JKL issues Area Forecast Discussion (AFD) at Feb 22, 12:45 PM EST
015
FXUS63 KJKL 221745
AFDJKL
AREA FORECAST DISCUSSION
National Weather Service Jackson KY
1245 PM EST Sat Feb 22 2025
.KEY MESSAGES...
- A significant warming trend will last through mid week, with
most places forecast to top 60 degrees on Wednesday.
- A cold front is forecast to move through Wednesday night with
our next good shot at rain (50-60% probability), followed by a
modest downturn in temperatures.
&&
.UPDATE...
Issued at 1000 AM EST SAT FEB 22 2025
Latest obs have been blended into the forecast as temperatures rise
through the teens and, for many areas, into the twenties late this
morning. Cloud cover was refined to account for upstream mid-level
cloud deck over western Kentucky/Tennessee that will impact our
area, especially the southern counties, during the afternoon hours.
Otherwise, no sensible changes changes were made to the forecast for
the remainder of the day. The impact-based Cold Weather Advisory was
also allowed to expire on time.
UPDATE Issued at 655 AM EST SAT FEB 22 2025
Have blended early morning obs into the forecast, without any
substantive changes.
&&
.SHORT TERM...(Today through Sunday)
Issued at 305 AM EST SAT FEB 22 2025
Benign weather will last through the short term period, with gulf
moisture cut off. A shortwave trough aloft currently over MO, KS,
and OK will move east and pass over our area late today, but it
will not bring anything more than an increase in mid level clouds.
Once the wave passes, mostly clear skies will return tonight and
last into Sunday.
Warmer air aloft which has been moving in overnight and predawn
will allow for warmer temperatures today (above freezing!),
assuming a bit of sun and some mixing. After a night of modest
ridge/valley temperature differences, more sunshine will bring a
continued warm-up for Sunday.
.LONG TERM...(Sunday night through Friday)
Issued at 548 AM EST Sat Feb 22 2025
While this long term forecast package is initially defined by
quieter weather and a noticeable warming trend, two passing mid-week
disturbances will usher in a cooler, more active pattern for the end
of the month. Expect mostly dry weather for the start of the work
week before a weak clipper system approaches from the northwest on
Tuesday. This first system will have little impact on the sensible
weather here in Eastern Kentucky, but a better-defined frontal
boundary will approach the area on Wednesday night/Thursday morning
and reintroduce widespread rain chances to the forecast. Behind this
cold front, temperatures drop back to seasonable norms, and a mean
upper level troughing pattern sets up over much of the Eastern
CONUS.
The forecast opens on Sunday night with a surface high pressure
system overhead. While some mid/high level clouds may stream into
the area, the general pattern favors efficient radiational cooling
and ridge-valley temperature splits. This will yield morning lows
near freezing on ridgetops and in the 20s in the valleys. Mostly
clear skies and mid-level height rises will allow afternoon highs to
recover nicely into the mid/upper 50s on Monday. On Tuesday, the
aforementioned surface high will have weakened and slid south
towards the Tennessee Valley. As it does so, a weak Alberta Clipper
will approach from the NW. Increasing cloud cover out ahead of this
disturbance will insulate overnight lows to near 40 on Monday night,
but the overall impacts of this first system will be very minor. The
southern positioning of the surface high should limit the amount of
low-level moisture advection into the forecast area, but guidance
does resolve a pocket of mid-level, modified Pacific moisture moving
over Northern Kentucky by Tuesday afternoon. Combined with marginal
dynamic lift, some light rain appears possible across the NE half of
the forecast area in this time frame. However, due to the marginal
nature of the set-up, PoPs have been limited to less than 25% on
Tuesday afternoon/evening. The parent system will quickly propagate
out of the region on Tuesday night, with little to no effect on
temperatures. In fact, there is a greater than 50% chance in both
NBM and LREF probabilistic guidance for high temperatures to reach
60 degrees across most of Eastern Kentucky on Wednesday.
Wednesday's warmer temperature temperature forecast can be
attributed to a shift towards SW flow throughout the entire
atmospheric column. The surface high will have shifted closer to the
Carolinas by then, and a trough is expected to dig into the Midwest
at the same time. Forecast guidance resolves a very narrow corridor
of warm air advection and moisture return in between these two
features on Wednesday. As a result, Eastern Kentucky will be firmly
positioned in the warm sector on Wednesday evening out ahead of an
approaching cold front. Chance to likely PoPs accordingly spread
across the forecast area overnight into Thursday morning.
Precipitation is most likely to fall in the form of plain rain
showers, but a few forecast models resolve marginal thunderstorm
potential. GFS model soundings depict marginal amounts of CAPE on
Wednesday night, but the positive tilt of the parent trough aloft
does not favor sustained, organized convection. Furthermore, this
system will be working against the diurnal temperature curve as it
moves into our forecast area. NBM probabilistic guidance is not
particularly supportive of thunderstorms in our area at this moment
in time, but this could be an artifact of the time-lagged nature of
that ensemble. This system has trended faster over the past 24
hours, and if that trend continues, the system may have more
diurnal instability to work with. For now, the best thunderstorm
chances look to be to the west of the forecast area on Wednesday
evening, and thunder is not explicitly mentioned in our forecast
grids as a result. We keep a close eye on the trends with this cold
frontal system in the coming days, but for now, significant severe
weather is not expected. Significant hydrological impacts are
equally unlikely, and storm total QPF is less than a quarter of an
inch across the entire forecast area through the next 7 days.
The most noticeable impacts from the midweek system will be the post-
FROPA drop in temperatures. Longwave troughing is expected to emerge
over the Eastern CONUS in its wake, with an embedded shortwave
disturbance digging down into the Ohio River Valley on Friday. This
will keep light precipitation chances in the forecast through the
end of the work week. As cold air slowly filters in via NW winds,
rain may mix with or changeover to snow on Friday, especially in
higher elevation locations closer to the Virginia/West Virginia
state lines. This will mark the beginning of a cooler and more
active weather pattern for the beginning of March. The updated CPC 6-
10 and 8-14 day temperature outlooks give credence to this idea, and
we will need to closely monitor the potential for late-season winter
weather as March begins. Over the course of the next week, however,
the potential for widespread hazardous weather in Eastern Kentucky
appears low.
&&
.AVIATION...(For the 18Z TAFS through 18Z Sunday afternoon)
ISSUED AT 1245 PM EST SAT FEB 22 2025
VFR conditions are forecast through the period. An area of broken
clouds at ~10K ft AGL is moving across the area at TAF issuance. A
lower but thinning deck at ~7K ft AGL is approaching from
Western/Central Kentucky. Forecaster confidence is lower that the
lower deck will hold together as it moves into/through eastern
Kentucky later this afternoon and tonight, so have included SCT
mention for now. Any residual mid-level cloud cover should
gradually yield to more sustained clearing on Sunday. Winds will
be less than 10 kts through the period.
&&
.JKL WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES...
NONE.
&&
$$
UPDATE...GEERTSON
SHORT TERM...HAL
LONG TERM...MARCUS
AVIATION...GEERTSON/
Source: JKL issues Area Forecast Discussion (AFD) at Feb 22, 12:45 PM EST (https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/p.php?pid=202502221745-KJKL-FXUS63-AFDJKL)
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