Much colder temperatures on tap for the weekend with H95 to H9 temperatures progged to be in the -7 to -11c range. In house mixing schemes suggest upper 20s to near 30 for high temperatures. Saturday looks quiet with even some sun by afternoon and Sunday looks cloudy as H7 moisture goes sky high with even some late day / Sunday night flurries possible (patchy light snow north) if we can moisten up the H9 to H85 levels. This is the 12z GFS sounding valid Sunday evening and is showing lots of dry air to overcome before any snow could reach the ground.
Still looking interesting for early next week. It doesn't look like a huge, blowout winter storm but it does appear some snow along with sleet and freezing rain could be in the offing starting Monday night and lasting into Tuesday.
Here's the setup... Cold high pressure in place across the upper midwest and is progged to stay in that position by all models - so we've got our cold air source. It appears the cold air will be deep enough for snow or a mix of sleet and snow near Louisville... mainly all snow the farther north you go from Louisville... with more of a mix of snow, sleet, and frzg rain south of Louisville... and prehaps a pretty decent ice storm (glazing) across southern kentucky.
Upper air pattern showing a RRQ position of the polar stream and H5 short waves ejecting from the the big trough / H5 low over the western U.S. These H5 shorts will no doubt be weakening / minoring out as they move across the U.S. towards a more confluent flow but still appears they will be able to produce enough mid-level WAA and lift to saturate the column and produce an overrunning event across our region in the late Monday - into Tuesday time frame.
Pink: snow, Red: Sleet, Blue: Frzg Rain
Current bufkit data and model QPF data would suggest the potential for several inches of snow across the region with amounts varying depending on where the exact thermal ribbon sets up - and we'll have a much better handle on that as we progress through the weekend... Stay tuned and have a great weekend.
Weather History:
1971 - The temperature at Prospect Creek, AK, plunged to 80 degrees below zero, the coldest reading of record for the United States. (David Ludlum)
Jay
2 comments:
So basically you think were gonna be more on the frozen side here in Lou Jay. Ive been hearing that we may end as rain as the warmer temps move in.
Hi Justin...
It's looking that way right now... this is a tough one though (they all seem to be tough around here).
GFS is all over the place - it's seems to be different with each model run. ECM however, has been more consistant. Little worried about the depth of the cold air as the polar jet is farly far north. That would imply a shallow cold air mass - more conducive to icy weather. At this time, looks like intial wave will be more of the frozen/freezing type precip - not all that heavy though as there's no real well developed system throughout the atmosphere to really get precip cranking. Perhaps even a second wave later next week - depending on whether or not the western energy eject or gets even further cut off. We'll see, Have a good day my friend.
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