Heavy Snow — Rowan, Kentucky

2024-01-18 to 2024-01-20 · Rowan, Kentucky

Event narrative

The reports of snowfall started coming in for Rowan County on the morning of the 19th. At 7am, a cooperative observer located 2 miles SSE of Farmers reported 4 inches. By 7:30am, a member of the public in Morehead reported 4.5 inches on social media. Then by 10am, the total was up to 6 inches in Morehead. At 12:30pm, 5 inches was reported by the emergency manager 2 miles NNE of the Lakeview Heights area. Shortly after, the community of Hilda also reported 6.0 inches.

Wider weather episode

A strong push of cold NW flow continued across the Commonwealth on the heels of the last big snowfall and frigid temperature event several days before. A large trough and shortwave were in place aloft across the region, and a cold front/low pressure system was approaching the state from the west on the 18th (Thursday). That cold front passed fairly quickly across the state Thursday night and into, having exited east by 12Z on Friday morning (19th), but left lingering NW upslope flow. Light snow and a wintry mix were expected across the region in response to this cold forcing. Initially winter weather advisories were put out for all of eastern Kentucky from 7pm Thursday the 18th until 7am Saturday the 20th. Soon after Harlan, Letcher, and Pike Counties were upgraded to Winter Storm Warnings for the same time frame. The higher elevations of these 3 counties were in line with the upslope flow and therefore were expecting more in the way of straight snow. The ironic part was that where highest totals were expected, actually underperformed. None of the counties in the warning met criteria. Meanwhile, despite only having winter weather advisories across much of JKL's area, there were a handful of counties that over-performed and reached warning criteria on January 19.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1157587. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.