Carvers Gap

I had to double check the thermometer this morning when I went out to run. It looked warm from inside the house. It was not, however, warm outside. I was about to freeze. I had no idea it was that cold. Wind chills at TRI are 19. Crossville and Wise have wind chills in the single digits. It is snowing in the mountains.

Clinch Mountain, just south of Gate City, still has snow on the south facing slopes. Crazy. It is not warm today. That is for sure. The Euro Weeklies show a nice warm-up followed by more cold...then a back-and-forth pattern of ridge/trough ensues. I don't think we have seen the last of winter cold...but we are close to shutting the door on it. If you like warm springs, the MJO has not been our friend.

Ha! Ha! The center of that bubble is over my house! I had a couple of inches of snow this winter. I won’t miss the pattern of the last three winters - especially the Jan and Feb part!

Indeed the average temp for March is only 0.4 higher than the totality of Feb so far. Today may well bring us below Feb's average at TRI. I can't remember who asked that, but there you go.

So far, the last 5 days have yielded -7.34F BN at TRI. The past two days have been roughly -13F BN. We had one day where we didn't make it out of the 30s for max temps. Lowest temp during this time frame was 20F. A trace of snow has been recorded at the airport. I had a trace of frozen precip at my place during two of those days. Modeling has been exceptional with this time frame. The mountains above 5,000' are snow capped in NE TN. The freeze from the past two nights has damaged blooming plants for sure. Lots of brown buds on pear and peach trees unfortunately. As for the LR forecast, more cold through the 25th. Then, I think we see some moderation towards the very end of this month and early April. After that, the MJO is showing signs of looping back into colder phases after its tour through the colder phases ends(skipping warmer phases). The warm-up later this month should correspond to the loop into the COD and maybe some brief time in 7 before potentially looping back into 8. El Nino springs are a bear. I wouldn't be surprised for the mountains to get more snow and for the NE areas of the forum to see more snow showers at some point. As for next weeks system, just isn't organized on modeling and that has been a clear trend. Let's see if modeling gets it back today or overnight. The GFS was a bit more organized(but slightly off the coast ) at 6z...but it might be over-amped. Otherwise, probably time to bid farewell to that long shot.

@Holston_River_Rambler, two on loop 5!

4400’ elevation gain...oof!

Yeah, I have been following Keith today. Looks like a “big” bunch made it to lap 4. Fun run complete, and now it gets down to business. Haven’t had a finisher during the last few years. And yeah, the jaw is thorn city. Not for me.

@Holston_River_Rambler, you kick around in Frozen Head. How tough is that course?

Yeah, I can’t decide if we want it flat or not. The GFS at 0z was a strong coastal. 6z was flat. The trend overnight has been generally weaker with the exception of the 0z GFS run. We have seen those storms do exactly that at this range...and a three run trends takes it to St Louis regardless of blocking. Looks to me like a hp is suppressing the track. We do prob want to see it bounce back by tomorrow morning.

Barkley Marathon is under way. Man, that was a cold night for those runners!!!!

Jan/Feb were base warm patterns with cold fronts which rolled through - notably the ice storm. Current pattern appears to be base cold w/ warm-ups in between. Just looking at LR modeling....looks like wave after wave of cold. If we get lucky, the MJO will rotate into warm phases by April(before coming around again into cold phases) and give us a respite. Have I said how much I really don't like cold during April? I have my limits as to when I like it freezing cold...April is pushing those limits.

The 12z Euro is on board for Tuesday/Wednesday. Temps are marginal, but beautiful comma head. Mountains/Plateau would get smashed. I would assume the cold that would follow that would be sharp.

The 12z CMC has the Jeff setup...slp heading into a marginal air mass. Higher elevations would score with that.

Bout where we want it at this range given seasonal “send it to Indy” trends.

If it had trended west even in the slightest, I would say the GFS is correcting westward again. I think it will trend north and west. We just want that to hold off for another 36-48 hours before making that trend.

Good look and still to the SE. We take.

Just looking at the 12z roll....it that doesn’t go big it has the chance to in future runs.

Sitting in JC at the moment. A pretty heavy snow shower is rolling through at the moment. Welcome to spring.

If the Apple app is correct (best science I can muster this morning at short range), we have lows in the 20s for five of the next six nights. If I am wrong....blame the Apple.

I don’t think it was overly cold here either due to wind and cloud cover. Tonight is prob going to be the roughest IMBY re: freeze. The wind chills are pretty sharp currently though.

Yeah, I think the air mass is marginal for middle of next week. Time of day might account for some differences in precip type. I haven’t look at the storm for more than 2-3 minutes. LOL.

Bonus snow! Wind chills this morning are around 25. It feels like the middle of winter. Our spring sports groups were sent inside yesterday by graupel. I am pretty sure I haven’t felt it this cold since December....LOL.

I think the Tuesday-Thursday timeframe next week has some marginal interest for me. As for the Weekend...looks like rain chasing cold to me. Maybe the mountains? That said, MRX does have snow listed for MBY Sat morning (light variety that doesn’t accumulate...if even that). I always think spring has surprises. TRI is seeing fairly steady and light snow shower activity this morning. I wasn’t expecting that or the snow yesterday. Never know!

Re: Tuesday system....The odd thing about the GFS...it spots systems from way out...then trends them sharply westward. The Euro and CMC have been 24-36 hours behind its trends. It has taken the Euro to school during Feb. Oddly, the Euro has had a recent progressive bias recently. Right now I prefer the GFS at all ranges. We are still at the point for next Tuesday where the operational is still pretty much a single member of the ensemble. 48 more hours and then we can talk seriously about it. I don’t have high confidence in any model seven days out...to the good or bad. As Jeff noted yesterday...there is one idea that the storm gets suppressed and another that comes north into a marginal air mass. To me, the only differences in tracks of the 0z Euro and 6z GFS was precip type. But again, as new data is inputed...those solutions will most certainly change.