WKU Meteorology

The weather over the first 10 days of March promises to be very active over the Mid-South. The primary event will occur Monday-Wednesday of next week and will bring heavy rain, severe weather, and possibly heavy snow to the south-central United States. Right now, it appears as though KY/TN will miss out on the severe weather and heavy snow but will likely get in on the heavy rain. (more…)

In my last post I described the typical scenario for how the Mid-South can receive accumulating snowfall from an Alberta Clipper. And wouldn’t you know, the current radar shows a clipper streaming in from the NW headed directly for the Bluegrass region. (more…)

The NAM has been bullish on a Mid-South snow event for Friday afternoon-evening with a range of solutions from the extreme case of a 4-8″ snowstorm (Tuesday 18Z) to a rain followed by a couple of inches of snow (12Z Wednesday). On the other hand, every other operational model from the NGM to the AVN to the UKMET to the CMC to the European to the GFS show a light rain event that could possibly end as flurries. Remember those old commercials that said “Four out of five dentists agree that chewing Trident gum prevents cavities”? Would you go to the one dentist that doesn’t agree?? Me neither. (more…)

NOTE: The original forecast map from NWS Louisville has been replaced, therefore all discussion in this posting was for the original map and not the one currently posted. See the 4:00 pm update at the bottom for more details.

The NWS office in Louisville originally backed off on snow amounts early this morning (2″ for Louisville and 1″ for Lexington) but have since drastically raised amounts. I think this is a very optimistic forecast. Recent trends in the NAM hint that the smart bet would be to take the “under” with regards to this forecast. (more…)

A weak surface low supported by a positively tilted trough may bring an accumulating mix of wintry precipitation to the northern half of Kentucky Monday night into early Tuesday. The surface low is expected to track along the Ohio River, which will allow enough warm air to surge northward to bring rain into northern KY and southern IN during the day Tuesday, which will create a sloppy, wet mess. (more…)

While the Mid-South deals with early season severe weather and a mostly snowless winter, the Upper Midwest will get yet another dose of blizzard conditions and life-threatening cold this weekend. (more…)

Current radar shows the cold front that sparked a line of convection north of the Ohio River last night is stalling out and retrograding northward. It is expected that this boundary will become a quasistationary warm front that will continue to spawn convection along a line from SE Missouri to southern Ohio. This will help to keep south-central KY mostly dry through the afternoon hours. (more…)

The storm expected to bring more severe weather to the Mid-South late Tuesday shares many characteristics with the storm from the week before, although it is the differences between the storms that could potentially be more worrisome. (more…)

In the recent “ENSO diagnostic discussion“, a weekly must-read for any synoptic meteorologist, the Climate Prediction Center makes the case that La Nina conditions may persist through the fall of 2008 and possibly through winter 2008-09. (more…)