textproduct: Jackson

KEY MESSAGES

- A warming trend will last through Thursday, with some places potentially topping 70 degrees, especially Thursday.

- The next likelihood of rain is Thursday and Thursday night, with a slight chance of thunderstorms in most of the area. Some storms could be strong to severe.

- After a cold front passes early on Friday, colder air will arrive and last into next week. Snow showers are a possibility before the weekend is finished.

UPDATE

Issued at 1223 AM EST WED FEB 18 2026

Have made further adjustments to temperatures, with non-valley locations being slow to cool and some ridge/valley differences around 15 degrees showing up. Raised mins for tonight for most locations outside of valleys.

UPDATE Issued at 900 PM EST TUE FEB 17 2026

High clouds are very prominent and the sky cover has been increased in tonight's forecast. The clouds have not been effect at preventing valley temperatures from dropping off. Some locations were already below forecast lows early this evening. The forecast has been updated for colder valley temps. However, still thinking that the readings will level out and possibly turn around overnight as lower clouds arrive.

LONG TERM

(Thursday through Tuesday) Issued at 600 PM EST Tue Feb 17 2026

An active weather pattern sets up over Eastern Kentucky for the duration of the long term forecast period, with multiple disturbances expected to traverse through a regime of quasi-zonal flow aloft between Thursday and Sunday. At first, the forecast area will be positioned firmly on the warm side of the resultant surface low pressure systems. Temperatures will be much warmer than normal at the beginning of the forecast period. This favors multiple rounds of rain showers, and perhaps a few thunderstorms, in the forecast for Thursday and Thursday night as the first system's fronts move through the commonwealth. A lull in activity appears possible on Friday as this first system's cold front comes to a crawl to the south of the forecast area. Another low looks to develop along that stalled boundary down in the Tennessee Valley on Saturday, but models disagree on its exact evolution. It is generally expected to move northeast, but its interaction with any shortwave perturbations riding through the flow aloft remains uncertain. Confidence is lower in the PoP forecast for Saturday as a result, but anything that falls would be in liquid form. The cold air advection in the wake of the first frontal passage does not look particularly vigorous, but that looks to change as the second system evolves. Models agree that much deeper troughing will dig into the Midwest on Sunday. As that second system, subsequent subsequent shortwave disturbances, and this troughing phase together at the end of the forecast period, a much stronger cold air advection regime is expected to emerge. This allows precipitation to change over to snow on Sunday, and snow showers may linger into Monday amidst persistent NW flow and much colder temperatures. Therefore, all of this activity is poised to culminate in a significant pattern change.

When the period opens on Thursday morning, a warm front will be lifting across the commonwealth. Ongoing WAA rain showers will move east-northeast across the forecast area as that boundary moves towards the Ohio River by Thursday afternoon. A rumble of thunder cannot be completely ruled out with this AM activity, but the severe weather risk appears low. Amongst the currently available pieces of forecast guidance, instability parameters are relegated to a few hundred J/kg of MUCAPE at best. Surface instability looks nil, so any AM storms would likely be elevated. Some forecast guidance is hinting at training cells and locally higher rainfall amounts immediately ahead the boundary on Thursday morning. While mean PWATs around 0.90 inches do not look particularly robust and the overarching system looks progressive, the potential for training will need to be monitored as this system enters the temporal range of more high-resolution guidance.

Behind that warm front on Thursday afternoon, low level flow veers further to the southwest and strengthens. The resultant warm air advection will push highs towards the 70 degree mark, especially in southern portions of the forecast area. Confidence is higher in some degree of post-frontal clearing and diurnal mixing in locations south of the Mountain Parkway, and KLOZ may make a run at its record high of 72 if the sun comes out. Despite the low level warmth, modeled soundings depict midlevel capping in the warm sector over Southern Kentucky, with the best forcing displaced further to the west closer to the I-65 corridor. Scattered convection may still try to develop in the warm sector, but it will likely take frontal forcing to get meaningful convection out of this set-up. Any residual boundaries from the AM round of showers could serve as a mesoscale focal point for afternoon convection, but this would likely set up further to the north, where the degree of clearing and low-level destabilization remains uncertain. Thus, any severe risk with Thursday afternoon's activity would be conditional, and that activity would likely be both low-topped and more isolated/scattered in nature.

The system's cold front will approach the area from the northwest on Thursday night. Frontal forcing will result in increasing convective coverage upstream of the forecast area, but the loss of daylight will relegate instability parameters to just a couple hundred J/kg of CAPE. Favorable wind profiles will yield 30+ knots of effective bulk shear, and models move a 40-45 knot southwesterly LLJ into the forecast area after dark. As a result, strong to severe storms cannot be ruled out across the northwestern half of the forecast area. The ECMWF Extreme Forecast Index data suggests that CAPE/shear profiles may be marginally supportive for strong to severe storms after 00z Friday, with readings generally between 0.7-0.9 range across the area. In simple terms, this means that many ensemble members show favorable parameter spacing for potentially organized thunderstorms. However, there is not a significant Shift of Tails alongside that data. This indicates that Thursday night's storms are unlikely to be an usual/rare/extreme severe weather event. Rather, it looks to be a typical transition season set-up in which weakening storms need to be monitored for an isolated case of damaging winds or a spin-up tornado as they approach the JKL CWA. Given all of the above, the Storm Prediction Center has maintained the Marginal (Level 1/5) Severe Weather Outlook for portions of the forecast area northwest of a line stretching from Monticello to London, Jackson, and Paintsville. A Slight Risk (Level 2/5) clips western Montgomery, Bath, and Fleming Counties up in the Bluegrass region, largely due to their closer proximity to the stronger upstream activity.

Rain chances taper off from NW to SE as FROPA occurs on Friday morning, with some clearing expected by Friday afternoon as a flattened and weak postfrontal high budges into the Ohio River Valley. The frontal boundary is expected to stall out to the south of the forecast area as it is abandoned by its upper level support, which reduces the efficacy of the post-frontal cold air advection. Thus, Friday's temps are likely to take the form of a NW-SE gradient, with mid 50s further to the north/west and low-mid 60s further south/east.

As hinted at in the opening paragraph, Saturday's precipitation forecast is shrouded in forecast uncertainty. As another low pressure system develops in the baroclinic zone along the stalled boundary to our south, another shortwave perturbation ejects out of the Ozarks. The medium-range forecast guidance handles the interaction between these features quite differently, so PoPs were categorically limited to chance values (below 55%) on Saturday. The best chances will likely come in locations closer to the Tennessee and Virginia state lines; expect future NBM runs to trend in this direction. Any precipitation that falls on Saturday would do so as rain given forecast temperatures generally in the 50s, but a changeover to snow looks likely on Sunday as temps dip into the 30s. The approach of deeper troughing from the northwest will introduce much colder air into the atmospheric column headed into early next week, with ensemble mean 850mb temps dropping below 0 on Sunday morning and then below -10 on Monday morning. At the surface, the low pressure system will have ejected to the other side of the Appalachians and then up the Eastern Seaboard, placing the forecast area in a multi-day regime of vertically stacked NW flow. Favorable cyclonic vorticity advection and orographic lift should work together to produce snow showers on Sunday and Monday, and some of those showers could be more vigorous on Sunday. The 12z GFS resolves snow squall parameters between 1.5 and 2.5 in Eastern Therefore, all of this activity is poised to culminate in a pattern change, with temperatures returning to near-normal, late-winter values for the end of February. Kentucky on Sunday afternoon. Despite marginal ground temps, minor accumulations cannot be ruled out in locations that experience higher snowfall rates.

The cold continues into Monday, when highs will likely struggle to climb out of the mid 30s amidst persistent NW flow and continued light snow showers/flurries east of the Pottsville Escarpment and along the higher terrain in SE KY. Drier continental high pressure returns at the very end of the period on Monday night, and the resultant clearing allows Monday night's lows to radiationally cool to lower than normal values in the teens (valleys) and lower 20s (ridgetops). This is quite the departure (50+ degrees) from the near-record forecast high temperatures at the start of the long term period, and the CPC expects temperatures to remain closer to near-normal, late-winter values through February 27th.

AVIATION

(For the 06Z TAFS through 06Z Wednesday night) ISSUED AT 1223 AM EST WED FEB 18 2026

VFR prevailed at the start of the period. MVFR ceilings are forecast to develop from northwest to southeast overnight and early Friday. This is followed by a potential for a bit of drizzle or light rain developing on Friday morning and lasting into the afternoon. Wouldn't rule out some IFR ceilings for a some places, but the threat wasn't significant enough to include in TAFs. Any drizzle or light rain should taper off by evening, but MVFR ceilings should persist.

JKL WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

None.