John1122

A year ago today we were getting snowfall. It actually was Knoxville's largest event of cold season per WVLT.

I use three analog rain gauges instead of a weather station. The weather station one I had was never very accurate in heavy rain situations years ago, it would record way way too much rain. So I just stayed with standard tube gauges. I have them standing, bottom mounted on a flat 2x6s about 12 inches off the ground well away from any trees or anything else in 3 separate areas about 200 feet apart, I base rainfall on the average of the three, though they normally almost exactly the same measurement. A Stratus is the best one of the analog gauges you can get. I've got a couple of weather stations, an Ambient WS series and an Accu-rite I got for Christmas one year. Plus I have a mercury thermometer in a Stevenson screen. I keep the sensors and mercury thermometer around 5 feet off the ground and on the north side so they don't get any excessive sun. The wind speed and rain gauge was never accurate on the Accu-Rite but it worked well for temperature, I always used water on a cold night to make sure thermometers would actually align with ice formation and ice always formed as soon as it hit 32/0c and all the thermometers run in lockstep with each other when I place the sensors beside each other.. The Ambient is a better station overall, but it almost always records a little more rain than an old fashioned rain gauges do, it does better with wind than the Accu-rite as well. Unless new ones have gotten a lot better I'd never buy an accu-rite for anything beyond humidity/temperature/pressure. Ambient seems to work better in most departments other than the tie in temp/pressure/humidity. I have never felt like spending 600 dollar or more for a Davis. They are nice but I feel like I can get enough information using what I have. It's not been that long ago when I did everything with an analog set up.

Volcanic winter is a frigid winter, that can linger and causes temps to be 3 to 5c below normal, even into summer. It's caused by aerosolized sulfur in the atmosphere from eruptions. Not sure why he's using it in those tweets as I'm not sure what volcanic activity in the last year or two that was that large.

Ended up getting .72 more rain after my last obs, 2.97 total for the event.

Picked up .85 in the last two hours or so since I posted that.

1.4 inches of rain so far today.

I'm shocked at the amount of leaves in Johnson City. Mine are gone. It looks like late November back home.

You're in a better place for that to happen that most of us. Western areas may not see anything this year but I think you'll probably have the most chances for getting cold that sticks well enough to have wintry precip.

Lately November to Winter has broken opposite of normal, maybe this one will too. However I doubt it very much. I expect a few cold periods in an overall AN winter. We just need the cold to be in place when moisture arrives for a change. It's been crazily hard for that to happen in the Tennessee Valley as a whole lately. The deep south has been more snowy/frozen precip friendly than our forum region the past couple of years.

All it takes is getting timing right for one or two events to make it a decent winter. Those have just been hard to come by except for small slivers of the forum area for a few years now.

Temps fell off a cliff this evening. Down to 35 at 8pm.

Made it down to 27 this morning. Leaf season is done above 1500 feet. A few oaks have some color below that. Early end this year.

1.31 inches of rain after midnight last night. 4.72 for the event and just over 7.2 inches for October. Sunny now in between the next set of rain moving through tonignt.

Not checked the rain gauge yet this morning but it's been hammering down for a few hours and continues to do so now.

Picked up .73 between 5pm and midnight. 3.41 total for the day. Moderate rain coming down still.

I had 2.68 inches through around 5pm. It's been raining steadily except for about a 20 minute break since then. Forecast calls for 1-2, overnight with another .5 to .75 tomorrow. It's got me at about 5 inches for October after actually being below normal for September.

Friend of mine who lives in Oklahoma has been without power for two days due to the ice storm there. They hardly had any wintry weather at all last year.

The tropical system will likely smash leaf season here right as it's at it's peak right now. Peak was very short and about a week later last year.

We had a chilly fog develop this afternoon from about 1700-2800 feet. Was just cloudy above and below that.

That's gonna make for a humid week I'm sure.

This day in 1989 we had snow and a high of 36 degrees. November was chilly and of course December was probably the coldest December ever around here. I was at or below freezing for the low every day that month with 24 of those days being in the 10s or lower. Winter spent all it's cold on fall.

Tennessee might go 2-8 if they stay on the SS Guarantano.

32 this morning here with thick frost.

The CFS is surprisingly cool for DJF right now, and it shows a warm to cold situation with temp anomalies being near to slightly above normal for January and below normal for February after a moderately warm December. This would be a much better Jan/February set up than we've had in years.

Looking at those maps, they may still be an improvement over last winter for us all and the one before that for everyone but the Tri-Cities and far eastern areas.