Looking Ahead: Snow Threat More Pronounced for Thanksgiving, Black Friday!

Good morning ladies and gentlemen,

We're going to start your short workweek on the chilly side, and with a few rain showers in the southeastern counties of the Cincy Tri-State. In particular, Brown, Adams, Highland and Scioto counties in Ohio and Bracken, Mason, Lewis and Robertson counties in Northern Kentucky could see a couple light showers early this morning with a small disturbance. It should not be a big deal, however. Anybody in the Tri-State could actually see a few light showers anytime on Monday, as we struggle to reach 55.

But - and you had to know there'd be a but - there's a more sustained rain threat as we go into Tuesday night through Thanksgiving. A cold front will sweep into, then through the Greater Cincinnati area during that time period. While it won't be carrying any significant instability (and thus, no thunderstorm threat), it WILL have plenty of moisture to work with. As such, I look for rain to start late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning, and continue through much of Thursday. Generally from Monday through Wednesday, lows will be between 35 and 45 and highs between 50 and 55.

Then it gets tricky. While I expect precipitation to continue...models are literally all over the place with type and the speed of a closed low that will drop into the northern Great Lakes on Thursday night and Friday. The Global Forecast Service Model wants to keep temperatures warm enough through most of the atmosphere to support all rain. The European upper air model, however, wants to bring enough cold air into the area for a rain/snow mix, and I'm inclined to agree for Thursday late day and Thursday evening. However...I do think all layers cool off enough overnight on Thanksgiving night and through the first half of Friday to support a changeover to all snow for the area, even south of the Ohio River. Friday's highs won't even get past the lower 40s (I am calling for 43) after a raw Thanksgiving with highs only around 46. It should be noted, however, that enough of the ground is still above freezing to not really worry about accumulating snowfall for Thursday night and Friday. Then we dry out Saturday, and another system swings in Sunday with a few more rain showers. We'll be below normal on Saturday as well with highs around 44, and back near normal Sunday with 48.

BUT...our focus turns to the models again for NEXT week. And wouldn't you know it - the long range models actually want to bring in the snow threat I talked about previously for around the 5th or 6th of December - AND are introducing a NEW threat for next Tuesday! The 12/1 storm needs to be monitored closely - as it looks BIG!

So to sum up the next 7 days:

== Near normal temperatures today through Wednesday
== Rainy Tuesday night through Thursday
== First snow of the season looks LIKELY Thursday night and Friday Morning
== BELOW normal temps from Thursday through Saturday, recovering to near normal on Sunday
== WATCH OUT week of 11/30-12/6 - TWO significant winter weather threats??