BlunderStorm

John did I believe.

I only recorded a low of 16 this morning. Was there an inversion? I can believe the airport and Abingdon could have reached their low's respectively but I am very doubtful of the other two low temps. As for the earthquake, I have nothing to report except catching Z's. I wish I had felt it.

So temperature wise where do we stand across the forum and how do you all think we will stand by the end of the month?

The map really nails the Clinch, Powell, and South Holston snow holes. It is right on the dot with my 3" total.

Snow depth wise I peaked this morning at 2.8". Snow Accumulation wise yesterday afternoon I peaked at 2.4" before drizzle melted it for a little over an hour to 2.2". So a little over half an inch fell around midnight. If I add up the 0.2" lost to melting and the additional snow I get 3". Mission achieved haha!

The latest FV3, and CMC still support some mountain snows next weekend. This may be worth a glance or two at this point. EDIT: I moved this here because I selected the wrong topic a little while ago.

Currently in what would appear to be Diego's last hurrah here. It's falling heavily. I'm rooting for this to go on for as long as possible.

Snow showers are picking up and coming in from the NE.

Well I would like to know the conditions that resulted in the downslope occurring. In most storms this is not an issue. In order to do that I would have analyze the storm and look for, understand, and come up with conclusions with the data. Here is the incomplete possibly flawed understanding I have of what occurred. Winds at the surface were coming from the northeast while winds further up would have been coming from the south. Beartown Mountain (part of Clinch Mountain) at a height of 4688ft presents a barrier for the lower levels of the storm almost reaching the 850mb level. From my understand the mountain took the immense amount of moisture from the storm and channeled it up it's slope causing orographic lift. This resulted in a lot of condensation that released a ton of latent heat into the air. Because the air was coming from the south at the 850 level the winds continued beyond the mountain spilling into the Clinch river valley just in time for the storm's arrival up here. This layer of warm air however critical to the amount of snow accumulation would be shallow due to the stubborn cold NE winds beneath it at the surface and only partially melt the snow crystals resulting in graupel. This I believe is a good theory as to how this occurred however numerous storms have taken a similar track and not resulted in this. This I believe in part was caused by the exact circumstances of this event which I have no idea of knowing and also in part by the warmer than modeled air the storm brought up the valley. It may not have been able to change the precipitation type here on it's own this far up but it certainly could have helped the downslope effect. Also of note early into the event I faced my 1st less influential enemy virga. I don't have any precise answer for that but my reasoning is the winds from the NE brought with it dryer air near the surface that would keep the relative humidity tempered down. In total it took almost 3 hours of moistening the atmospheric column between seeing snow on radar over me to see light precip reaching the ground from 9 to midnight. Anyway after many hours as the storm pivoted winds changed direction and the downslope effect weakened resulting in me making a full transition to snow in the late morning and early afternoon before switching back to a mix near the end of the event at the warmest time of the day when it was 33. Even with all this chaos and factors working against me I still got some snow though. Wow.

Yeah, it was really rough to watch. There is nothing more infuriating than looking out for a storm for 10 days only to be stuck in graupel for hours surrounded on all sides by heavy snow just a few miles away. With that said I at least I got some solace at the end. John, I know everyone has said it and including you yourself but to emphasize... It is just December 9th. We are still weeks away from peak climatology and weather patterns as far as I know are looking fairly favorable. We will get ours. For me I'm still weather hungry and already looking ahead. A bust won't put me down for long. The time without a 6 inch snow streak continues but it's days may be numbered.

Well looks like the temperatures to support snow are about shot. I've got a mix of light snow and drizzle at 33. Thankfully it's only down from here so maybe I see things shift back. Looks like I'm locked into the comma as it pivots as I was hoping and there seems to be a heavier wave of snow forming in Scott county. I would say accumulations have topped out at 2.4. though I'm not sure if that's it.

It's just a light snow but at least it's still falling. The temperature has finally inched above freezing and will probably continue to warm for another hour.

2.2 inches. I'm thinking 3 inches in total when all is said and done. I would say it it is still falling at a moderate clip and the temperature is just at freezing.

The comma head is getting close to spinning around here. It could be close. The least that can be said is the snow seems to be moving out slower and slower the further up the valley it goes especially on the western side.

It's 32 and heavy snow is coming down hard. No more mixing, YES!