Holston_River_Rambler

I just about cropped it without the date, but thought better of that, lol. It's from Tomer Burg's twitter, I just have it saved to my gifs, for those....special.... moments, when I need a pick-me-up. To be more serious about the question (cause I kinda feel bad now). After the last couple of years, (and the couple of marginal systems so far this year), I'll take the cold first, and roll the dice with the energy's track. We almost had a bona fide 1 - 3 or 2 - 4" clipper system on one run of the GFS last night. That would be nice, to have a clipper track across I-40, with no concern for precip type. I really feel like Huntsville, AL needs to not be worrying about precip type, for those of us outside of 2500 feet plus or extreme NE TN and SW VA, to also not worry about there being a problem. The 6z GFS was also close to something a little more spectacular around Christmas: (Compare that to what I posted above). On the surface it looks similar, but it is A LOT messier and uglier than the beautiful phase in 1993. Now that I have been looking at these H5 energy maps for a while, there almost something beautiful or atmospherically perfect about that energy phase in 1993. (many of you will respond, "well no duh," lol) But the gif in this post, if there was a messy phase of those 2 pieces of energy and it stayed south of us as it went negative, it would likely get the job done. If you look in the gifs posted by Griteater of the Euro Control (link in BNA's post above) there are some nice opportunities for energy to get south of us again, with the northern stream. suppling the cold.

This is what we really want, always and forever:

It's been so long, I don't remember any more.

Is Sandy Claws a comin' to town? Is he bringin' his old Polar magic with him? 0z Dec. 25th:

Just found a cool app that lets me take star pictures with my phone. Hopefully I will get better using it in time. Orion over MoCo:

And just like that, as soon as the set has set for an hour, cleared overhead with the a little bit of the Milky Way visible.

I think this may have been the convo. John was talking about earlier, for those who didn't see it: From Griteater: "Going forward, both Anthony Masiello (HM) and Isotherm are honking for January (these are 2 of the best out there for long range discussion): Anthony - https://twitter.com/antmasiello/status/1338312081926447117?s=20 Isotherm - https://www.americanwx.com/bb/topic/54035-my-winter-outlook-2020-21/?do=findComment&comment=5732631 Anthony is expecting an MJO orbit through phases 7-8-1-2 late Dec thru January - https://twitter.com/antmasiello/status/1337383148112449538?s=20 Here is what MJO Phase 8 looks like in early January on average - suppressed tropical convection in the Maritime Continent (orange/red/white colors), ridge over Alaska / Western Canada / Greenland, trough east of the Rockies:

I would have liked to have seen where the OP went after 240: N. stream swinging a trough through, followed by a Yukon HP, almost dropping down in sync with the s/w left behind in the SW. Looks like a cross polar flow too. And the N. Stream wave could act as a 50/50

Member 47 was fun for y'all up that way too!

Same over here on Frozen Head. Tried to get a pic but the clouds only cleared out for a little while. Hopefully I can get one tomorrow.

What do y'all think of the NAM's depiction of ice in Sequatchie county? : Looks like it wants to bank some low level cold air up against both sides of the Sequatchie Valley. I'm not really interested in chasing ice, for ice's sake, seems waaay too dangerous. But from a TN Valley microclimate standpoint, I'm curious. The Icemeisters over in the Carolinas seem to put a lot of stock in the NAM's thermal profiles, but I'm not sure if the same thing would work out over here?

Here's hoping!

RAP weenie run for the plateau:

Now the next great question for today. Do we see the sun before nightfall? I'm pessimistic about my chances:

Starting to get some wet snow mixing in here. I can look up to a nearby mountain and see the snow line at around 1800 feet.

My temp has dropped 5 degrees in the lats hour. 42 -- 37. Maybe I can get a flake or two, lol.

With that last gasp batch of precip over middle TN though it looks like the snow level is only about 500 feet. looks like @Kentucky was right in the middle of the early changeover that bearman mentioned. Hopefully he got some accumulations out of it.

Finally figured out how to get the height of the snow line on my radar app. Looks like over the eastern TN valley it is around 2k feet and dropping steadily

Latest HRRR hammers Clay and Knox counties, KY. 13.3 jackpot spot. I have absolutely no confidence in that sort of an amount, but that model starts to change that area over as early as 1 - 2 AM NAMs backed off sig. from their 6z runs throughout today, but the RAP seems to be coming back a bit.

Sun setting here and temp finally starting to drop, just as clouds are rolling in, (as Dan said in the other thread). Some mid 40s on Wunderground's map near Somerset, KY

Another Frozen Head trip. Definitely chilly above 3000'. Some cold air advection clouds too.

Stole the idea to look for this off Jeff Piotrowski on twitter, but this a stout disturbance and lapse rates (maybe??) are helping create some convective snow in western OK. I think the disturbance if forecast to become less wound up as it moves across our area, but I wonder if any one can get some thunder 24 hours from now?

Now the NAM, RGEM, and the RAP (show here for full snow weenie effect) have come around to some version of what it has been showing. Scratch that the 06z new HRRR looks pretty for y'all out in parts of Middle and west TN It drops the High Knob Hammer with 8 inches at LPN. All other models cut that in half. RGEM even gets into the coveted purple area in its snow precip. depiction just west of Nashville, for small window. Rooting for y'all in Nashville and SWVA and hoping i can get a surprise change over too.

Speaking of Cross Mt. @John1122, you can really see some downsloping on satellite this afternoon. I've been getting a little bit of upslope enhanced precip here in MoCo.

So we’re at the point that we have to fake punts to get 1st downs on Vandy?