John1122

This got me to thinking about the trend of warmer winters since 1998ish. My earliest winter memories start around 1975. I decided to look back at my grandfathers low temp records for here to see how often we slipped below 5 degrees here in the winters since then. 1975: 4 Degrees December 19th 1976: -5 January 9th 1977: -10 January 19th - Also -7 January 29th with several other subzero days. 1978: -2 January 11th 1979: -10 February 10th 1980: 4 February 2nd 1981: -2 January 12th 1982: -14 January 17th - many days below 0 with a -10 on Jan 11th 1983: -8 December 25th, -4 on December 24th. 1984: -2 January 21st, 0 on the 20th and 22nd. 1985: -28 January 21st, -22 January 20th. 1986: -5 January 27th and 28th 1987: 2 January 27th 1988: 0 February 6th 1989: -10 December 22nd, high was 0 that day. 1990: No temps below 5. 1991: 0 February 16th 1992: 2 January 16th 1993: 0 March 15th, blizzard was good. 1994: -14 January 19th, -10 18th, two other days below 0 in the month. 1995: -4 February 8th, -1 on the 7th. 4th-14th was very cold and snowy. Last yr for my grandpa. He died Mar 16th at 90. 1996: -20 February 5th. 15 inches of snow on the ground. Last extreme cold event (below -5 imo) in East Tennessee. 1997: 1 January 11th 1998: No temps below 5 1999: No temps below 5 2000: 5 December 22nd 2001: 2 January 3rd 2002: No temps below 5 2003: -4 January 18th (last sub zero) 2004: 2 December 20th 2005: No temps below 5. 2006: No temps below 5. 2007: No temps below 5. 2008: 4 January 20th 2009: 0 January 16th 2010: 3 December 14th 2011: 4 January 14th 2012: No temps below 5. 2013: No temps below 5.

This is the 30th anniversary of the frigid Christmas of 1983. My low was -10, my high was 6 degrees. It was an odd pattern, it would warm up and rain, change to snow showers, then be really cold. Then repeat. The entire second half of December went that way in 1983.