John1122

No apologies needed. Unfortunately the GFS has warmed up late the last several runs, which is a trend, and the SE ridge returning on both models is unfortunate. Feb 6th-10th we may get lucky, but if that warmth comes back after like it's being shown, we will probably be looking at late February to turn things around at the earliest, and even that's a crapshoot, since the Euro actually has the MJO climbing into Phase 4 by the 10th. By then we are in bowling ball season, where you hope you score with a ULL or some freak event like the blizzard if you don't live at elevation.

Even with that look on the Euro at D10, the air mass is already moderating. It's been verifying about -2 D6-10 this winter, which would mean it's probably going to be basically normal. At this point it appears the SE ridge is on the EPS and GEFS with a displaced -EPO that allows for a western trough.

It has nothing to do with living any dying with every model run. We are in a hyper warm base state and the pattern for the last 4 winters have mostly stayed there outside of a brief period in 2018 when we had the cold dry weather. No drivers for cold here appear to be trending favorably in the longer range especially with the MJO looking to stay in the 4 or 5 areas even if at low amplitude. The GEFS looks opposite of the OP with the EPO, but due to it's position it also allows the SE Ridge to pop. Unfortunately the GEFS has been verifying about 6 degrees too cold in the LR. Meaning it's almost always too cold which leads to it's extreme snow means that never seem to happen. It's also popped a -EPO about 40 times this winter and I think it's not verified yet on that. We all know that any model that shows a -NAO is a fairy tale too. But that massive +NAO on the GFS wouldn't be a surprise at all. These are the unfortunate realities of the GEFS D6-10 and 11-15 the last few months. Which means the long range cold that crops up there is mostly fools gold this winter. The Euro OP beats all models by far D6-10, including beating it's ensembles and it's still verifying 2 degrees or so to cold D6-10. So when the GFSENS are showing us at -1 in day 11-15, it's probably going to verify at +3-5 degrees. I shudder to think how warm we may be if the GFS is right, and it's better day 11-15 than it's Ens on temperature but still verifies too cold by a few degrees the last 90 days.

Unfortunately the trends aren't great and the season is slipping by fast. I'd say any sustained winter pattern isn't going to happen at this point, our best chance is getting one of those random quick hitters that will likely be melted off within 48 hours. The MJO, except on the GEFS, is staying in unfavorable locations now, never leaving the right side on most modeling. The GEFS has been heading right with it itself, it was low amp 8-1-2-3 recently, now it's middle of the C.O.D into 3. 3 is good for winter hear but it's on an island at this point. Other modeling seems to have it in the C.O.D of 4-5, which are not good for us. The GFS keeps throwing out big fantasy storms every other run, but so far it's verification rate on them this year is 0.00 percent. We probably have to score something between February 6th and 10th as we get a couple of cold days in that time frame. If we torch up again beyond that, we will have burned away most of low elevation winter. This is not what you want to see unless you want some February severe possibilities. -PNA/+EPO/+AO/+NAO with the MJO heading towards phase 4 even on the GFS suite by this time. This is a repeat of the pattern that torched us the first week or two of January. Hopefully it's wildly wrong, but it's handled warmth much better than cold this year.

Not surprisingly, the Euro was much warmer vs the 12z run at D9/10. Canada is cold but there's no penetration into the upper midwest that run so our cold source is 10+ degrees warmer than 12z today so we basically get down to near normal. The Euro shows a -10 BN over Nashville the morning of the 7th. But it shows a 2m temp of 24 there during that frame. I believe Nashville's normal low is 28 around this time frame. So the -10 may be a little bit overdone on the anomaly map. But even that is brief, afternoon temp hit the 40s. The western ridge is south of the PNA region and the heights are lower in Alaska which once again just means the air comes off the Pacific instead of across the pole. GEFS is awful. Western trough/SE ridge. GFS op will have spring flowers in bloom late in the run. I'm pretty sure if that takes place into mid February, winter is basically done but we will see if we can get lucky.

Trends have gotten worse for the event 48-60 hours from now. Another decent track but elevation snow system. SWVa might get an inch or two. Looking tough for the rest of us below 2500 feet. January is going to close out as one of the worst winter months in the entire history of the sub forum for those who like cold and snow. Who knew it could be that much worse than the putrid 2019.

Almost everything outside of the mid-week light snow shower chance is now based in hoping February's decent ensemble modeling trends aren't the 40th head fake of the winter season. The GEFS snow mean is nice but seemingly meaningless the past few winters, as it has virtually not verified in 48 months when it shows these snowy solutions. The Euro at D10 looks better than it did at day 10 yesterday, so there's that. Still looks like a robust frontal passage behind a cutter in a fast moving pattern, rather than something that will set up shop and allow for truly cold weather to arrive for any length of time. If we get lucky and the Polar Vortex splits but will it help us? It split last year and record breaking cold hit the Midwest but didn't propagate into our back yards. I've not looked but I'd guess there's been very few times when Chicago had highs in the -10 range that it didn't get cold here. Last year that happened and we stayed warm. It also takes a few weeks for the PV to change weather in the Lower 48 most of the time. That would put us on track for the backside of February into March at best, where even with the aid of the TPV we'd probably be looking at lower elevation cold rain and elevated snow unless we got a bowling ball. If we are still hoping to reel in something in the D9-16 range in a week or 10 days, winter is likely over until late March or April, where it will invariably turn frigid for 2 weeks with rain or snow showers.

That area is strangely susceptible to tornadoes. They had one on Halloween night. There's been one tornado in my county since 1935 and it was on the ground here for about 1 mile before crossing into Claiborne Co, but Claiborne gets a ton of tornadoes by comparison.

Yep. The tornado history site counted them as Tennessee F5. I believe 3 of the F4 also started outside of Tennessee on there so not sure if they were F4 in the state or not. The other 29 F4 formed in Tennessee.

I believe the tornado history site mistakenly counted this one and one from the April 1974 outbreak that crossed from Northern Alabama into Tennessee.

There have been 92 F3, 32 F4 and 3 F5 in Tennessee.

2.38 inches and pouring down out there right now with some heavy upstream returns coming. Some flooding issues cropping up in the area and creeks are very high.

Now at 1.28 after moderate/heavy rain for the past few hours.

.55 has fallen here so far. I can't imagine we manage a 3rd straight year of much much AN precip.

Yes, that's what happened here a week later. Power line snapping cement with 2 inch per hour rates for 8+ hours. They literally record 3 to 5 inches for 4 straight days at Tri on the official record. That's a big part of why the extremely low snowfall averages are off in our region. Extremely poor quality control. You can't have a remotely accurate 30 year average when you're missing the biggest events of the timeframe. After looking it adds up to 17.6 falling at Tri airport.

It's not right and the maps that accompany them are honestly laughable. As I mentioned, Tri airport goes from 0 snow depth to 13 inches depth on February 2nd-3rd 1996 but has M for snowfall so they don't include it. February 1998, no clue how they missed it. I don't remember it happening how its recorded at Tri, but amounts between 3.4-5.7 inches are recorded over a 4 day span, with something like 18.2 inches falling. But I guess they aren't counting it as one event? No idea honestly. I thought it was a dynamic cooling event that all fell in a shorter time. The Plateau had one a week later with 10-25 inches.

Heavy rain and frequent thunder here. Very windy earlier, but it's died down some in the storm.

After trying to figure how TYS recorded only 8 inches of snow for the February 1st-2nd 1996 event, I went and looked at the hourly data from Feb 1st and 2nd of that year. I recall the snow starting in Knoxville before it did here as it worked it's way South to North, and it had started here by 7-8 pm. Looking back at old news footage at the time, Knox was reporting snow by 8-9 pm as well. This was a cold event with temps in the upper teens to mid 20s in the area. Snow fell in Knox as the temp dropped quickly from 28 at the start to 19. This should have produced higher ratio snows, and that is reflected in observations that are harder to find than the normal big 3 reporting stations you'll find looking at MRX data, which are Tri/Chatt/Tys. On the hourly reports at Knox from Feb 1st freezing precip starts in the form of freezing rain/fog with 10.5 mile vis, and .02 inches of precip fall as freezing rain. The reports then indicated only fog in Knox, but .12 precip falls, then another period with .12 precip falls, this time the temp is in the 20s and the visibility has fallen to 1 mile at observation time. None of this is recorded as snow. Official data says snowfall 0.00, precip .26. I'm 99.9 percent sure that both periods of .12 were in the form of snow. From midnight to 1am on the 2nd, Knoxville records another .12 precip, once again it's labeled as fog. with a visibility of 1 mile. So .36 has fallen at this point, with 0.00 listed as anything but fog. The next observation says snow .13, followed by snow .15. The snow continues with the aforementioned temps falling into the 10s and finally an observed precip amount of .86 falling as snow. The official snowfall is claimed to be 8 inches from that .86, which I think is absolutely wrong based on QPF, temp profiles and observations all around the site. Knoxville had 1.37 fall as frozen but has missing data listed for snowfall and snow depth for the 1st. I figure the .86 with a lot of it falling at temps below 25 would be close to 10 inches on it's own. I'd guess Tys probably actually had 12+ inches of snow like every other station in it's immediate vicinity. But as Carvers mentioned, it's the year of inexplicably missing snowfall data at the big 3 reporting sites from that time frame.

Rogersville reported 17 inches from the storm. So the reports you heard were accurate about heavy snow there.

The data for February at Tri-Cities is still missing, but I found some other reports in scholarly articles and also I found a mention of snowfall at Tri-Cities and Knoxville on a youtube video of live coverage of the event from a Huntsville tv station. I also noticed that even though official records say M on snowfall and list the entire month of February 1996 with 2.9 inches if snowfall at Tri, the snow depth goes from 0 on 1-31-96 to 13 inches on 2-2-96. Then I looked at nearby sites and found the range of snowfall. So in the Tri/SW Va area the lowest I found was 13 inches. The highest was 16 inches. You could even pick out areas that saw 12+ inches of snow by temperature. It was 6-10 degrees colder in those areas than it was in areas that saw less snow.

I mentioned earlier that I was going to write a little about what I remember and some observations about the February 1996 monster winter storm and Arctic outbreak that capped off winter. The Blizzard of 96 gets more headlines, but this event was much more significant for most of our region. We all felt the frigid cold. Far western areas like Memphis to Dyersburg to NE Arkansas had the least precip, as there was a sharp cutoff between Memphis and Oxford. Batesville Northeast into the eastern 3/4ths of Tennessee, and Northern Alabama saw major league severe winter weather. Far southeast areas from Chattanooga east were warmed nosed and missed on the massive winter precip but still had moderate wintery precip and got extremely cold as well. The stage was set with fresh Arctic cold a few days before the storm. The storm formed on an Arctic front in South Texas. Areas far south such as Jackson and Monroe began seeing frozen precip on Thursday the first. It began spreading NE into the surface cold as Thursday progressed. 850 temps were around 50 while surface temps were in the 20s and low 30s across Northern Miss, North and NW Alabama and Southern Tennessee. Sleet and freezing rain fell over Memphis but extremely heavy freezing rain developed around Oxford and worked it's way into Middle Tennessee. Nashville saw sleet and ZR, as did Huntsville, Alabama. Temperatures that Thursday stayed in the 20s from just North of Chattanooga to the Tri Cities in East Tennessee. I was working in Jefferson County that day. I remember riding to work and the winter storm warnings started rolling in over the radio. By Thursday at around 5pm-7pm snow had over spread most of Middle and East Tennessee and Southern Kentucky except for far NE areas. Southern Middle was sleet and snow mixed. Mississippi was under a state of emergency with 1-2 inches of solid ice. Northern Alabama was getting there slowly with freezing rain that would soon mix with sleet. By 9pm Thursday heavy snow was falling from Nashville to Knoxville. This would continue over northern Miss. Northern Alabama, southern Middle and East Tennessee into SWVA for the next 12-18 hours. There was thundersnow and thunder sleet across the south. Temperatures fell rapidly with the slow and ice happening with surface temps in the upper 10s and low 20s. Fayetteville in Southern Middle had freezing rain to sleet to snow with a temp range of 26 falling to 19 during the event. At midnight Crossville had heavy snow and 19, Nashville snow and 20, Tri Cities heavy snow and 20, Knoxville heavy snow and 23. Chattanooga had been stuck at 33 with rain but they transitioned to ice then sleet and finally to snow. With 3 inches of snowfall on top of ice during the event. Extremely heavy snow developed in small area of Roane, Northern Knox, southern Anderson, Union and Jefferson County. This boosted their totals to all time type snowfall records. At the end of the precip Northern Mississippi saw 3 inches of solid ice/snow. Northern Alabama had similar totals with slightly less ice and a bit more snow. Southern Middle Tennessee had 1 inch of ice and 4-5 inches of snow. Nashville had 5 inches of snow on top of ice. Cookeville had 6 inches of snow on top of ice. The western Plateau areas saw 11-14 inches of snow. Southern Kentucky saw 7-10 inches. The Eastern Plateau areas such as Oneida, Lafollette and Cumberland Gap saw 14-17 inches of snow. The Northeastern Valley from Morristown NE into SWVA saw 13-17 inches of snow. The areas from Rockwood to Halls to Maynardville where the enhanced thundersnow went on picked up 18-22 inches of snow. For whatever reason, Tyson only recorded 8 inches from the event. Specific snowfall reports I witnessed or have found from various NWS sites. Nashville 5 inches. Cookeville 6 inches. Huntsville, Ala 3 inches - lots of ice. Batesville Miss 3.2 inches + ice. Chattanooga 3 inches + ice. Knoxville Tys 8 inches. Rockwood reported 8.5 inches on .82 precip, data missing for the next day with 1.09 precip falling. Likely 20 inches in Rockwood. Lenoir City 9 inches. LaFollette 17 inches (observed this myself) Norris 18 inches. (Observed this myself.) Maynardville 21 inches. (co-worker lived there.) Halls 19 inches. (Maynardville co-worker observed) Crossville 13 inches. Jamestown 13 inches. Fayetteville 4 inches - lots of ice. Tazewell, Tn 15 inches. Greenville, Tn 11 inches. Bristol, Tn 13 inches. Kingsport 14 inches. Abington, Va 16 inches. Middlesboro, Ky 10 inches. Corbin, Ky 9 inches. Knoxville Exp Station 2.08, all frozen, missing data. Likely 18+ inches of snow. So generally most of the area saw frozen, a good bit of it had double digit snowfall totals that rivaled the Bizzard of 1993. The cold that followed was record setting for February. The air mass produced Minnesota's all time record low of -60. Temperatures here were widespread below 0. The very few areas that stayed above zero in far southern areas had lows in 1-3 range. Most areas with snowpack were at least -10 with quite a few -20 or colder readings. It was -20 imby, -20 in Spara, -22 in Tazewell, -23 at the Greenville experimental station. It was -16 in Crossville, Norris and Kingsport and -10 to -15 from Murfreesboro to Northern Knoxville to Morristown. High temps were in the upper single digits across Northern areas from Tazewell west to Dyersburg. Only around 10-12 in many others. As far south as Huntsville the high temp was only 13 in the wake of the storm. Mt LeConte didn't have notably different temperatures than the rest of the area, it was actually slightly warmer February 5th than other areas. -17 was as cold as it got. After looking back on it, this may be the most impressive winter event of my lifetime. Virtually as cold as 1985 with snowfall amounts rivaling the blizzard of 1993, plus a massive ice event for west and SW valley areas.

The Claiborne Progress reported that they received a report of a tornado on the ground in Tazewell, but it may have been a prank, because apparently the report says the touchdown was on the football field at a local middle school.

Noticed some big cells in Middle Valley areas. Heavy rain here right now but just a rumble or two of thunder every 4 or 5 minutes so far. Looks like Nashville is getting some flooding too. Looks like cells in Eastern Arkansas might reach West Tennessee. At least the heat may break there. The H.I in Memphis is 111 and 112 in Jackson with an 80 degree dp.

Had another .55 so far today and a wall of heavy rain is about to move into the area. Flooding is breaking out in Scott and Morgan County and likely will here over the next few hours if that holds together.

Definitely juice for the storms that are starting to pop out there. Currently 80 degrees with a DP of 73. Tornado warning popped in Eastern Ky.