John1122

Most of our long range looks are well into December now. Hopefully we can have a better winter than last year, which was an all-time worst here. The first week of the month looks to be near normal temp wise and probably drier than normal, even though CPC favors AN precip.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

It's been around 40 with rain showers here this afternoon and evening. This would have been a snow shower kind of day a month from now.

The Purdue big is especially impossible when they refuse to call 3 seconds on him. He was staying in the lane for 7 or 8 seconds. Not to mention tossing Tennessee players around like ragdolls with no calls.

Had about 1.55 total today. Steady moderate rain for the better part of 12 hours. Just what the forest floor was needing.

Truly heavy rain the past hour. Had missed this at night.

Good luck to her. Hopefully the positivity continues. We're all a family here it feels like and I know we all wish you guys the very best.

1950/52 were the big ones in the area. My dad talked about snow over the bumpers of his car in 1952. We had 20 inches. Tri-Cities had close to 20 as did Knoxville. Chattanooga was rain though as was Nashville. The '52 storm was an epic paste job but much more localized to East Tennessee/SWVa than 1950. 1950 was a long duration event and it was much colder. It snowed over a foot across a large part of the state, 6-9 inches initially and then more snow for several days afterward with highs in the 10s and 20s and lows in the single digits to near 0. Tennessee and Kentucky played an infamously cold and snowy game that year. In '50, Memphis had 2 inches, 9.2 in Nashville, 2 inches in Huntsville Alabama with a high of 19 and low of 1 that far south. It was actually colder in Huntsville than it was in Tri-Cities for the low. Because it stayed cloudy and snowed every day for several days after in the Tri-Cities/Knoxville and Southeast Ky/SWVa/Mid-State. The crazy thing is that most years in the 50s/60s/70s had measurable snowfall in November. Snow of at least a trace happened every year in the 50's in November. Outside of '50/'52, 2 inches fell in 1956 and 3.5 in 1959. 1960 had none, '61, '62 had half inch events. ''63 had a 2.5 inch event. '66 had an 8 inch event and a 2 inch event. The 8 inch event was November 2nd. the 2 incher was at the end of the month. '68 had a 3 inch and 2 inch event. '69 had a 3 inch event. It was 1973 before a snowless November hit again. In 1974 there was a 2 inch event mid-month. 75/76/77 all had multi-inch events. 1978 was snow free. 1993/1994 was the only back to back snow free November years from 1940-1994 (we did get 3 inches on Halloween 1993 but it stopped snowing around 9pm.) And by that I mean snow of at least a dusting. Then the 2000s hit and November snow just went "poof". None form 2000-2005. 2006 we had half an inch. November has mostly been hard times since 2006.

I posted that and it literally started pouring.

There was a fire near me today. My cousin lost a van and outbuilding. The rural fire service and Forestry got it out before it could take off. It was on the edge of about 35000 acres of dry woods. The rain was almost non-existent.

Hopefully the 00z GFS is correct. Way more rain next week than it had been showing and some snow showers for most of us.

Hoping the GFS itself is wrong, as it's the driest by a decent margin, over the next 10 days.

A few maps from NOAA. Not sure why they left December off. All in all it looks like Mod/Strong Nino's lean slightly towards more snowy for most of us except West Tennessee and that happens a little more than half the time in this data set for most of us. So really, it looks like a 50/50 situation for most of the Valley. The far eastern areas/western NC have a bit better odds of more robust snow chances.

Not as wild as the ride was on 18z but pretty close at 0z.

Happy hour indeed on the 18z. Rain systems and....I'm sure you all saw it.

I picked up .48 inches of rain and it was still misting enough to use windshield wipers as I headed to Knoxville. There's a lot of nice color still on the trees down here. My trees are 90 percent bare. The mist dried up around the Clinch River bridge in Anderson County.

Actually getting moderate rain. After the extreme rains most of the 2020s so far, it seemed like I'd never have missed it so bad again. Fall droughts are the worst weather to me. Especially when near record high temperatures accompany them.

Barely had misty sprinkles here so far. Hopefully it doesn't die out before we can get at least 1/4th inch. The November temperature outlook is deeply depressing for my winter loving self. We can still have a snowy winter after a warm November but the odds favor it going the other way. I hope we can get a few more rain events just to get the fire danger in the rear view.

It's still burning and now 3 fires on the north side of the mountain I live on are going. All set right off the road. I'm hoping the nearly inch of rain the gfs was throwing out at 00z comes to pass by early next week.

I grew up in the 70s around my grandfather. Our house was across the driveway. He was very weather focused for his whole life. Always recording what the weather was on a particular day to the best of his ability. He could "smell snow." I didn't understand how he could but it seemed like it always snowed when he said it was going to do it. Years later I realized it was the smell of burning coal that was often in the air when he predicted snow. Around here nearly everyone had coal burning stoves in their house for heat. I live/lived within a mile of multiple coal mines. Even now, in certain areas, I smell that smell when it's cold. Much less than back in those days. I loved Margie Ison back then. She was on channel 6. We only got 6 and 10 back then. Channel 26 was a thing but we never had much luck getting it to come in because it was UHF. When Margie started talking about Alberta clippers or a Siberian express, get the sleds ready because we were getting 3-6 inches of snow and it was going to be cold. My favorite weather events center around snow events. Not surprisingly at all. Two in particular from when I was a child strike me. One, we went to get carpet in Knoxville in the 1970s. I remember three things distinctly, my dad had borrowed a 1970s white ford utility van. My brother's and I had enough room to hold full on wrestling matches in the back as we drove there. It was a Sunday and we left with no snow on the ground. I remember being amazed at how big the rolls of carpet were in that warehouse. It was raining when we left the place in Knoxville. I think it was on Broadway. It was cold and coming down really hard. It poured all the way up I-75 until we started up the hill above Cherry Bottom in Southern Campbell County. Suddenly, about halfway up the hill, it started snowing. By the top, and further north in Campbell County it was a winter wonderland. There was probably four inches of snow down and it was pouring big, wet, goosefeathers. We all celebrated no school that next day. It was the first time I knew that winter weather was different here than it was points south of here. The second, my grandfather said we might as well not go to church that evening because it was going to snow and they'd call it off. This was probably 3pm. He hadn't had any way to watch weather that day. I stayed home with them but my mom made my little brother go. It was December 12th, and it got dark early. By 6pm it was dark and light snow, enough to dust the car tops had started. By 6:45 pm not much more had fallen. I started watching Ripley's Believe It or Not at 7pm and my brother came in about 7:30, church usually went from 7 to 8:15ish. He said that they barely made it home. I went and looked out and in 30 or 45 minutes about 3 inches of snow had fallen and it was pouring. We got 9 inches that evening into Monday morning. Days like that made me love winter and I was always trying to be more like my grandfather, and his weather love was infectious to me.

I know that we definitely have cooler weather when sea surface temperatures there are cooler. He just says it's not a true oscillation, i.e. driven entirely on its own, but coincidental to outside factors such as solar forcing, volcanic activity and aerosols in the 60s and 70s. He even went back an reanalyzed the 850-1850 period and found that if you took out solar forcing and volcanic events, that there was nothing there to indicate an oscillation, and that overlayed, every peak and valley was centered around those events. I would guess that it's just very unlikely we ever go through long time periods without eruptions or solar forcing being a factor. After reading it, I'm not getting my hopes up there will be a flip without something to force it. But maybe he's wrong.

Unfortunately, the AMO may not be a thing according to the person who actually thought he'd found it and gave it the name "AMO." Long article but he notes that the apparent AMO cycles can all be tied to external factors such as volcanic eruptions, solar activity and aerosols. He no longer sees evidence that there is an AMO. https://michaelmann.net/content/rise-and-fall-atlantic-multidecadal-oscillation

My friend who teaches in Briceville shared this from just after sunset.

It's burning towards Cross Mountain. Hopefully it doesn't get there. This is a small foothill/ridge that sits in front of it. Cross Mountain has a 2700 foot elevation gain back behind that area and it does it quickly. It's almost completely vertical. Every 600 feet in elevation there's old strip pit roads cut around the mountain that are usually the only breaks. I'd guess the winds above 3000 feet will be 10+mph higher and the fire makes wind too.

The 1960s are a different beast entirely when it comes to analogs, but 1965-66 was a strong Nino with a +2 peak in fall into early winter. October 1965 was dry with an inch or less of rain falling around the area as a rule. November 1965 was dry and warm as a rule. It finished +2 and was especially warm it's first week. Around 2 inches of precip fell for the month. December of 1965 started cold. A major cold front passed right at the end of November with highs in the mid 20s and lows in the lower teens on November 30th. It warmed up quickly and also finished +2. January 1966 (my brother was born Jan 20th) started warm. The first week was wet and had highs in the 50s. A pair of cold fronts were on the way. Behind the first, a fast shot of cold with light snow came by. The high on the 8th was 27 with a low of 12. It warmed all the way up to 51 on the 9th after a low of 13. The second cold front came through and pushed highs into the low 40s with lows in the 20s. Basically normal here for January. There was a dusting of snow. Another front passed on the 13th, with freezing rain on the 14th and two inches of snow on the 15th. Deeper cold pressed in behind that with highs in the 20s and low 30s with lows in the teens through the 20th. We had 3 days of snow that totaled an inch over that time frame. On the 22nd a major snow event happened across most of the valley region. 6 to 8 inches of snow fell. On the 26th 3 more inches of snow fell. Then on the 29th-31st a monster snowstorm hit with a massive arctic blast following it. 8-12 inches of snow was wide spread. We were -15 on the 30th and -19 on the 31st with highs of 6 and 10. We closed out January with 22 inches of snow and one of the coldest period ever and it had all happened after January 10th for the most part. The first five days of February were cold and it snowed each day. Then winter mostly ended. There was a wet snow in late February with 2 inches and 2 inches in early March. But that 2 or 3 weeks in January was just brutal. Otherwise from November through March we were generally AN.