textproduct: Jackson

KEY MESSAGES

- Temperatures about 15 to 20 degrees above normal linger into Sunday, but colder weather arrives early next week. - Periodic rain chances continue into the weekend.

LONG TERM

(After midnight Thursday night through Tuesday) Issued at 625 AM EST Wed Dec 24 2025

At the beginning of the long term forecast period, Eastern Kentucky will still be positioned within a regime of progressive northwesterly flow around the periphery of anomalously strong ridging over the south-central CONUS. As shortwave impulses navigate through this flow aloft, a surface frontal boundary will oscillate across the forecast area. This translates to a couple more days of periodic precipitation chances and unseasonably warm temperatures. However, the pattern is expected to transition this weekend. Guidance depicts the aforementioned ridging eroding with each passing system. Its flattened form will nudge into the forecast area on Saturday, providing a brief break from the precipitation chances, but keeping the warm air in place. A stronger disturbance will emerge upstream in the Northern Plains around this same time. As that system's parent trough deepens and digs into the Great Lakes states on Sunday, a better-defined cold front will sweep all the way through the forecast area. Much colder air will advect into the column after FROPA occurs, marking the beginning of a colder pattern to end 2025.

When the period opens on Christmas night, rain showers are likely to be ongoing in the vicinity of the weak boundary discussed in the short term forecast period. North of that boundary, temperatures could dip into the 40s overnight, but a passing shortwave disturbance should drag the boundary back north by Friday morning. This will place the forecast area back in a warm air advection regime during the daytime hours, and the best rain chances will shift northeast along with the front. The disturbance is forecast to round the apex of the ridge and then move southeast from Ohio into the Mid-Atlantic on Friday night. As it does so, it will pull the boundary back to the south in the form of a weak cold front and yield another round of showery activity. A rumble of thunder or two cannot be entirely ruled out with Friday evening's rain. Since model soundings depict a cap over our forecast area and convective parameter spacing remains unimpressive, PotThunder grids were kept below the mentionable 15% threshold. Thunder chances increase the closer one gets to the WV state line, where probabilistic data is more enthusiastic with this set up. Wind gusts between 20 and 30 mph may still blow around outdoor decorations, but the probability of winds exceeding advisory/SPS criteria is low. Likewise, QPF remains less than a quarter of an inch. Thus, the most noticeable sensible weather on Friday will be the unseasonably warm temperatures. Expect afternoon highs in the mid/upper 60s and overnight lows in the mid/upper 50s on Friday night. These values are 20 degrees greater than climatological averages (highs near 45 and lows near 30) for late December in Eastern Kentucky.

The warmth continues on Saturday, when the proximity of the upper level ridge axis could yield in the warmest day of the forecast period. Winds will remain westerly to southwesterly in the wake of Friday night's boundary, meaning that little to no cold air advection or airmass change is expected. Insulation from the previous night's cloud cover will give Saturday's temperatures a head start. Most of the area is forecast to exceed the 65 degree mark on Saturday afternoon. If subsidence from the nearby ridge results in pockets of sunshine peaking out, thermometer readings in the low 70s cannot be ruled out. The southwesterly warm air advection regime continues on Saturday night as the ridge axis propagates east, and much of the area will see MinTs in the upper half of the 50s. Therefore, it is plausible that temperatures could climb to 25 degrees warmer than normal values on Saturday.

The attention then turns to the developing system in the Northern Plains on Sunday. The antecedent warmth and the better support aloft signal that Sunday's system could produce more tangible impacts, whether this be in the form of convection or cold air advection. Some of yesterday's convective machine learning guidance clipped the JKL CWA with 5-15% contours. Those probabilities appear to be largely driven by dynamic/kinematic support, as decent forcing, a strengthening mid/upper level jet, and robust shear will be in place. However, uncertainty regarding the timing of FROPA cascades into uncertainty regarding the temperature forecast and the thermodynamic environment ahead of it. The 00z guidance suite trended towards a slower trough ejection and overnight FROPA, which would mitigate instability. The currently-available model guidance suggests that an uptick in wind gusts along this boundary is likely, as are more substantial QPF totals between a quarter and a half an inch. The potential for a high-shear/low-CAPE, linear-type convective event will need to be monitored closely in the coming days as higher-resolution guidance becomes available and the aforementioned machine learning guidance ingests the latest trends in the data.

Regardless of convective outcomes, a significant cooldown is expected early next week. The post-frontal cold air advection with Sunday's system looks quite potent. Northwesterly flow aloft will yield subzero 850mb temps by Monday morning, and precipitation may change over to snow showers on the back side of the system. Surface flow will remain blustery behind the frontal passage on Monday, but it will be out of the west. A drier continental airmass will wrap into the lower levels of the atmospheric column on the backside of Sunday's system. This will limit snow accumulation potential, but temperatures on Monday will likely struggle to rise above freezing. Models depict a reinforcing shot of cold air at the very end of the period, with another day of subfreezing highs on Tuesday. Overnight lows are forecast to be in the teens/near 20 early next week. This is a 30 to 40 degree temperature swing relative to the temperatures forecast early in the period, so 2025 is poised to go out on a colder note.

AVIATION

(For the 06Z TAFS through 06Z Thursday night) ISSUED AT 1155 PM EST TUE DEC 23 2025

MVFR conditions are prevailing across the TAF sites at issuance. Expect all sites to lower to IFR towards dawn. Rain will become increasingly possible overnight for places generally south of the SYM terminal, for a time, before tapering off, though fog lingers in the south into dawn. IFR CIGS/VSBY can be expected to take hold mainly after 08Z continuing through roughly 14Z before a slow improvement to MVFR is anticipated. Southwest to westerly winds of 5 to 10 kts will taper off to light and variable early Wednesday morning - continuing that way through the day.

JKL WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

None.