While stubborn overcast conditions remain over the area this afternoon and evening, the skies should clear out tonight for a generally nice Thursday afternoon ahead of more rain and thunderstorms tomorrow night. The clouds should stick around for awhile today, but we’ll gradually clear out overnight. The high temperature this afternoon won’t get much higher than 60 given the overcast situation, and the low temperature tonight should fall to near 50 once the skies clear out. We’ll begin tomorrow with sunny skies across south central Kentucky that should continue into the afternoon. It will also be somewhat breezy out of the south as the low-level jet should intensify out ahead of the next advancing storm system. The GFS suggests that the jet at 850 mb will be around 30 knots by late tomorrow afternoon. This will pull moist air into our area from the Gulf and raise our dew point temperature to near 60 by tomorrow evening. Coupled with sunny conditions that will raise our high temperature into the low-70s, this would normally be shaping up for a fairly severe weather event.
This will likely not be the case for south central Kentucky, however. The storm system that is currently slamming the central Rockies with a bitter winter storm will advance into the Plains overnight tonight. The low pressure center currently over New Mexico will advect warm, moist air from the Gulf into the ArkLaTex region, eastern Oklahoma, and even southern Missouri tomorrow morning and afternoon. The SPC believes that these areas will experience damaging winds from a MCS that will develop out ahead of this system, with possible supercells and tornadoes ahead of the MCS in the warm sector.
But by the time that this system rides the jet stream northeastward into our area, it will be well after sunset and into the overnight hours. So we should expect some rain and thunderstorms for our area, but nothing severe appears likely. It looks to be a soggy start to the weekend as the bulk of the rain should arrive in our area Friday morning and afternoon.
Check back on Friday for a look at the rest of your weekend.