NAM 12z likes Kentucky this morning. *This is not a forecast* (yet), but we’re watching it closely. Western KY could steal the show again this year with snow! It happened last year, its possible. Last night the forecast models ‘corrected’ themselves with the additional data that was added to them from the data dead zone in the eastern Pacific Ocean. There is a post on the fan page pertaining to the importance of the data obtained in the additional flights sent out by NOAA yesterday I encourage you to watch it.  One of the corrections took a strong coastal low and shifted approximately 300 miles NW which places a surface low in northern Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia. This places a swath of heavy wet snow across the Tennessee Valley and lower Ohio River Valley on the southern portions of the Tri-State. 

Why do I like this more than the other set ups, this one is actually unique, no two storms are really the same. The upper air characteristics and enhanced support has my attention. As I have said many time before I never tell you anything without looking at multiple things to back it up. While I typed this the 12z GFS model run was rolling. It looks similar, and lines up with the previous mentioned model runs but has a different opinion on the snowfall aspect, but worth watching. It has been the warmer solution of the bunch. This will be a tricky set up in that the cold air looks to be in place this weekend mainly because of the storm that is coming through today. Profiles support the idea. I took the Skew-T from Bowling Green, KY which appears to be the bullseye for now. This has the potential to be a big one. But as I always say, it has to hold! (And personally, I am ok with a slight NW shift)

 

 

The above diagram shows a moist column through 15,000 feet in addition temperatures at or below freezing through the entire column. The position of the low will support all snow as cold air advection will be taking place at this time period. Further making the set up legit. Question is, where? is this done shifting NW ? Keep it here we’ll keep you posted. I should note, if this shifts at all to the NW over the next 3 days most of Tri-State will get nailed with this. We’re watching it closely.

One other thing that has our attention with this storm  as I mentioned above is the mesoscale convective banding. The feature showed up on ECMWF model last night. and now on NAM and GFS. though it is important to note GFS is still a few miles SE of the NAM/ECMWF/CMC (Canadian) solutions. This definitely has our attention. We’ll have more details as they become available keep your fingers crossed!

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