Area Forecast Discussion
Issued by NWS Jackson, KY
Issued by NWS Jackson, KY
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235 FXUS63 KJKL 222212 AFDJKL AREA FORECAST DISCUSSION National Weather Service Jackson KY 512 PM EST Sat Nov 22 2025 .KEY MESSAGES... - Drier weather returns to the area through Monday afternoon. - A series of frontal boundaries will move across the region between Monday night and Wednesday morning, leading to widespread rain chances on Tuesday. - A colder, but drier, airmass will settle into the region for the beginning of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. && .SHORT TERM...(This evening through Sunday night) Issued at 230 PM EST SAT NOV 22 2025 At current, remnant showers are occurring across Floyd, and Pike counties. A boundary is apparent looking at visible satellite imagery located along a line extending from Liberty east to Hazard, and Pikeville. A cold front continues to move across the state confirmed by looking at temperature and humidity fields from state Mesonets. Cloud cover is starting to thin out north of Fleming county and surrounding sites north of the area. Sky conditions should improve heading into the evening, with high pressure building into the area behind the cold front. Temperatures tonight will fall into the upper 30s to low 40s, with patchy to areas of fog. Sunday, high pressure continues to build into the area, leading to partly cloudy to mostly sunny conditions and temperatures in the upper 50s to low 60s. To account for a good set up for deep mixing tomorrow we`ve collaborated with neighboring offices to use the 90th percentile for winds during the peak heating hours. Also, have elected to use a blend of the 10th and 25th percentile of the NBM for dew points. Sunday night, under mostly clear skies, conditions will favor some ridge-valley splits, with lows in the low 30s in sheltered valleys and hollow, with ridge-tops remaining in the upper 30s. Fog will be possible again Sunday night, however with time for the grounds to dry out some from yesterdays rains, fog has been confined to the river valleys in the forecast. .LONG TERM...(Monday through Saturday) Issued at 511 PM EST Sat Nov 22 2025 While the daytime hours on Monday are forecast to remain dry, the return of southerly surface flow and southwesterly winds aloft will yield increasing amounts of warm/moist air advection to the column by Monday evening. The ridging and surface high responsible for the previous day`s drier weather will have shifted east by then, and a shortwave midlevel trough is forecast to approach the region overnight into Tuesday. At the surface, this initial disturbance will be represented by a low pressure system lifting NE across the Ohio River Valley, with an initial warm front and a trailing cold front. However, forecast guidance continues to resolve the deamplification of the parent features aloft and thus a weaker first cold frontal passage. Models also agree that a stronger trough will then dig into the Northern Plains and allow southerly/southwesterly flow to continue into Wednesday. The stronger dynamics associated with this second system will lead to a second, better-defined cold front crossing the forecast area on Wednesday. That system`s surface low will likely be occluding over the Northern Great Lakes in this time frame, which would allow drier air to wrap around its backside and into the Ohio River Valley by midweek. After this secondary frontal passage, another surface high builds into the region and remains in place for the first few days of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. In sensible weather terms, these synoptics lead to increasing cloud cover, increasing temperatures, and increasing rain chances over the first couple of days in the long term forecast period. Expect a North-South temperature gradient on Monday afternoon, with locations south of the Mountain Parkway more likely to see highs in the 60s than areas closer to Interstate 64. Further to the north, winds will be slower to veer, and forecast highs accordingly remain in the 50s there for one more day. More efficient warm air advection and isentropic lift associated with the arrival of the warm front will insulate Monday night`s lows. Temperatures are forecast to be 10 to 15 degrees warmer on Monday night than they were on Sunday night, with widespread lows in the mid to upper 40s. This gives a head start to Tuesday`s highs, and most of the area will be able to climb into the mid/upper 60s on Tuesday afternoon ahead of the approaching cold front. PoPs spread from west to east across the area late on Monday night, then become more widespread by dawn on Tuesday morning. Scattered to numerous rain showers will continue through Tuesday night before the second/stronger boundary arrives on Wednesday. Additional pre-frontal rain showers are possible on Wednesday morning, but the forecast has generally trended drier for this time frame. The intrusion of a dry slot will likely limit rainfall rates and keep QPF light with the second boundary passage, and the probability of widespread hazardous weather is low. A few thunderstorms cannot be ruled out closer to the Tennessee state line on Tuesday, where models resolve marginally higher amounts of likely- elevated instability. The highest storm total rainfall accumulations from Tuesday to Wednesday will likely come there in the Cumberland River Basin, but these totals generally remain less than one inch. Thus, widespread hydrological issues are not currently anticipated in Eastern Kentucky. Behind Wednesday`s frontal passage, surface winds will turn westerly as northwesterly flow continues around the backside of longwave troughing aloft. The resultant advection of a continental airmass into the commonwealth will yield below-normal temperatures and drier sensible weather for start of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Thanksgiving day will begin with widespread AM lows below freezing, and highs are only forecast to warm into the lower half of the 40s that afternoon. Black Friday looks even cooler as CAA persists and mid-level geopotential heights fall, with similar lows/highs before temperatures bottom out in the lower 20s on Saturday morning. Model solutions begin to diverge around then, but there are hints of an embedded disturbance approaching from the NW late next weekend. That system will have to work to overcome antecedent dry air and a general warming trend across modeled 850mb temperatures to produce much precipitation in our area, but slight chance PoPs re- enter the forecast at the very end of the period. Timing and evolution details remain highly uncertain, so interests are once again encouraged once again not to read too far into any one deterministic model run`s precipitation output in that time frame. && .AVIATION...(For the 18Z TAFS through 18Z Sunday afternoon) ISSUED AT 1254 PM EST SAT NOV 22 2025 Current conditions range from LIFR, IFR and MVFR as low clouds from earlier rain showers reduced these categories. Throughout the day, there will be very slow and gradual improvement to VFR as surface high pressure builds back into the region. Winds are forecast to be light and variable through the TAF window. && .JKL WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES... None. && $$ SHORT TERM...GINNICK LONG TERM...MARCUS AVIATION...GINNICK