textproduct: Paducah

KEY MESSAGES

- Light snow should come to an end by daybreak across southwest Indiana.

- Significantly colder air will spread across the region this weekend with the coldest temperatures Saturday night into Sunday. Dangerously cold wind chill values (below 0) and impactful air temperatures are likely.

- A warming trend commences next week, with highs rising back above normal by Wednesday possibly pushing back into the 60s late next week.

DISCUSSION

Issued at 100 AM CST Fri Dec 12 2025

Alberta Clipper system continues to produce light snow over the northeastern quarter of the CWA. Reports are in the 1 to 2 inch range in the winter weather advisory although we may sneak a few slightly higher reports in southwest Indiana where a brighter band of precip has been working for the last couple of hours. Frontogenetic forcing is weakening and the returns are diminishing but it will probably take a couple more hours for the snowfall to stop entirely and will leave the Winter Weather Advisory in place for a little bit longer. The surface low at about 1009mb currently over south central MO transits eastward today and shifts our winds back from the north which should keep things pretty chilly today and tonight with a little bit of cloud cover draped behind it.

Amplifying flow over the western half of the CONUS sends a very strong cold front towards the region Saturday. The airmass coming along with this 1038-1042 mb high is sitting over western Canada this morning with -30/-40 degF temps and -40/-50 degF dewpoints. The very cold and dense airmass is already trending faster in model guidance, which is not unexpected. Lowered Max temps a little Saturday as winds shift around as early as midday before the coldest airmass slams into the region in the afternoon. With this type of airmass transition I expect a brief bout (an hour or two) of 20-25+ mph gusts and sharply dropping temperatures. Model consensus has the southern half of the area about 13 to 15 and the northern half about 3 to 8 air temperature by Sunday morning purely from cold-advection processes. That seems a little cold without any radiative component but its what has been shown for the last several days. This coupled with the persistent winds overnight puts us below zero basically everywhere wind chill wise and closer to -10 along the Interstate 64 corridor. A cold weather advisory will likely be needed later today or tonight for most, or all of the CWA. Light snow is modeled along the leading edge of the front but there isn't a great deal of Fgen or jet level ascent and the front moves so fast any lift from that looks very short-lived. We have very light accumulations in the northeastern most counties.

Sunday looks very cold with winds staying up to 5-10 mph with max wind chills struggling to break 10 degrees. Sunday night the 1040mb high parks directly overhead. Forecast lows are basically 0 to 10 right now but it has the look of one of those nights where we see late overnight lows tanking out which would put things below zero and flirting with daily record lows.

All that mess finally breaks up the persistent troughing over the Great Lakes/Hudson Bay with a much more zonal pattern taking shape. This leads to surface high pressure forming up over the southeastern US and giving us warmer southwesterly winds. Max temps should easily break back into the 50s by midweek and probably into the 60s later in the week with small rain and shower chances starting to spark up amid the persistent southwesterly moisture return flow.

AVIATION /18Z TAFS THROUGH 18Z SATURDAY/

Issued at 1119 AM CST Fri Dec 12 2025

An MVFR cloud deck is slowly advancing southeastward but current satellite shows the southeast edges eroding and scattering out. This means it could take a little longer for the MVFR deck to reach PAH, EVV, and OWB. This also means the deck may retreat briefly from CGI. Once this deck moves in later this evening, it should stay fairly solid through tomorrow. Winds will remain generally northerly and light.

PAH WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

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