low 40's should be the temps across KY Sunday morning and wouldn't you know it, I think we will flirt with temps in the low-mid 50's Sunday afternoon. There will be increasing rain chances to close out the weekend but confidence is relatively low regarding smaller features so we'll break that down tomorrow. Either way, at least it's rain chances, NO snow, so be smart with the extreme cold as we get close to the weekend and dress appropriately, don't be out driving if the roads are unsafe (they're still pretty bad here where I live), and we'll be able to enjoy some relief in the not-so-distant future.


That's pretty much what I'm expecting over the next few days. I wanted to keep tonight's post brief so...I did. I'll be back on tomorrow to discuss our rain chances into next week and summarize the winter storms we just endured. Stay warm!
DKK