textproduct: Jackson

KEY MESSAGES

- A series of frontal boundaries will move across the region between tonight and Wednesday morning, leading to widespread shower chances late tonight into Tuesday night.

- Isolated strong storms are possible on Tuesday afternoon/ evening for areas along and south of the Hal Rogers Pkwy/KY-80 corridor.

- A colder and drier airmass will settle into the region for Thanksgiving and Black Friday, but there is a lot of uncertainty in the forecast for Saturday and beyond.

UPDATE

Issued at 942 PM EST MON NOV 24 2025

Light rain has made it to the western edge of the forecast area, but is struggling to overcome mid level dry air. It will prime the way for the next wave to move in overnight and likely bring rain to our northwestern counties, while it may take longer to make it to our southeast counties. Temps have cooled a bit faster than was forecast in eastern valleys, and the mins have been revised downward slightly, but readings are still expected to bottom out part way through the night and then climb as clouds thicken and low level flow picks up.

LONG TERM

(Wednesday through Monday) Issued at 447 PM EST Mon Nov 24 2025

The beginning of the long term forecast period is marked by the passage of a well-defined cold front. On Wednesday morning, a vertically stacked and likely occluded low pressure system will be spinning over the Northern Great Lakes, with its trailing cold front sweeping through the Greater Ohio River Valley. Dry air is forecast to wrap around the southwest side of that low, leaving Wednesday's boundary with much less precipitable water to work with than on the day prior. A few pre-frontal rain showers remain possible on Wednesday morning, but gusty post-frontal winds out of the west will quickly advect a much cooler and drier continental airmass into the region. This will likely limit the amount of diurnal warming realized on Wednesday afternoon, and many locations will actually see temperatures steadily decrease throughout the day. MaxTs will likely struggle to warm above 55 degrees, and the LREF Grand Ensemble data depicts only a 40% chance of highs warmer than this threshold. Once the sun goes down, temperatures will plummet into the 30s, with widespread overnight MinTs below freezing.

Wednesday's frontal passage sets the stage for a rather chilly Thanksgiving Day. 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. Some high-/mid-level clouds might linger into Thursday morning, but the continued advection of cold and dry air into the column favors a mostly sunny sensible weather forecast with highs in the upper 30s north of the Mountain Parkway and in the lower 40s further to the south. Models collectively resolve less cloud cover and colder 850mb temperatures on Thursday night, which could turn out to be one of the coldest nights of the season thus far. Efficient radiational cooling should allow sheltered and shaded valleys to dip into the teens overnight, but even the relatively warmer ridgetops will cool into the lower half of the 20s. Expect similar, if not slightly cooler, conditions to continue on Black Friday before the pattern shifts next weekend.

The broad midlevel troughing associated with Thursday and Friday's colder weather looks to lift northeast overnight into Saturday. This will set up a regime of quasi-zonal flow aloft, and midlevel geopotential height rises indicate a general warming trend. The exact arrival time and magnitude of that warmer airmass remains somewhat ambiguous though. Some guidance keeps cold air around just long enough to interact with a shortwave disturbance and yield some mixed snow/rain in the Bluegrass region on Saturday. Others show the better precipitation chances arriving on Sunday after another day's worth of WAA. The compounding differences result in significant model spread and reduced forecast confidence for Saturday and beyond, but the synoptic features at play point towards primarily liquid precipitation and seasonably mild temperatures for the end of November and the start of December.

AVIATION

(For the 00Z TAFS through 00Z Wednesday evening) ISSUED AT 942 PM EST MON NOV 24 2025

VFR conditions still prevailed at the start of the period. Light rain was approaching from central KY. It will try to move in this evening, but will probably struggle to overcome mid level dry air. Enough moistening should eventually occur for some light rain to arrive in some locations overnight, but it will probably take longer for significant deterioration in conditions. Low level flow will also pick up overnight, especially just off the surface, and low level wind shear will be a concern overnight into Tuesday morning. During the day Tuesday showers will become more numerous area wide, with a deterioration to mostly MVFR conditions expected across the area during the course of the day. Although, it could take until late in the day in extreme eastern KY.

JKL WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

None.