textproduct: Paducah

KEY MESSAGES

- Temperatures will generally be well above normal through the workweek.

- Rain and thunderstorms are expected Thursday through Friday evening. There is a conditional risk for severe thunderstorms Thursday night, with a lingering risk possibly over southwest Kentucky Friday afternoon. - Intervals of widespread rainfall, some amounts locally heavy, are expected Thursday afternoon through Friday night, with limited flooding potential.

DISCUSSION

Issued at 1255 AM CST Wed Jan 7 2026

The ground/air temperature contrast with some available lower level moisture is leading to patchy fog that is becoming locally dense in places. GOES Night Fog IR seems to be doing a pretty good job picking up on the thickest of it from near Poplar Bluff eastward to Ft. Campbell. Although webcams show visibilities are inconsistent through that range. Will continue to monitor and a small dense fog advisory might be needed before daybreak.

Warm (but not as warm as yesterday) conditions are forecast today before we begin to see the influence of broad troughing currently working into the Pacific coast. The upper level impacts of this system hit us in two waves. First the trough currently off the southern California coast approaches Thursday as a shortwave; at the same time digging troughing over the Rockies strengthens and broadens a southwesterly jet- max pushing this trough to about 130-140kts. A surface low over the Plains develops in response and advances into the western Great Lakes region at about 992mb or so - dramatically increasing our low level wind fields. Surface winds increase to 15-25 mph and 850 flow increasing to 55-65 kts. Those strong winds will be pulling on 60-65 degree dewpoint air to our south, with even richer moisture available over the central Gulf. GFS- based guidance has dewpoints mixing out into the upper 50s in the late afternoon and early evening. That is hard to believe given the lack of significant drier air aloft (and the time of day). ECMWF guidance keeps dewpoints closer to 62-63. There are complications in the low-level thermodynamics with the strong temperature inversion present at 850mb to start the event (evident on currently 00z Nashville RAOB and from our fire weather behavior the last few days). Most guidance seems to lift that inversion out by 03z or so amid decent mid-level height falls. From 00 to 06z we sit in a somewhat diffluent region amid a phasing of the polar/subtropical jet with a max centered roughly over Texarkana and a stronger one over TX/OK panhandles. We are under the right front quad on the stronger one and left front quad on the other with curvature holding up well back over the Rockies. The lift looks to become more neutral through the night as the broader polar jet spreads over the area.

I'm not sure that the cap will be completely lifted out by this somewhat neutral jet-level situation. But as mentioned most forecast soundings seem to do that. ECMWF soundings give us 400-600 J/kg of MLCAPE and GFS even with its possibly too low dewpoints are 200-400 J/kg. I've spent all this time rambling about the specifics because the shear environment will be exceptional. 850mb flow is between 98th and 99th percentile in NAEFS anomalies with curved hodographs yielding 400-600 m2/s2 of 0-1km SRH and 0-1km shear magnitudes around 40kt. Any surface based convection that were to get going in that environment would be dangerous. In the winter time it seems any anomalously strong atmospheric behavior like this rarely works out in our favor. We will just have to see how the thermodynamic details play out, which higher resolution guidance over the next 12-24 hours should give us continued insight on.

We end up in a fairly neutral upper air environment until Friday afternoon. It still looks like the switch to the right rear quadrant of the by now 150-170 kt southwesterly upper jet holds off until Friday afternoon and in such a position the best forcing stays to our southeast during the day Friday. There will still be at least some elevated instability during this period and locally heavy rain would remain a threat until everything clears. If surface based instability can be scraped together we would have a severe weather threat as well through the overnight Thursday into Friday morning. I am just a little more skeptical of that happening without semi-active jet-level ascent going on.

Behind the front colder air moves in and we look to probably get back to normal. Towards the end of the period broad deep cyclonic flow over the upper Great Lakes starts to look a little bit more like what we dealt with last month, although the intensity of the cold air is not quite the same.

AVIATION /12Z TAFS THROUGH 12Z THURSDAY/

Issued at 533 AM CST Wed Jan 7 2026

Patchy locally dense ground fog is visible in a few spots across the area sandwiched in between more dense fog to the north and south. This should mix out fairly quickly leading to prevailing VFR conditions much of the day. Winds should be relatively light through the night before strong winds move in after sunrise Thursday.

PAH WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

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