textproduct: Jackson

KEY MESSAGES

- Unsettled weather and widespread rain shower is expected today.

- Thunderstorms this afternoon and evening could produce locally heavy rain, potentially leading to isolated flooding, along with strong to locally damaging wind gusts.

- Expect cooler than normal temperatures to begin the work week as broad troughing dominates the weather pattern aloft.

- Unsettled weather is poised to return for the middle to later part of the new week. Strong to severe storms and locally heavy rainfall are possible from Wednesday night to Friday.

UPDATE

Issued at 1150 PM EDT SAT JUN 13 2026

High clouds have continued to thicken a little faster than was forecast, and more adjustments were made. This may keep valleys a bit milder as well overnight. A few showers have popped up over south central kentucky in the last hour or two. This would be the start of what models suggest will be an expanding area moving into our western counties overnight. Although, the showers haven't developed to the extent that guidance would suggest at this point.

UPDATE Issued at 843 PM EDT SAT JUN 13 2026

Early evening obs have been blended into the forecast, resulting in a faster drop in temperatures and faster increase in high clouds.

LONG TERM

(Monday night through Saturday) Issued at 230 AM EDT Sun Jun 14 2026

Broad upper-atmospheric troughing will dominate the synoptic weather pattern over much of North America for the long-term forecast period. Progressive shortwave disturbances are progged to rotate around this feature, and there is above-average model agreement regarding their positioning, timing, and evolution. As a result, confidence is high that the first part of the period will be marked by drier and seasonably pleasant conditions before a mid-week warming trend emerges. That transition culminates in a return to more active weather as a series of well-defined disturbances dig into the Midwest and then the Greater Ohio River Valley during the second half of the work week. A southern stream disturbance in the western Gulf will funnel modified tropical moisture into the forecast area in this same time frame, and medium-range models are hinting at robust lower and upper level jet streak support across the region from Wednesday into Thursday. These ingredients collectively support increasing rain chances across the entire CWA from Wednesday night into Thursday, and they paint enough of a synoptic signal to suggest that some of this activity could come in the form of strong to severe thunderstorms. The exact details of that convective forecast will be determined by mesoscale nuances that are difficult to discern at the current temporal range. However, this setup has certainly caught our attention. Our forecast area will likely be positioned within a regime of quasi-zonal flow underneath the base of the trough axis through Friday. Thus, the surface frontal boundaries associated with the disturbances aloft will remain in our vicinity for multiple days in a row and create the potential for multiple days of convective precipitation in a row. As a result, we will also need to monitor the potential for localized hydrological impacts during this stretch of active weather. Thankfully, the mean troughing axis should dig deeper into the Eastern Seaboard by next weekend and the boundaries should accordingly shift south into the Tennessee Valley. Such a shift would place the commonwealth in a regime of vertically-stacked westerly to northwesterly flow, and the resultant dry air advection allows the period to end on a quieter note. When the period opens on Monday night, the forecast area will be firmly under the influence of the cooler and drier early-week airmass. Expect overnight ridge-valley temperature splits (ridgetops in the 50s and valleys in the upper 40s) and subsequent river valley fog formation. After any fog burns off in the AM, Tuesday looks to be another dry and mostly sunny day. Afternoon highs will be a few ticks higher on Tuesday than they were on Monday though, as west- southwesterly surface winds will kickstart the aforementioned midweek warming trend. With the warming trend comes increased moisture and thus increased sensible weather forecast uncertainty. Confidence was not high enough to commit to significant ridge-valley temperature splits on Tuesday night, as the first shortwave looks to dig into the region by Wednesday morning. This introduces breezier winds, low-end rain shower chances, and relatively greater amounts of sky cover to the forecast grids than on the previous night. Those conditions would not favor large splits, but if the cloud cover arrives late enough in the night, the sheltered and shaded eastern valleys/hollows could still decouple.

The potential for showers on Wednesday morning could play a role in determining the convective environment later that afternoon/evening. Any residual boundaries left behind (such as an outflow or a differential heating boundary) could act as a focal point for another round of showers and storms as temperatures warm into the 80s on Wednesday afternoon. Breezy southwesterly winds could gust up to 20mph during peak diurnal heating, and the shifting features aloft will yield increasingly effective WAA and moisture return in this time frame. Instead of dying off after sunset, those winds/gusts are actually forecast to strengthen overnight into Thursday. Sustained southwesterly winds between 10 and 15mph (with gusts potentially approaching wind advisory criteria) will continue to pump warm, moist air into the forecast area on Wednesday night, and lows may not dip much below the 70 degree mark. This is atypical for this time of year, and EFI/SOT data continues to signal that unusual weather conditions are possible in this time frame. All of this boils down to approach of a second, sharper shortwave, which will be met with plenty of upper level kinematic support to spark strong to severe convection upstream. Given the pattern and the season, that convection will likely congeal into an MCS as it moves towards the Bluegrass, where it will encounter the nocturnal intensification of an 850mb jet streak to between 50 and 70 knots. Winds of this magnitude aloft will help provide ample shear to sustain convection, and the unusually warm/windy conditions forecast in our CWA that night will work to keep sufficient MUCAPE in place. Thus, there was enough of a signal in the modeled kinematic and thermodynamic environment for the Storm Prediction Center to outline a severe weather outlook along the I-64 corridor on Wednesday night and Thursday. Medium-range convective guidance derived from machine learning, artificial intelligence, and analogous event analysis data further support this notion, with damaging wind gusts the most likely hazard type.

The mesoscale evolution of Wednesday night's activity will play a crucial role in determining the parameter spacing for any additional convection in our forecast area on Thursday afternoon. Models suggest that the surface front responsible for that activity will not have made its way through the entire CWA by then. They also keep 30-40 knots of southwesterly 850mb flow over the CWA through Thursday night. Depending on the amount of diurnal warming and destabilization realized to the south of the boundary, another round of strong to severe storms cannot be ruled out. With high freezing levels and deep moisture in place, damaging winds would once again be the favored hazard type. Regardless of severe storm development, the potential for additional convective rainfall bears watching. Localized hydrological issues may emerge wherever multiple rounds of activity track, and this potential cascades into Friday as the previously-discussed quasi-zonal flow regime persists aloft. The compounding forecast uncertainty presented by the mesoscale unknowns in this setup precludes the mention of specific rainfall totals, but there is a 70-80% chance for at least 1 inches of rainfall across the entire CWA through Friday evening in the LREF data. When this threshold is increased to 2 inches, those probabilities hover around the 40-50% threshold. It is important to note that the LREF does not have any explicitly convection-allowing members in its ensemble. Thus, it will be interesting to see how higher-resolution, CAM-inclusive ensembles resolve these probabilities as the event approaches. At the very least, this rainfall should prove beneficial to the area's ongoing drought concerns. We recognize that some of recent rain chances have not come to fruition area-wide, but the parent features responsible for those chances have been far more subtle than what is emerging in the Wednesday to Friday window. The magnitude of those features and the cumulative nature of this active weather pattern demand attention, so interests are accordingly encouraged to stay tuned to future forecast updates.

AVIATION

(For the 06Z TAFS through 06Z Sunday night) ISSUED AT 215 AM EDT SUN JUN 14 2026

VFR conditions prevailed area wide at the start of the period and should generally prevail for at least the first 12 hours of the period. Some valley fog is also anticipated through 13Z, mainly south and southeast of the TAF sites. Some reductions to MVFR or lower would occur with this, but TAF sites will not be affect. The main aviation concern will be the possibility of showers/thunderstorms arriving from the west prior to 12Z and then occurring at times through as late as 00Z to 03Z. Confidence in timing for any given location remains low. That being the case, the convective potential is being handled with PROB30 groups, with prevailing groups remaining VFR. MVFR and localized IFR can be expected when/where the more significant precip occurs. The stronger storms could produce brief gusts as high as 25 to 40KT. Otherwise, near and behind the cold front, a few hours of MVFR reductions are anticipated and once that cloud cover clears, fog will become a concern by 06Z and after.

JKL WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

None.