textproduct: Paducah

KEY MESSAGES

- Elevated fire danger persists this afternoon mainly over western KY thanks to good mixing leading to lower dewpoints and breezier winds, and in turn lower RH values.

- Rain and thunderstorms Friday afternoon. Risk for severe storms is small, but not quite zero.

- Monday severe weather potential remains and will need to be watched closely in the coming days.

UPDATE

Issued at 1146 PM CDT Wed Apr 22 2026

Updated Aviation discussion 06z TAF issuance.

DISCUSSION

Issued at 1247 PM CDT Wed Apr 22 2026

A strong upper level ridge stretches from north Texas into the western Great Lakes region this afternoon. The surface reflection is centered over northern Alabama and Georgia. This gives us warm and dry conditions with a light southwest wind. Broad troughing over much of the northwestern CONUS will begin to approach by tomorrow afternoon, giving us a little more cloud cover and probably slightly gustier conditions as the low level pressure gradient tightens slightly.

That trough gets close enough to push a front through by Friday. Ahead of the front we have fairly decent column and low level moisture. Lapse rates are fairly meager and deep and low level shear is fairly weak. Broad warm advection and spokes of DCVA produce a fairly long window with enough lift for precip - starting in the late morning and persisting into the evening. Instability is fairly weak but sufficient for embedded thunderstorms. MLCAPE is about 600 with MUCAPE for elevated parcels about 1200 J/kg. QPF is still about 0.80 to 1.20 inches with the 1.00 or greater probability on the NBM about 55-60% which seems reasonable given the picture. Right now it looks like mostly beneficial rains with some attendant thunder and the risk for severe storms appears quite low.

The system on Monday appears better aligned to bring a severe weather threat. Troughing over the eastern Pacific tightens up the subtropical jet into a zonal 100-110 kt maxima over much of the southwest and south central CONUS Sunday into Monday as a closed low transits along the northern periphery of that jet and opens up into a fairly sharp shortwave trough with ridging building over the eastern Great Lakes. By Monday afternoon this leads to strongly diffluent flow over the mid-Mississippi Valley. In response, a lee cyclone forms over southeastern Colorado Sunday and arcs east northeastward towards southern Lake Michigan by Monday night, holding intensity between about 995-998mb. This results in 24-30 hours of strong southwesterly return flow that loads western Gulf/Bay of Campeche air into the area and puts our dewpoints in the high 60s to low 70s. 850mb flow strengthens to around 35-40 kts during the afternoon. Mid- level lapse rates in deterministic models are running about 7.0 to 7.5 degC/km. Both GFS/ECMWF deterministic runs show an elevated mixed layer trying to work in from the west which provides a little bit of capping on model forecast soundings. The end result of all of this by the afternoon is about 2000-2500 J/kg of MLCAPE with fairly strong looping hodographs and ample deep layer shear to lift through any capping inversion and a surface cold front to lift any remaining parcels. CIPS analogs/CSU machine learning algorithms and the regular eyeball test highlight at least some potential for severe weather. As always at this range there are a myriad of things that could change what we see now appears to have a fairly high ceiling. Will continue to monitor closely.

After that it appears we stay in a fairly amplified pattern with moisture return followed by strong shortwave/frontal passages with additional rain/thunderstorm potential.

AVIATION /06Z TAFS THROUGH 06Z FRIDAY/

Issued at 1146 PM CDT Wed Apr 22 2026

The TAFs remain VFR. Light S to SW winds through the rest of the night will pick up after 14-17z, with peak values sustained at 12-16 kts with gusts of 20-25 kts. After 01z Friday, winds will begin to relax to 5-10 kts. Sky cover will be limited to passing FEW- SCT high and mid- level decks, though BKN conditions are forecast at CGI in the afternoon. Diurnal CU bases will will be around 5-10kft.

PAH WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

IL...None. MO...None. IN...None. KY...None.