at 8:08 AM by Pierce Larkin

The Weather Week In Review: 7/19-7/25

Here at WxOrNotBG, we have begun to implement a new post every Sunday evening previewing the week ahead. In light of that, I am going to begin posting a review of the previous week each Saturday night, highlighting the major events that occurred, etc. So, with that being said, here is your *cue awesome music* WxOrNotBG Week in review for July 19th through the 25th.

To put it rather lightly, this past week has been summer in KY in a nutshell. Actually, you could really say that its been Kentucky weather in a nutshell. We have had cooler weather, storms, rain, heavy rain, really hot weather, etc, etc.

h/t replygif.net
h/t replygif.net

However, this week was a good one for weather across the state. No crazy disasters, none of that. So that is a major plus!

h/t giphy.com
h/t giphy.com

Sunday and Monday were fairly hot across the local region, and state as a whole. Sunday being the hotter of the two, temperatures extended into the mid and upper 90s across the state, with generally unbearable dewpoints. This had all of us like…

h/t giphy.com
h/t giphy.com

I would like to say, however, if you are complaining about the heat, we can just give you this back:

IMG_1020

IMG_1240

h/t NWS Jackson
h/t NWS Jackson

Thats what I thought.

As we all headed into the week drenched in the weekend’s sweat, we all looked to Wednesday through Friday for hope of a better tomorrow. However, simple math would put us at least two days from substantial relief (or so we thought).

h/t giphy.com
h/t giphy.com

Monday was another hot and muggy one. I was up for the majority of it, and the morning started off cloudy for most of us. A cold front was slowly approaching the region, and we were impacted by the decaying thunderstorm complexes and their clouds that morning.

The atmosphere would quickly become unstable into the afternoon, leading to thunderstorms forming and running over many areas of the state that are already waaaaaaay above average in the rainfall category.

h/t UCAR Archive
h/t UCAR Archive

This only added insult to injury, as many areas have had >10″ of rain in just the past month alone across the state! This includes almost all of eastern Kentucky, and much of south central and western Kentucky.

h/t NWS
h/t NWS

This is what has led to much of the flooding problems across the state recently. The region ended up under a slight risk for severe storms going into Monday evening, as the front approached an unstable environment. This lit up the radar, and created an incredible light show across many parts of the state.

 

Luckily, there wasn’t much in the way of flooding or severe weather with that round of weather. With that passing on through, the weather got just straight up incredible Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday (Thursday afternoon at least). A nice Canadian high pressure settled across the region (didn’t think you’d hear that phrase until winter, did ya?), leading to much cooler air and lower dewpoints settling across the region. We were to the east of a pretty strong high pressure system, and that left us in the nicer part of the country.  

We enjoyed temperatures and dewpoints being substantially lower than recent history has given us Tuesday and Wednesday across the state, and this was so nice. However, heading into Wednesday night and Thursday, a shortwave passed along the periphery of the ridge and created areas of very heavy rainfall, especially over southern and western parts of the state.

h/t NWS Paducah
h/t NWS Paducah

The rest of the week overall fairly pleasant across the state. Highs were about what you’d expect during July, but overall, nothing crazy happened in the past week.

What is crazy to look at is how crazy wet this month and year have been. Leading into July 26th, here are some of the stats from across the state:

  • Louisville i’ntl airport: 8.51″ of rain (July), 5.12″ above normal. 12.40″ above normal for the year.
  • Lexington: 8.7″ of rain (July), 4.92″ above normal. 12.58″ above normal for the year.
  • Jackson: 8.82″ of rain (July), 5.07″ above normal. 11.75″ above normal for the year.
  • London: 10.96″ of rain (July(!!!!)), 7.66″ above normal.
  • Paducah: 9.93″ of rain (July), 6.27″ above normal.

One of the most interesting, and absurd, things I found about this data is that London has actually received 31% of its rainfall this year during July. Think about that. They have actually had close to the least amount of rain on the year of that whole group, but they are incredibly waterlogged for this month. Any way you look at it, whether it is northern, southern, eastern or western KY, this state has seen an enormous amount of rainfall for this month.

Countrywide, this past week saw very typical July weather conditions. The previous week was a bit more active than this past one was, but overall, its been fairly quiet/boring nationwide. As Jacob Wilkins wrote about on Friday, there were some pretty sweet tornadoes over a fairly remote location in South Dakota on Thursday evening.

 

That does it for this weeks “Weather Week In Review”. Who knows what will happen next week…..!