textproduct: Jackson

KEY MESSAGES

- Drier weather returns to the area through Monday afternoon.

- A series of frontal boundaries will move across the region between Monday night and Wednesday morning, leading to widespread rain chances on Tuesday.

- A colder, but drier, airmass will settle into the region for the beginning of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

UPDATE

Issued at 826 PM EST SUN NOV 23 2025

Skies are clear over almost all of the area early this evening. With near calm winds, this is allowing temperatures to drop, and most of the area is already near or at saturation (with dew points in the low to mid 40s, which is generally no higher than they bottomed out during the day). It would seem only a matter of time until fog begins to develop. The main question is how extensive dense fog will become. Will monitor the potential need for an advisory.

LONG TERM

(Tuesday through Sunday) Issued at 557 PM EST Sun Nov 23 2025

After a wet start to the long term forecast period on Tuesday, a strong cold front will sweep through the Commonwealth on Wednesday and advect much drier and cooler air into the region. That continental airmass will remain in place over the forecast area for much of the upcoming holiday weekend, with below normal temperatures in the forecast for Thanksgiving and Black Friday. Some forecast guidance hints at a return to more active weather late next weekend, but forecast uncertainty increases around then.

When the period opens on Tuesday morning, persistent southwesterly flow in the lower half of the atmospheric column will be advecting a seasonably warm and moist airmass into the area. Widespread cloud cover will be in place, insulating the previous night's lows and giving Tuesday's highs a climatological head start. Once the sun rises, temperatures should climb into the mid to upper 60s, and models resolve a weak plume of (likely-elevated) instability ahead of the week's first cold frontal passage that afternoon/evening. Weak frontal forcing and these marginal amounts of instability could combine to produce a few rumbles of thunder throughout the day, but severe thunderstorms are highly unlikely with this system. The better probabilities for favorable convective parameter spacing continue to be resolved further to the south in the Tennessee Valley, and forecast model soundings indicate that any convection north of the Tennessee state line on Tuesday will likely struggle to become surface based. Furthermore, the parent midlevel disturbance associated with Tuesday's activity is forecast to deamplify upon approach, leaving the surface front in a fairly weak state. Thus, the majority of Tuesday's activity is likely to fall in the form of generic rain showers.

The weaker nature of Tuesday's disturbance will leave a regime of deep SW flow in place on Tuesday night as a much stronger trough digs into the Upper Midwest. The resultant cloud cover will keep overnight temperatures insulated once again, with MinTs in the upper 40s/lower 50s. Scattered to numerous rain showers are forecast to continue out ahead of a second cold front, which is forecast to reach the forecast area on Wednesday morning. By then, its parent surface low will be occluding over the Northern Great Lakes, and a dry slot will be wrapping around its southwestern side into the Ohio River Valley. This will reduce both the coverage and magnitude of Wednesday morning's prefrontal rain showers, but reinforced the notion that the second boundary will have a much more pronounced temperature/moisture gradient. Westerly winds behind Wednesday's frontal passage are forecast to quickly advect a much cooler and drier airmass into the forecast area. This CAA will likely prevent Wednesday's temperatures from following the traditional diurnal warming curve, as temperatures are likely to fall from the 50s in the morning to the 40s that afternoon and then below freezing that night.

This sets the stage for a chilly start to the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. A surface high pressure system will build into the region behind the front while broad troughing sets up aloft over much of the Eastern CONUS. The resultant regime of westerly to northwesterly winds throughout the column will reinforce/strengthen cold air advection processes, and guidance depicts midlevel geopotential height falls headed into Black Friday. Expect chilly highs in the upper 30s/lower 40s on Thursday and Friday, with widespread subfreezing lows in the 20s. A few spots could reach the teens on Friday and Saturday morning before the pattern begins to shift again.

A clipper type system could approach the Greater Ohio River Valley from the NW around the backside of the departing upper level trough, but guidance resolves height rises and warming 850 temps over Kentucky in this time frame. Thus, our CWA looks to be positioned within that system's warm sector, with liquid precipitation favored. Timing and evolution details are ambiguous at this extended temporal range, but a warming trend appears likely headed into next week as broad midlevel ridging sets up over the SE CONUS. This leads to a regime of quasi-zonal flow over the commonwealth, and some guidance accordingly points towards a wet start to December. The CPC's experimental 8-14 day extended period hazards outlook mirrors this sentiment; they have outlined the region with 20-40% of heavy rain between December 1st and December 3rd. Those dates are beyond the end of this particular forecast period, and a lot can change in between now and then. Interests are encouraged to stay tuned to future forecast updates, but the risk of widespread hazardous weather is low in Eastern Kentucky through the end of November.

AVIATION

(For the 00Z TAFS through 00Z Monday evening) ISSUED AT 826 PM EST SUN NOV 23 2025

The main concern during the period is the extent to which fog and low stratus develop over the area tonight. With the exception of some localized transient stratus south of KIOB, the period started out clear with VFR conditions area wide. That will eventually change, with the clear skies, near calm wind, and rapidly saturating surface air leading to fog development. All TAF sites are forecast to reach IFR or worse at least at times overnight into early Monday. Fog then dissipates during the morning and leaves VFR conditions to finish the period.

JKL WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

None.