textproduct: Paducah

KEY MESSAGES

- One more day of very warm conditions is forecast tomorrow. - A strong cold front will bring a 80 to 90 percent chance of rain and 20 to 30 percent chance of thunderstorms late Sunday afternoon and evening. There is a marginal risk of severe weather with the showers and storms with damaging winds and isolated tornadoes the main threat.

- Winds will be gusty out of the south on Sunday, possibly reaching or exceeding 35 mph (40-60% chance).

- A brief blast of cold air will arrive Sunday night into early next week. Temperatures will struggle to warm above freezing for Monday and Tuesday and there is a 60-90 percent chance that wind chill values fall into the single digits above zero!

DISCUSSION

Issued at 102 PM CST Sat Dec 27 2025

A very slow moving warm front is just sneaking into the southwestern part of the CWA with a warm advective zone at the surface and slightly aloft moving northeast. A very interesting and somewhat climatologically anomalous advection/ground fog scenario kept dense fog across the area through midday but over the last hour that does look to have mixed up into a low overcast. Those low clouds are keeping temperatures into the low 60s south and upper 50s north. Southwesterly winds over western AR/MO are trying to dry things out and break us out but they have yet to succeed and lowered maxes a bit for today.

A broad/large trough that has been causing weather impacts over the west coast of the US moves eastward over the Plains tomorrow as a surface cylcone spins up and deepens to our northwest during the day. As you'd expect this leads to quite a strong low-level pressure gradient and southwest winds 15-20 mph with higher gusts begin advecting 65 to up to 70 degree dewpoint air towards the region from Texas. Drier/warmer air around 800mb, which appears to be part of a diffuse EML (visible on CRP/BRO 12z soundings) mixes out dewpoints and muddies our low level thermodynamics a bit. I do wonder though if it will succeed quite as much as modeled at mixing out dewpoints with the conveyor belt of moisture coming in down low from the southwest. Large scale ascent is strong with broadly diffluent jet-level flow and strong mid-level height falls. Southwesterly 850mb winds increase to around 50-55kts (trending upward from yesterday) and surface dewpoints are modeled higher in CAM guidance than they were yesterday. CAMs mostly show a narrow line of convection just ahead of the front. If that can get formed up I am wary that a periodic damaging wind/tornado threat will accompany the line as it moves east, with strong low level theta-e advection through the early evening persisting the instability a little longer than modeled as well - as is often the case with cold season events.

Behind the front sits a 1040mb high moving in from Canada. At 00z the surface low over the Great Lakes is at 990mb with our pressures modeled around 1002mb. So that 1040 mb will be in quite a hurry to establish itself and very windy conditions look likely. Wind advisory level conditions look to be a 50-70% probability at this point but wanted to wait one more cycle as its still 30-36 hours out. Much colder conditions follow with minimum apparent Temps sinking to the single digits again. Another cold front tries to work towards the region by midweek. In the extended temperatures look to be settling close to climatological norms for now with highs in the mid 40s and lows a little below freezing with no obvious major precip systems through the end of the period.

AVIATION /18Z TAFS THROUGH 18Z SUNDAY/

Issued at 1113 AM CST Sat Dec 27 2025

Degraded flight conditions look to stick around for most of the rest of the day. Advection driven fog is keeping things socked in over WKY/SEMO and parts of SIL. Poor visibilities may rise to a low overcast but VLIFR/LIFR conditions and no better than IFR is expected for the next several hours with poorer conditions moving northeastward through the day. Eventually a bit of drier low level air will work in on increasingly southwesterly low level winds but it may be 03z and even then low MVFR or IFR conditions may persist awhile.

PAH WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

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