Area Forecast Discussion
Issued by NWS Jackson, KY
Issued by NWS Jackson, KY
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548 FXUS63 KJKL 110340 AAA AFDJKL AREA FORECAST DISCUSSION...UPDATED National Weather Service Jackson KY 1140 PM EDT Mon Aug 10 2026 .KEY MESSAGES... - Showers and thunderstorm chances will persist through the end of the week. The greatest coverage is expected from Tuesday through Friday. Some of those storms could arrive as organized clusters with a potential for strong to damaging wind gusts. - Isolated to scattered instances of excessive rainfall may occur where storms are most persistent, leading to elevated concerns for flooding - especially for mid-week. - A Flood Watch remains in effect for northeastern Kentucky until 8 AM EDT on Wednesday, primarily for flash flooding. && .UPDATE... Issued at 1140 PM EDT MON AUG 10 2026 No major changes were made to the forecast with mainly just the inclusion of the latest obs and trends for the T/Td/Sky grids. We are watching closely the upstream convective development in Indiana and Ohio for possible jogs south toward our part of the state overnight. For now, have tamped down PoPs until much later in the night per the current regional radar trends and the latest CAMs guidance. Uncertainty remains high for these anticipated storm clusters, their movement, and subsequent development into Tuesday. These minor adjustments have been sent to the NDFD and web servers along with an earlier freshening of the HWO, SAFS, and zones. UPDATE Issued at 633 PM EDT MON AUG 10 2026 Trends and latest model runs would suggest that precip will remain to our northeast for a longer time as we move into the evening, and the POP has been lowered initially tonight. Have still held on to chance POPs for later in the night. && .SHORT TERM...(This evening through Tuesday night) Issued at 512 PM EDT MON AUG 10 2026 All is fairly quiet, but warm and humid across eastern Kentucky late this afternoon. Air temperatures range from the mid 80s to around 90F while dew points in the lower to mid 70s make it feel more like the 90s to around 100F. Thus far, the diurnal cumulus field has remained largely subdued, aside from a couple of rogue sprinkles and very isolated thunderstorms. The greater regional radar mosaic shows an MCS over northwest Virginia up into southeast Pennsylvania. It has laid out a pronounced outflow boundary extending from Charleston, WV to Columbus, OH. Most notably though, this is the first of multiple MCSs in the days ahead amidst a synoptic-scale WNW flow pattern where multiple perturbations passing aloft will interact with a sultry and unstable atmosphere south of a stalled boundary near the Great Lakes. In this setup, large run-to-run model disagreements have been noted among the CAMs, and none of the 12z HREF member solutions have managed to generate a semi-accurate solution even for the first 8 hours of the period. The disparities and resulting sensible weather forecast have been vast -- the 12Z FV3 (and to a lesser degree the HRRR) were too far to the northeast with the initial MCS and would have the outflow still over West Virginia late tonight, while the NAMNest overconvected and would have the outflow blasting all the way to Paducah, Kentucky by that same time. Meanwhile, the RRFS and REF members have generally been somewhat closer to reality thus far, though still too far northeast by perhaps 100 miles with the initial MCS and likely to aggressive with the overall convection. All of the REFs members do largely agree, however, on the aforementioned outflow becoming a point of initiation for renewed convective development heading into this evening. The members then show this convective activity backing southwest into a high-instability, high- moisture air mass over the Commonwealth this evening and overnight. The latest RAP mesoanalysis shows this high-instability air mass across our region with 3500 J/kg of SBCAPE in the east up to ~5000 J/kg of SBCAPE near Lake Cumberland. So while steering flow will remain WNW, the unstable WSW low-level flow should tend to support convective complexes wanting to build back into the area of high instability over eastern Kentucky (as much of the instability will remain after sunset). The backing nature of the storms against the deep-layer westerly flow will tend to support storms repeatedly building into nearly the same locations as the outflow tries to work southwestward. This should limit overall potential for straight-line wind gusts with this potential system. However, given high PWATs already between 1.5 and 2.0 inches and the potential for localized PWATs pooling to higher amounts with strong IVT on a westerly 20 to 30 kt 850 hPa jet, torrential downpours are likely to occur in stronger cells. If this convection persists for too long across a given area, flash flooding is possible even in areas that are relatively dry going into this event. Thus a Flood Watch has been hoisted for those counties across eastern Kentucky where there is the greatest confidence in heavy rainfall tonight. Additional westward expansions appear increasingly probable in future updates. The Flood Watch is currently in effect through Wednesday morning, as some data supported a bit of a pause in the activity, and by that time the mesoscale environment and favored track for MCSs becomes quite uncertain. However, if the longer-range guidance proves close to accurate, the Flood Watch will likely need to be extended in time and/or reissued. Tonight`s convection will heavily dictate the mesoscale environment, ensuing MCS evolution, and the areas most heavily impacted on Tuesday and Tuesday night. If there is enough of a break in the clouds and precipitation on Tuesday, the risk of severe convection will be elevated, especially across the northern half of the CWA where SPC`s Slight Risk is coincident with a hatched area for significant severe wind gusts. There is also a non-zero risk of a brief spin-up tornado should stronger convective scenarios unfold. That conditional severe threat, while quite notable, coincides with a Moderate Risk ERO across northeast Kentucky. At present, only a small portion of our CWA is in the Moderate Risk (Fleming and Rowan counties), but further expansions cannot be ruled out. Within the Flood Watch area, the 25th to 75th percentile of the REFs would support a widespread ~0.5 to ~3.5 inches of rain. Ensemble max values of 4.0 to 5.5 inches through 12Z Wednesday represent possible worst-case scenarios. Those with interests in flood-prone areas are encouraged to monitor later forecasts. .LONG TERM...(Wednesday through Monday) Issued at 459 PM EDT MON AUG 10 2026 Active weather will continue in the long term period, with multiple bouts of thunderstorms probable. However, confidence in details is still very elusive. We will start the period still under west northwest flow in the mid- upper levels, near the southern edge of faster flow, and with subtropical ridging just to our south southwest. A very warm and humid surface air mass will remain in place and give considerable instability. This completes the setup for MCSs to develop where there`s enough focus from initiating features. The forecasting problems are that these features are relatively weak in the big scheme of things, and also that future convection relies in part on the evolution of difficult to forecast prior convection. Have used a broadbrushed forecast for POP through Friday based on blended models. The GFS and ECMWF both show potential for a weak cold front to slip south southwest through the JKL forecast area by the weekend as a weak low rotates through a northeast CONUS trough and enhances the upper level flow over the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley. Should this come to pass, there could be a break in the precip potential at the start of the weekend. Any relief from the muggy air mass would probably be minimal, as the upper troughing quickly departs and ridging builds into our area from the southwest during the weekend and supports hot and humid weather. Models then show another impulse moving through the faster flow to our north and northeast, which suppresses the ridging back to the southwest early in the new week. This would allow another weak cold front to push in from the north with an increase in the POP in the neighborhood of Monday. && .AVIATION...(For the 00Z TAFS through 00Z Tuesday evening) ISSUED AT 735 PM EDT MON AUG 10 2026 VFR conditions prevailed at TAF issuance, and aside from some localized valley fog overnight, should last through the night. There is a potential for an area of showers and thunderstorms to advance through the region from north to south or northeast to southwest on Tuesday morning and early afternoon. However, forecast models have been performing very poorly with regard to convective precip recently. Forecast confidence is low and only a PROB30 group was carried in TAFs. && .JKL WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES... Flood Watch through Wednesday morning for KYZ044-052-104-106-107- 109-110-119-120. && $$ UPDATE...GREIF SHORT TERM...GEERTSON LONG TERM...HAL AVIATION...HAL