(LEX 18) — Another day and another day closer to the weekend, when winter looks to descend upon us. Each day we basically eliminate possible scenarios and sharpen the focus on how we expect the event to unfold.
It's appearing increasingly likely that a nice snow will be visiting the Bluegrass this holiday weekend. We’re also getting increasingly confident that it’s going to be primarily focused on Sunday. The reason we keep scootching it back is the low itself appears to be doing the Supertramp and taking the ‘long way home’. A slightly longer route to get here adds some time.
There are still some pieces that need to come together to really firm this up. Considering this won’t be cranking (assuming it does) until sometime on Sunday and lasting into late Sunday night, that’s still a long way off meteorologically. Almost all of the snow forecasts are based on us getting under the ‘comma head’ of the strengthening low. If that happens as almost all the models now say it should, then we do get a nice thumping of snow Sunday PM. There are other pieces still coming together, but it does continue to look promising (from a snow lover’s point of view).
Through early Thursday afternoon, most of the modeling was beginning to converge on a solution, which is mostly snow for most of us. The NAM was the outlier and at that point had 0...which gives you reason to pause. However, the late afternoon run brought even it into the snow camp.
The accompanying map is based off the European Model’s Ensembles. It’s the percentage chance of seeing 6 inches or more of snow. An ensemble is taking the basic Euro model and tweaking it with a few dozen variations. The idea is the ensemble has a better chance to give you an accurate picture of the atmosphere. With this map, most of southern and southeastern Kentucky has a better than 50% chance of seeing 6” of snow. The number decreases to about 1 in 4 around Lexington and almost no chance around Louisville and northern Kentucky. The low number by Hazard may be because of sleet/freezing rain knocking the totals down. But just like betting at Keeneland, there are times when the good odds don’t come in.
So one more day of speculating for this weekend. I would expect us to put some harder numbers on this tomorrow evening.
