Jeffersonville, Indiana 7 Day Weather Forecast

Wx Forecast - Wx Discussion - Wx Aviation

667
FXUS63 KLMK 162010
AFDLMK

Area Forecast Discussion
National Weather Service Louisville KY
310 PM EST Tue Dec 16 2025

.KEY MESSAGES...

* Continued warming pattern expected through the middle of the week
  with highs warming into the 40s and 50s.

* Strong cold front Thursday will produce widespread gusty showers
  and perhaps a few thunderstorms. Some isolated activity could be
  strong to severe with strong damaging winds as the main impact.

* Rapid temperature drop behind the front Thursday night into Friday
  morning with scattered snow showers Friday morning.

* Temperatures will trend warmer through the weekend and into next
  week.

&&

.SHORT TERM /THROUGH WEDNESDAY/...
Issued at 310 PM EST Tue Dec 16 2025

Low stratus continues to dominate the weather this afternoon. This
helped to keep temperatures cooler than expected, with upper 30s to
low 40s this afternoon, but still warmer than the past couple of
days. Visible satellite imagery shows the thin stratus layer
thinning/mixing out some upstream across western KY and northwest
TN. Could see some partial clearing later this evening, but high
clouds start to increase as a weak sfc low over the TX Panhandle
moves east and meets up with a weak shortwave mid-level trough
moving into the Great Lakes by tomorrow morning. Increased cloud
cover and continue southerly flow will keep us mild overnight with
lows staying above freezing for most overnight.

Shortwave trough axis will move across the Ohio Valley during the
day on Wednesday. While most will be dry, we could see an isolated
shower or sprinkle mainly along the KY/TN border during the day.
Winds will remain out of the south-southwest with gusts of 10-15mph
and temperatures warming into the mid/upper 40s to even low 50s
during the afternoon.

&&

.LONG TERM /WEDNESDAY NIGHT THROUGH TUESDAY/...
Issued at 310 PM EST Tue Dec 16 2025

Strong upper level trough, associated deepening sfc low along with a
strong trailing cold front will work out of the Upper Midwest and
Dakotas Thursday morning and into the Great Lakes/Ohio Valley late
Thursday into Friday. Sfc low strengthens as it moves over the Great
Lakes, as central pressure drops tightening the sfc pressure
gradient resulting in strong southerly flow with gusty winds of 30-
35 mph. This will continue to advect in warm, moist, Gulf air into
the region ahead of the approaching cold front. Moisture pooling
ahead of the boundary increase PWAT values between 1.00" to 1.20"
which is nearly 250% above normal for this time of year. Gusty winds
and widespread rain showers are expected for most of the day
Thursday.  With the increased sfc moisture ahead of the boundary,
dewpoints around could nose north of the Ohio River by Thursday
afternoon/evening. Forcing along the strong cold front along with  a
robust 60-70kt LLJ should be enough to form a thin line of
convection right along the boundary as it works from west to east
during the day Thursday. Surface based instability remains marginal
at best with maybe a couple hundreds Joules of SBCAPE ahead of the
front, but likely enough to give us a couple of thunderstorms. With
the very weak instability but strong LLJ, we get one of our typical
cold weather season high shear-low CAPE scenarios with this system.
Main threat with any storms will be the potential for isolated
damaging wind gusts. It will be a warm December day as highs will
mainly be in the mid/upper 50s with isolated locations near the
KY/TN border hitting 60. Precipitation amounts look to be around an
inch for most locations across central KY and southern IN with
locally higher amounts from any strong convection that may form.

Front is expected to quickly push eastward Thursday night and be
generally clear of the CWA after midnight. Cold air advection behind
the front will move in behind the departing boundary with
temperatures rapidly falling from near 50/upper 40s near midnight to
the mid/upper 20s and low 30s just before sunrise on Monday. As the
cold air filters in, it is possible that some of it catches up with
lingering, post frontal moisture/precipitation giving us some
lingering wintry mix or light snow, mainly over towards the
Bluegrass early Friday morning. The other concern with rapidly
falling temperatures is moisture associated with the evening
showers/storms quickly freezing as the colder air moves in. The one
thing that works against this is strong westerly winds behind the
front helping to dry surfaces before the subfreezing temperatures
arrive.

Friday will be mainly dry but much colder and blustery thanks to
brisk west-northwest winds. Other than the aforementioned light snow
flurries/showers east of I-75 and generally north of I-64 during the
morning Friday looks mainly dry and clouds are expected to clear
from the southwest to the northeast as the trough and sfc low work
east into the Mid-Atlantic and New England. Highs will be about 25
degrees colder than they were on Thursday and about 10-15 degrees
below normal for this time of year in the low/mid 30s Friday
afternoon.

The shot of colder weather is brief as the upper pattern becomes
more zonal over the region as we go into the weekend. Temperatures
rebound into the low/mid 50s on Saturday and slightly cooler with
40s to near 50 on Sunday. A weak shortwave trough and fast moving
clipper system will pass over the Great Lakes late Saturday into
Sunday. A weak, mostly dry cold front will push into the Ohio Valley
Saturday night into Sunday with an increase in rain showers over the
area. Current pops are between 20-30 percent.

Moving into next week, ridging is expected to build across the four
corners region with a continued northwest flow across the Great
Lakes into New England.  With high pressure moving off the Mid-
Atlantic, we`ll get back into a broad southwest flow/warm advective
type pattern ahead of a weak frontal system that looks to move
through late Mon/Tues.  Forcing here is weak, but cloudy skies and
some light rain showers are looking more likely in the Mon/Tue time
frame.  Highs Monday will range from the lower-mid 40s over southern
IN/northern KY with low-mid 50s over southern KY. Highs Tuesday look
to warm into the low 50s over southern IN/northern KY with mid-upper
50s over southern KY.


Extended Forecast from Previous Discussion...

Since our last extended forecast discussion prior to Thanksgiving,
we were quite bullish in a colder pattern setting up after
Thanksgiving and leading into December as we expected the MJO to
orbit out of phase 6 and into phase 7/8.  This did verify quite well
and the temp departures for December to date rack up there with
December of 1989 and December 2013.  We expected this colder pattern
to persist into the holidays based on the expected MJO forcing.
However, the overall hemispheric pattern broke down a bit in the
last few weeks which is going to lead to that cold forecast into the
Holidays to bust.  So what happened?  Well, first we had quite the
flare up in Indian Ocean convection last week. This was a result of
a westward moving Kelvin wave moving out of the Pacific.  This
feature essentially muted the MJO phase 7/8 forcing and the MJO RMM
plots went into the neutral zone.  Teleconnection patterns also
didn`t verify all that well as we had a +AO/+NAO on the Atlantic
side and a bouncy EPO/-PNA on the Pacific side.  This has allowed
the cold pattern to relax a bit and a milder pattern is expected
across much of the CONUS over the next week.

However, this break in the cold is likely not to last as 200mb
velocity plots show a decent Rossby/Kelvin wave pushing into the
Atlantic next week.  The global models are picking up on this
showing a stronger jet developing across the Atlantic with stronger
Blocking developing over eastern Europe.  Model progs show this
blocking retrograding westward with time setting up the potential
for the NAO to trend more negative as we head into late December.
Additionally, the AO, while positive now is expected to grow
increasingly negative as we round out the year and we`re also seeing
growing model consensus on stronger blocking developing into AK.
Should this be the case, the general pattern looks to reload and we
should see a colder pattern return toward the end of December and
into early January.

&&

.AVIATION /18Z TAFS THROUGH 00Z THURSDAY/...
Issued at 1248 PM EST Tue Dec 16 2025

Visible satellite imagery shows the thin layer of low stratus over
most of KY and parts of southern IN. This will be one of the biggest
challenges as guidance has done a horrible job reflecting this area
of low, MVFR stratus that we`ve had for most of the day. Satellite
does show areas up stream trying to break but the question will it
be enough. Given some of the upstream observations, it appears it
has been so went optimistic on mixing out this low stratus later
this afternoon into the evening.

The next potential impact will be LLWS associated with a pretty
stout 40-45kt LLJ that will work over the area later tonight. Went
ahead and added LLWS to all TAF sites tonight to reflect this. Other
than that we will remain seeing winds out of the south to SSE around
7-10kts with mid/high clouds and VFR flight categories.

&&

.LMK WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES...
KY...None.
IN...None.

&&

$$

SHORT TERM...BTN
LONG TERM...MJ/BTN
AVIATION...BTN