Good evening WKU!
There is much to discuss in this weeks forecast. Firstly, I’ll discuss tonight’s bitterly cold air that will seemingly be here to stay for the meantime trend. Why Wednesday’s rain chances are highly valid and how tomorrow night will induce possible Thursday’s snow chances. Lastly, all this “hoopla” about snow that you might’ve heard is supposed to occur on Thursday, could actually happen. I’ll talk about that and just what you should expect to encounter for the next couple of days.
Hold up, wait a minute… did it snow at all for Tuesday? Many rumors have circulated about Tuesday’s AM snow and if you were up early enough (around 6am-ish) you might’ve saw a few flakes falling from the sky. However, it didn’t accumulate to “zilch” because Tuesday’s minimum temperature had not quite reached freezing this morning. We did however mange to get two tenths of an inch of rain, that makes nearly 3 inches in the first two weeks of November! It’s going to get a little wetter for Wednesday and Thursday!
Climatological Report (Daily) for Tuesday in Bowling Green, Ky
Wednesday partakes of mostly cloudy skies with inclined rain chances due to the gradual lifting of saturated (very humid) air Wednesday evening. That upstream trough aloft will make its way through the Mid-South by Thursday afternoon with winds up to 20 mph at the surface. Majority of this returning air flow will be induced from the southern moisture out of the Gulf of Mexico and into the south/southeast U.S.. Giving the Mid-South more rain! Humid air moves into the region by Wednesday afternoon making room for a mixing scenario as dew points will be favorably 35°F by Wednesday evening. So what?! The high temperature for Wednesday is only supposed to get to reach 37°F. So, we could possibly see some freezing light rain by Wednesday after 8pm.
NAM surface relative humidity (courtesy Pivotal Weather)
Thursday continues to start out with messy conditions for this week’s trend. That circulating low associated with that fast moving trough will sqeeeeze it’s way in between the shortwave ridge of high pressure off the east coast. This keeps the mid-latitude cyclone alive and as this system rotates counterclockwise it will build up fast paced winds with it. The tighter gradient of pressure signifies faster winds and a change of wind speeds on the backside of the trough. On the back-end of the trough is a developing arctic jet stream of winds from the northwest that will invade the enclosed low Thursday to produce a phase change for your rainfall. Freezing rain will end early Thursday morning before 2am and will proceed as rain until noon. A slight risk for snow Thursday after 4pm will be slim chances but valid to contain importance because of the sporadic moisture return. Not nearly enough to cancel school though. We’ll be lucky to get 0.03″ of snow.
Composite reflectivity of the precipitation type with the 1000-500 mb thickness (courtesy Pivotal Weather).
TUES PM: Overnight Low of 31°F with mostly clear and dry skies. Winds from the north at roughly 5 mph.
WEDN: 37°F/31°F; Cloudy skies into overcast in the morning with humid conditions on the rise from southern moisture. Rain chances are medium after 10am (~40%) but increase to (100%) after 4pm. Freezing rain to begin between 8-10:00pm. Precip: (0.5″-0.75″).
THURS: 39°F/32°F; Overcast skies with freezing rain ending a couple hours at the top of the day. Nippy winds and light rain proceeds until about 7:00am accumulating to about 0.01″. A 30% chance of rain as those winds pick up speed throughout the day. Snow chance of 30% as well that will most likely occur after 4pm and won’t accumulate to much.