John1122

18z GFS was pretty aggressive again on the snow for early next week. It would touch just about all of us with at least flakes in the air.

GFS bringing shenanigans in a few days.

It's really hard to get anything done here with an unfavorable Pacific. But a favorable one can render the Atlantic meaningless. February 2015 was a +NAO/+AO combination. The Pacific drove the entire pattern. Big EPO ridge suppressed the storm track in the East and delivered major cold. Temps finished around -8 to -12 for the month in the region with multiple winter storms.

There were a lot of blanks and a few heavy hitters on the EPS. For pie in the sky fantasy, member 34 casually dropped about 2 feet on Nashville and 12+ over most of the region. It alone would likely skew the average.

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.

Basically the same story here as Daniel Boone, around an inch on decks and cars, less than half that managed to stay on the ground.

Heavier precip is snow, lighter is drizzle. Down to 38 degrees.

You can tell this is northern stream and not southern stream energy. Winds are N at 12 and another bit of precip just came through as a mix of rain and snow at 40 degrees. Last event it had to get to 34 to change over due to the S flow.

First few showers have been moving through, temp fell fairly quickly from 49 to 43. West wind at 8.

WVLT's current meteorologist really needs to learn the area. He just came on during the halftime of Chiefs Raiders, ran whatever house model they used that showed .1 to .3 over non Smokies areas and 1 inch at the highest areas and declared the "the highest elevations of the Smokies may get an inch at most". I'll be shocked if Newfound doesn't get 5 times that and LeConte might see a foot with it being the primary NW flow spot in the entire southern Apps.

I've been watching football and didn't even notice that MRX had issued wide spread winter products. Kind of surprising. Did models ramp up snowfall totals? Looked earlier like BL temps would be an issue below 2000 feet. I'll take this any day of the week. Tonight Cloudy. A chance of rain in the evening, then snow likely or a chance of rain after midnight. Snow accumulation up to 1 inch. Lows in the lower 30s. West winds 10 to 15 mph with gusts to around 30 mph. Chance of precipitation 60 percent. Monday Cloudy. Snow likely or a chance of rain in the morning, then a chance of rain or snow in the afternoon. Snow accumulation up to 1 inch. Total snow accumulation up to 2 inches. Highs in the mid to upper 30s. Northwest winds 10 to 15 mph with gusts to around 30 mph. Chance of precipitation 60 percent.

Quite a bit of thunder and just drenching rain today and currently. I am about to cross 75 inches on the year and will soon break the yearly record imby for the last 100 years, though that record was set last year. Amazing that we had one solid month of drought in the middle of it.

Imagine this is the NAM doing its thing but MRX has me with a 70 percent chance of snow showers Monday.

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.

The GFS is hilariously inconsistent in the LR regarding theA0/ NAO region. You couldn't have a bigger flip on the 18z to 00z runs.

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.

January 1994 was a potent Siberian Express situation, with 2 fronts. The 2nd was one of those 20 degree drops in two hours and it was already cold from the first front. Most areas went ice to snow then got extremely cold behind the 2nd front. I spent around 9 days below freezing in the heart of January. The first front for Nashville was a trace of snow, the temps were 41-39 in advance of the front. It was 39 at midnight January 14th. The temp fell all day and the low was 13 there. The high the next day was 17 with a low of 5. 36-4 the next day. The second front was coming through the next day. The high was 35 early, the front roared through the state and Nashville had fallen from 35 to 7 by midnight. It snowed 2.2 inches on top of some freezing rain and sleet there during the frontal passage. The next day Nashville was 10-0, the following day 17- negative 1. 26-11 and 29-13 the following day. It was one of the big 5 winter events for the Valley in the 1990s imo just because of the power and duration of the cold. I was going to post about another in the historical thread. The blizzard is legendary for the Eastern half of the region but this event for Valley as a whole beats it in my opinion. It's the massive ice and snow storm of February 1st-3rd 1996.

I would guess we will be in a base warm pattern with occasional brief cool shots at least through December 15th-25th. Possibly longer. The 6 week pattern sometimes happens, which would put us in this pattern until January 10th or so. Last year we never got out of the ditch all winter. In 2015 after the very cold November of 2014, we got out in January I believe. It was mostly warm through December, 2014 mid 60s Christmas Eve. Mid 60s again January 6th before the bottom fell out for a week or so, then January battled it out flopping around before we had the brutal February into early March with multiple snow and ice storms and well below 0 cold. You just get gun shy with these last three winters when everything that could go wrong for winter did.

The GEFS and GFS are not in agreement at all really. OP is a nationwide torch and the Ens are BN East.

I am not opposed to a relaxation in the pattern in December, as long as it doesn't last until March like it did last year.

Saw yesterday MRX put a graphic out that said this was Knoxville's earliest 1" snowfall and it listed November 1st 2014 at Tri-Cities. I knew that I had 3 inches on October 31st 1993, and I remember at least north Knoxville having an inch or more. I looked it up and it shows a trace at Tyson, but it shows 1.3 inches at Tri-Cities. not sure how MRX missed 1993.

I believe the control is a lower resolution run of the main model but not 100 percent sure.

I feel like going full weenie over the Euro, but I know that is extremely unlikely to unfold favorably for us. I'm going to minor weenie and cling onto the hopes of a dusting to an inch on Tuesday.

I'm a fan of Pivotal Weather's Euro access, gonna support them via Patron in hopes it can stay free for everyone.