


Area Forecast Discussion
Issued by NWS Paducah, KY
Issued by NWS Paducah, KY
438 FXUS63 KPAH 161914 AFDPAH Area Forecast Discussion National Weather Service Paducah KY 214 PM CDT Thu Oct 16 2025 .KEY MESSAGES... - Quiet and seasonably warm conditions will condition today through the rest of the day. - A robust fall storm system will bring showers and thunderstorms to the region, mainly Saturday afternoon into late Saturday night. A few of the storms could reach severe levels, but there are limiting factors. - Another disturbance will bring renewed modest rain and thunderstorm chances on Tuesday. && .DISCUSSION... Issued at 214 PM CDT Thu Oct 16 2025 Most of the focus of the day is on Saturday`s front/thunderstorms. The large closed low and troughing that stretches from the Front Range of the Rockies off the Pacific coast gets shunted eastward by a jet max moving onto the Pacific coast over the next few days. A closed low over south Texas gets caught up ahead of this big trough and moves overhead tomorrow. This trough has no moisture to work with and should pass without much ado, but it will shift our surface flow to the southwest and we will begin advecting richer moisture into the area from Texas where dewpoints are 65-70 F. The polar and subtropical jets phase Saturday morning over the TX/OK panhandle which builds momentum to the east of the trough and helps keep it going as flow east of the trough at 250 increases to about 130-140 kt with sharply diffluent flow to the southeast of the jet. This should result in a lot of large scale lift over the quad-state from about 21z on. It would also support strong surface pressure falls, but the thermal gradients from sfc-500mb or so seem a little too weak to really get a low cranked up. Nevertheless 850mb flow does pick up to 35-45 kt by 00z or so with dewpoints in the mid 60s. All guidance has been consistent on showing antecedent and advected drier air aloft mixing down in the afternoon, which keeps our dewpoints from really taking off. In this case I do not think its a situation of global models overmixing, it makes sense there would be a deep mixed layer and there definitely will be some drier air aloft given the short moisture return interval (really only about 18-24 hours). The overall trend has been for this system to steadily get slower congealing peak lift/thunderstorm potential about 22-03z over most of the area. Given the number of large outdoor events planned put considerable attention to the PoPs temporally as it does look like a fairly quiet morning and early afternoon gives way to a stormy late afternoon and evening. MLCAPEs remain limited due to the deep mixing only yielding about 200-400 J/kg MLCAPE, and that has been very consistent across all models and run to run for the last several days. 0-1km shear/hodographs are pretty good and deep layer shear is supportive. Will need to watch for any trend in sharper mid-level lapse rates or less mixing/higher surface dewpoints that would result in stronger buoyancy. So to try to un-nerdspeak all of that. Thunderstorms are going to be a factor Saturday, but they do look to hold off later in the day and into the evening which may help some of our outdoor activities. However this also increases the time for heating to build instability. We think moisture will decrease during the afternoon enough to limit the severe weather potential but the organizing shear is strong enough we absolutely will need to be mindful and monitoring it, as a small increase in instability would make for a pretty favorable wind damage setup with an attendant tornado risk. It looks a little better than it did for this 24 hours ago but it still is a pretty marginal setup overall. A robust cold front then sweeps in behind the front dropping our temperatures and humidity and leading to a fairly cool breezy day on Sunday. Another trough pushes through on Tuesday but it does look quite moisture starved based on the short return interval in the current guidance. ECMWF has been dry and the GFS is trending that way. && .AVIATION /18Z TAFS THROUGH 18Z FRIDAY/... Issued at 1120 AM CDT Thu Oct 16 2025 VFR conditions with a moderate easterly breeze are anticipated through the rest of the day. Overnight winds become calm and fog and ground fog are expected at CGI and possibly PAH. Another light to moderate east wind and VFR skies are forecast for Friday. && .PAH WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES... IL...None. MO...None. IN...None. KY...None. && $$ DISCUSSION...JGG AVIATION...JGG