Holston_River_Rambler

Hope everyone is doing well in these dry conditions.

I'm about to head out for the annual camping trip to the southwest and was reading the ABQ forecast discussion. It was informative (mostly  in the short term), but also kind of funny (mostly in the long term), so I thought I'd share

.SHORT TERM...
(Today through Sunday)
Issued at 107 AM MDT Sat May 9 2026

Day 1 Saturday: It is May so that means virga "bomb" season in
New Mexico. Virga being rain that evaporates from a thunderstorm
before reaching the ground. The rain cooled air still does reach
the ground causing a dry microburst hence the "bomb" term. Today
looks to be a decent set up for that to occur over the northern
mountains into the northeast Highlands. Isolated activity should
develop over the central RGV and then back over the Gila Forest as
well. Instability (CAPE) looks rather limited with weak
"moisture" over the state within increasing NW flow aloft. Storms
will be moving pretty quickly as well so any convection could
produce a quick microburst with winds most likely not reaching
severe levels due to lack of CAPE and downdraft CAPE (DCAPE).

Impacts from the gusty winds will be pretty minor and limited to
the typical blowing dust and displaced trampoline or bouncy house.

Day 2 Sunday: The downburst potential increases more on Sunday
with a much more supportive upper level pattern. A fast moving
short wave trough passes through northern NM on Sunday increasing
the NW flow aloft and cooling aloft. Lapse rates steepen quite a
bit more by early afternoon and supportive of CAPE around 400-800
J/kg and DCAPE around 600 J/kg. Deep layer shear increases to
30-40 kts especially from the Highlands south towards SE NM and in
phase with the instability. HREF hints at a least small chance
(<10%) of CAPE reaching 1000 J/kg in a few spots in E NM. Should
the models be under forecasting CAPE then maybe there is support
for a marginal severe weather risk for damaging winds. More than
likely storms produce wind gusts closer to 50 mph than 60 mph. The
main impacts from these kinds of winds will again be blowing dust
but could damage weak structures and toss trampolines.

Hi-res CAMs and synoptic models all have a pretty clear signal for
convection developing in the Las Vegas (not Nevada) area of the
Highlands in the early afternoon and then work off to the SE.
Isolated activity then develops down the mountain chains towards
the Sacramento Mountains. It looks like storms will be in the
vicinity of Ruidoso but likely moving too fast and with not a lot
of rain to cause any issues on the burn scars.

The wildcard in all of this is the back door surface cold front
that surges down the eastern Plains bring a surge of moisture to
the region. Models need to have a good handle on it`s evolution
and magnitude of moisture. The boundary layer moisture will be key
to the whole convective scenario and where the forecast goes
sideways for the intensity of storms. Will dewpoints in the 40s be
the key to this all? Lastly we will throw in the mention of east
canyon winds for the ABQ metro area late Sunday due to the back
door front but just not a lot of confidence on the intensity of
winds with it.

39

&&

.LONG TERM...
(Sunday night through Friday)
Issued at 107 AM MDT Sat May 9 2026

Day 3 Monday: The upper level ridge strikes back. Star Wars
reference intended. Yes that synoptic feature that reared its ugly
head back at the end of March comes back to life like Darth Maul.
Synoptic ensemble model suites are all in pretty good agreement
with an anomalously high (+12 DAM) 500 mb ridge building over
AZ/NM on Monday. As such temperatures rebound quite a bit in E NM
with temperatures back into the mid/upper 80s after 70s on Sunday.

Day 4-7: Tuesday the ridge builds over NM with 590 DAM heights at
500mb or again about +12 DAM above normal. It will be quite
possible that kind of 500mb height would be close to a record on
the 18Z ABQ sounding. And that would make sense given this height
would be right around the 99th percentile of climo. Heat risk
builds into the moderate category for much of NM as high temps
reach the 90s which will be only about 2 weeks ahead of schedule
instead of 2 months (at least for ABQ metro). Roswell will
probably be in reach of 100F.

Wednesday through the end of the week the upper level ridge moves
over Texas and southwest flow aloft develops over NM. A weak
shortwave passes by on Thursday which could bring some elevated
convection to the area. Again not much moisture with this system
so virga will be the most likely outcome from any convection.
After that ensemble model suites become quite divergent in their
solutions. Cluster analysis shows exactly that...a cluster. GFS,
ECMWF and Canadian ensembles all favor different outcomes from
each other. All this means is that there is very low confidence in
the forecast day 7 and beyond.

39/Discussion courtesy the WCM working night ops. Take it for what
it is worth.

1 hour ago, John1122 said:

The back edge of this that's over Shocker and Knoxtron looks extremely heavy on Radar.

1 hour ago, housemtnTN said:

Would anyone with halfway decent radar care to post some current images pls?

I'm under that band in RoCo right now

12z HRRR just had a conniption over the Smokies

Pretty enthused that this afternoons potential precip shield is looking is looking less potential and more actual this AM:

There was even a severe t-storm warning associated with it earlier.  Now we see if the cold air can make it. 

Just woke up to see some of the hi-res were showing and I will take. 

Looks like the Nam is showing a 300mb jet acceleration that enhances lift behind the front:

Precip. pops over central Alabama and Mississippi and ride up into eastern TN. 

I think there's probably more dynamically going on that that too, but I'm just excited to see what happens. 

Maybe we can get some tasty lapse rates with that March sun as the cold pools rolls through tomorrow PM? 

We'll see if we can get some good rates, but it has been pretty warm so I'd hedge against road problems in areas with lots of traffic especially. 

Also, just now logging back in, so I wanted to add sorry for your loss Daniel 

Kind of surprised the precip shield isn't further west with this satellite:

Wondering if my 60 day trough would swing back by this month.

November 11, 2025:

January 11, 2026

March 16, 2026 (ok, so a little over 60 days):

Hope everyone is doing well. Finally getting caught up on no weather things after Jan and early Feb. Thought I'd start and spring/ summer general obs. thread with some recent pictures as I await the line of storms this PM.

Drought seems to be slowing easing, at least in some areas. 

Piney Falls in Rhea County, TN on Feb 20.

Diurnal and differential heating aided thunderstorm tops building over the Smokies on *.....checks calendar....* March 6:

Waterfall at Sand Cave in Cumberland Gap on March 10:

Heading to Boone tomorrow, so I guess we'll see if I can get some Watauga headwaters snow pics. 

Winds are cranking up here on the plateau. Cold air rushing in. 

Interesting features to the lee of Black Mt. KY and High Knob, VA earlier this AM:

I should also at least own up to the fact that the strat kind of flopped:

It tried and failed.

Also, I don't really understand how all the east Asia correlation stuff works, but shouldn't this be a good look for us by around March 10- 15? 

If only we could get this with some cold:

But at least they are running the Barkely ultra marathon at Frozen Head in it! 
 

@John1122

Pretty wild weather swings from Kingsport to Morgan county:

This:

and this (Eastman bubble):

To this, and 55 degrees:

Looks like it has finally made it to the valley floor. Going to try and bring it back to Morgan county lol 

Something I have truly missed about living in Kingsport, and I'm not being sarcastic, is being able to see it absolutely ripping snow up on Bays Mt, with Rain/ snow mix just around 1000' feet lower. 

Don't know if this one will work or not, but I can actually see the snow above my head, but most of it is melting before it hits my elevation ~1300 feet

Probably looks like static to most in this lo res gif,  but if you have good eyes you may be able to see. A few flakes bade it down, but a wall of snow about 500' up 

Starting to snow pretty good in west Kingsport now 

Currently in the box area, looking NNW:

Already got some flurries in Kingsport. 

When I wake up at 2am tomorrow morning to ponder how I can concoct baseless myths and empirically vapid one liners to post on American Weather, as is my custom, I'll be sure to provide more data for future posts. 

If I had known someone was going to come in here and accuse me of being part of some myth promulgation, I would have been more specific and offered an empirically sound and data driven assessment of the entire TN Valley watershed's 2m temperatures. A mausoleum must be more lively than in the other sub forums right now.

1 hour ago, GBOVolz said:

What was first of Jan like? It’s been cold for so long, i can’t remember what warm feel like. lol


.

I think we warmed up for a while from around just after Christmas through mid January. Torch weenies kept predicting a big torch, but it was just average or a little abv. average. 

Looking at the tropical West Pacific this am and noticed we just have a tropical storm hitting the Philippines in February with a less organized twin storm over western Australia's coast. This sort of set up seems to associated with westerly wind bursts and just a quick search shows that it tends to happen in years with El Ninos that develop in the late summer and fall (2015/ 2023).
 

Last few days of satellite:

Looks like we art going to do early Jan all over again, at least wrt tropical forcing:

GEFS still likes a decent strat. disruption around Valentines Day:

A true sudden stratosperic warming event (SSWE) has to have a wind reversal (blue lines drop below 0):

EPS (above) isn't as enthused as it has been recently, even though the Euro OP still shows some significant warming:

Any potential impacts, if we get a SSWE at some point this month, would likely be at least a couple of weeks minimum, after the event. 

WBIR is reporting sidewalks covered with snow in sunbright. Just supercooled rain and occasional sleet here 20 minutes south. 

As far as I can tell, it looks like everyone has gotten above freezing, so at least no ice to deal with this evening. 

Even got a few lightning strikes on the front end: