It’s early on a Friday morning…ok at least by your friendly neighborhood weatherguy’s standards.  There’s some fog in the creek valley, but the sky overhead is clear.  We’re looking at a good Friday.  The sun will help make it fell milder than the upper 5o’s the thermometer will say.  As we get to the latter part of November and beyond, cherish and enjoy the sunny days.

Saturday is still looking like the better of the two weekend days.  Sunshine will be giving way to some afternoon clouds as a system (a winter preview perhaps?) swings out of the Gulf and heads northeast.  If this is a winter preview and we see things coming up out of the Gulf through this winter season, perhaps we’ll finally get ‘the big one’ that many folks seem to want (although careful what you wish for…) and more on that in a sec.

The low will be on a track south of us, so the more south and east you are (say London or Hazard) the better your rain chances Sunday compared to Lexington.  Regardless we should see more clouds and a few degrees cooler on Sunday.  Also, most  of your Thanksgiving week is looking better for travelling.  There will be rain (and snow) from a northern system, but it’s not looking like a big deal at this point.  Fairly chilly air will follow it though for the holiday, so it will start feeling more like the season.

Which brings us back to the hint given above.  There’s not going to be any cool air around for this weekend’s storm to play around with, so obviously it’s all rain.  But, if you saw our world famous webcast yesterday (also available at www.facebook.com/billsweather  if you’re a member of facebook) was showing you the ‘model fantasyland’ for the first week of December when there looks to be A LOT of cold air running around.  Simply remember back to the pattern we’ve been in since July, 2 to 3 weeks of cold (with some Arctic discharges) followed by 1 to 2 weeks of relative warmth.  Well our warm clock is about out and we’ve talked here and on Kruser’s show on VLK about winter coming fast and hard.  We start bringing lows out of the Gulf with cold air in place and life can get awfully interesting…and for the love of Pete please be snow and not ice when the time comes!  So this weekend’s low is a practice run, running the patterns but no tackling yet.

Last night I was helping out the folks at the Perryville Battlefield Park reconstruct the weather around the time of that crucial Civil War battle.  What was incredible was how quickly and dramatically the weather turned then.  They were coming through a summer drought that lasted into September…certainly not something unusual for around here.  It rained from late September into October as the pattern was flipping (sound familiar?) and it snowed (and it snowed A LOT) in late October.  In fact it would be record breaking snow, execept this was before our reliable climatic record begins.  There were 3″ of snow on the ground around Oct. 24th.  This beats the Lexington’s records which go back to 1888 easily.  Louisville has had a few more early snows than Lex, but that 3″ would also beat their records which go back to the 1870’s.

Of course you’re sitting there reading and thinking, “why yes this absolutely proves global warming since we don’t get October snow like that now…” .  There is not one single person that will deny we’ve warmed since the late 1800’s.  The 1860’s were at the end of the climatic period known as the Little Ice Age, so it WAS colder.  The October snow may have been a fairly common occurrence then.  What we strongly disagree with is the mechanism of change.  Natural climate cycles were going on well before people were around or could have even dreamed of having any effect.  When you begin your records when the temperature is near it’s coldest point over the last several hundred years, you know what you are going to see a warm up because it HAS to.  When you’re at the bottom of a cycle which way do you go?

Our last warm cycle peaked 10 years ago and we’ve been steady and cooling since.  Here’s an article from Der Spiegel…a German publication.  The sun is at historic lows, and there’s no reason to think that won’t continue as happened in the Maunder Minimum and others…cycles… btw when you read that article look at who is attending the meeting in Copenhagen, politicians, bureaucrats, environmental activists, business leaders and oh yeah scientists.  However I don’t think such notable climate and meteorological scientists such as Joe D’Aleo, Bill Gray or Richard Lindzen, or Lord Christopher Monckton have been invited.  Check out icecap to learn what these gentlemen, and others, have to say about our climate.

So with that, we’ll finish this up on a Friday morning.  Enjoy the day and your weeknd…and Go Cats…Bill wants to go to a warm bowl this year!