Carvers Gap

Hey, if it just gets hot like last summer....We can call this second summer, along the lines of second breakfast. Why? Because one summer is not enough for this forum that loves winter weather. LOL.

Saw where the QBO 30mb rose a couple of points during July. Could be good or could be bad...If it pops positive with a La Nina, that is a warm signal for winter. OTH, maybe it really hasn't gotten its act together and truly dropped. Anyway, two straight months w a slight positive trajectory. I am "hoping" that the stall means we might get a couple of extra months of run in the negative towards the end of winter.

That is crazy, Powell! A quick glance at LR guidance...Just took a glance at the CANSIPS which just updated. Next three months are August(BN), Sept(N), Oct(N).... That is a pretty good trend on temps. CFSv2 looks similar. Have not seen the updated Euro seasonal yet. A normal fall would be nice. Euro Weeklies are warmer for sure. Still, in the SE we appear be tucked underneath AN heights or the east of AN heights depending on the model. Would very much enjoy some cooler nights in September vs the furnace that we had last year. We are about to enter the time of year that the Euro Weeklies struggle - shoulder season. So, I think we have about four more weeks where I trust it as the trump card. During shoulder season, it often diminishes in accuracy until late November when it regains its form and flawlessly nails the forecast much AN temps for 12 straight weeks.

Definitely continue improvement in modeling today and that correlates well to Jeff's comments yesterday. Be tough to ask for a better look for August.

LOL. Of course the Euro Weeklies would follow the CFSv2 for once! I should have stuck to my original thoughts! I caved one run to early!!!! LOL. You all can send me a Christmas card if this heat leaves. So, I am just going to disregard my Tuesday thoughts and revert to my Saturday thoughts. Since those Tuesday comments, it has rained like crazy here and the LR models have moderated.

More good rain today and storms. Thunderstorm warnings to boot.

It was pretty wild...felt like I was watching storms out West. Vivid stuff! Looked like quite a boomer up your way with that last storm.

Lots of rain IMBY yard this evening - very thankful. Looks like more on the way tomorrow. Will take every drop right now!

La Nina summer is here. As Jax noted, maybe a break for a couple of weeks...then more heat is possible. La Nina heat patterns are probably some of the most difficult patterns to break down once in place. Endless summer looks like a real possibility again this year. Getting very dry IMBY. This heat quickly bakes out whatever moisture is in the soil. Of all wx patterns, I dislike La Nina summers the most...and it is not even close. Thankfully we had June, but I would guess that September will be a summer month instead of fall this year...unless the CFSv2 could finally be right about something. Not holding my breath. Just hoping we don't go like last Sept/Oct. That was brutal. Thing is, the next couple of months will likely rival that, but at least it is during summer and not fall....but I am not ruling out early-mid Fall be fairly warm either.

Awesome. We were able to see it tonight. Could barely see it with the naked eye and easily see it with binoculars. And it is right below the Big Dipper as noted in this thread. The sky might look dark there due to some washing out on the horizon and from lights...but just scan around with the binoculars. It will pop right out. You can see it right now in the NW sky.

Looks like maybe a somewhat significant pattern shake-up is now to the point it might sneak inside of d10. Fingers crossed. It won''t be cool...just less hot. Bout the best we can expect. Ridge on the 12z EPS is definitely backing West, but will it happen? IDK...hope so.

Just come on over to Kingsport, I can get you some real feel 90s with humidity...but BN rainfall. LOL. We don't want you to miss summer!!! J/K of course. Seriously, had some nice storms this morning. The graduation at Dobyns-Bennett will go ahead as planned this evening as it looks like the weather has held. For once, glad it is not raining. Man, might even be able to see a comet over the proceedings. Not many graduations have a comet overhead.

12z EPS has shown some minor but tangible improvement in the long term. It is slightly more like the GEFS w the ridge setting up over the SW. How is that for brevity?

Just a quick glance at overnight ensembles, and lots of model bias in play. The EPS is showing how difficult it is to break down a big, summer heat ridge. The GEFS and GEPS are trying to sneak some relief in later in the month into the East. I do think the ridge backs West. That is a pretty common theme on Weeklies modeling for whatever they are worth. The real question is if the trough moves westward, does a ridge still belly into the SE under any sort of eastern GL trough? That is not an uncommon setup during summer....western ridge with some ridging under a shallow eastern trough. Still, the current pattern looks pretty similar to what we have had this summer - meaning big warm-ups with potential for the ridge to get knocked down. We do have less BN temps in play at this point for any trough to draw from when compared to earlier this summer. Would be nice to see fall come early for once in a blue moon! Doubt that happens in a La Nina...but one can hope! But like Jeff said...maybe we can just get this out of the way now. I should add...my money is probably on a slightly watered down EPS right now. GEFS has had an awful bias of late run troughs for months on end. But hey, summer is gonna summer. At least we had June which was pleasant. Maybe we can steal a break again at the end of the month or in early August.

I certainly hope the 12z GEFS and EPS ensembles are correct. They do continue to imply that the ridge backs westward. The 12z GFS was all-in on that today...But when is it not? LOL.

When Jeff uses "BOHICA" in a post about the long term pattern, we know things in the wx world are about to go to crapcon 1. Man, we got absolutely drilled by a storm this evening. That humidity and sun are creating some heavy hitters. What is crazy is I can look at a storm and the normal rules don't apply. I have seen east to west storms. I have seen storms to my west on a true north to south trajectory. We have been hit from the southeast by storms. I have seen storms form and not move at all. But we got hammered today. Half of my corn got knocked over. It was a really howler. VERY thankful for the water!!!

LOL. Well, crap. And that is a top 5 afternoon disco of all time. That is awesome.

2020 FTW!!!!

Yep, IMHO we have flipped quickly to a Nina pattern. Tonight's Euro Weeklies do offer some hope as the worst of the 500 anomalies switch to the Mountain West by August. But I know that once these death ridges go into place...they have been tough to budge. Right now, MBY is depending on stray thunderstorms for anything in the way of moisture. You Plateau folks need to send some of that our way in the TRI(west of 26). I was really hoping the Nino hangover pattern would hang on through September. Maybe we can still get a little milage from it. But whew! The heat is here. What makes it tougher is that May and June were pleasant - so not acclimated to this yet!

Great share. Your Hickory Cane corn is massive. As for how my garden is doing? Pretty much switched over to all summer stuff. This was a big year for potatoes and garlic. Summer stuff is about 2-3 weeks behind due to the late start, but it is going to hit in a wave pretty soon. Been a banner pepper year. I will try to get some pics uploaded later. My garden looks night and day to what it was two months ago. It has gone nuts. Copper spray has kept much of the disease away on my tomatoes - so far. Should be a really good garden year. Need more rain as this heat really sucks the moisture right out of the ground. No amount of humidity can slow moisture loss in 90+ degree heat. The soil just gets baked.

Well, we knew we couldn't dodge it forever. The furnace has kicked in big time. Looks like very warm temps for a couple of weeks. The Euro Weeklies and CFS Weeklies do hint that it will back off by later this month and into August. I am sort of glad that the heat is kicking. It might mean that the heat does its thing. Then, we go into a typical fall pattern - maybe. I give this shot of heat 14-20 days before it runs its course, and then we see another front knock back the temps. Again, sometimes summers that get started late last well into fall...so, having summer right now is a good thing IMHO. Ground here is definitely getting very dry with the heat. We have not had near the rain that others have had. FTR, I still think this ridge backs into the Rockies during the second half of July. But....this is a hot time of year, so it is still going to be warm.

Northern Plateau(and evidently portions of Knoxville referencing Powell's report) is like living in the Costa Rican rain forest lately!!!!

Pretty amazing for sure. Good example of that phenomenon just in E TN depicted on an MRX tweet. Some areas of Knoxville look like they received 4-5" of rain. We finally got a storm on Tuesday that produced well here. Prior to that, it was getting pretty dry. The Plateau(I know John as shared his huge amounts of recent rain) has done well. NE TN can get in a bit of a rut during summer. We have a weak rain shadow in every direction but to our southwest. Depending on where one is in the TRI will greatly influence which rain shadow is most influential. In Kingsport, northwest flow of any kind is usually gobbled up by the mountains to our NW in KY and SW VA. That said, we do really well on SLPs which track to our SE as those often produce more lift here. Opposite is generally true for Johnson City. Then, there is the weird snow convergence zone between JC and Kingsport which @Holston_River_Rambler has shown a few times. But yeah, Knoxville has scored big during the past week. I know Jeff has said it a few times, there are some similarities to Chattanooga and TRI in how precip can be diminished at the valley floor. Sometimes it is just comical. Good to see some folks getting rain. That might keep the drought monster(and extreme heat) at bay for a bit longer. I think many areas have caught-up just a bit since that graphic was produced on the 29th for that 12 hour time frame.

Looks like a warm couple of weeks beginning in a couple of days. If the Euro Weeklies are correct, the ridge which pushes eastward will revert back into the West yet again by mid-July. We will see if that verifies. Seems to have been the pattern this summer. TRI is at 0.0 in terms of temp departures from normal - meaning we are normal here. That means we have basically stolen four potential warm weeks from summer's grasp. In about four more weeks, we will begin to get a better idea of how early fall will unfold on some modeling.

Going to keep it simple this year... December: Seasonal temps / BN precip January: AN temps / BN precip February: AN temps / BN precip Best chances for snow will occur late November into early January. Expecting a big thaw in January this year, BUT I do think we see bouts of serious cold this winter despite my AN temps forecast. I was really bullish at the end of last winter regarding the upcoming winter being a dud. And it may well be. Strong to moderate La Nina's are generally a non-starter IMBY. The good news, as I have stated before, is that we really need the Pacific to cool down some, and it has been some time since we have seen a strong La Nina. Winters that have followed strong La Ninas can be pretty good in MBY, so I will suffer through a strong Nina event if need be this winter. That said, we all saw last winter when phase 7-8-1 had constant precip last winter and the MJO would not go there at all. I don't think that happens this winter with La Nina - meaning those regions should have cooler SSTs and less convection propagating through them. If anything, the door is open for the MJO to at least cycle through colder phases 2-3 times IMHO. I don't think it locks into those regions, but who knows....I don't close the door on anything this far out. The IO is yet another unknown. While I won't be surprised to see several waves propagate eastward this winter from the IO, I think a BN SST setup in MJO regions 7, 8, and 1 will potentially weaken those waves. So, here are my components for the upcoming winter in order of importance: 1. Moderate La Nina: That should dry things out this fall, maybe even causing an early start to winter. The question is, "When does the atmosphere transition to a Nina pattern?" Right now, still looks like a hungover Nino pattern. What would be swell is if the Nino pattern could hang on long enough to temper the normally prolonged summer that Nina's are known for. Then, even better, Nina kicks in and we get early season cold. We have a shot at that combo the longer that Nino holds on. However, have to think some much AN heat will show up during September at some point with a quick flip to cold in November. 2. MJO sea surface regions 7, 8, and 1 "should" cool off. That will balance point one, and provide maybe some temporary but severe bouts of cold. 3. The SER. I think it sets up shop on the EC. "Where?" is the question. Ideally, we want it closer to the coast. If it bulls its way westward, then E TN will fight it all winter. Might not be a terrible thing for areas in west TN though, and even middle. If we can get it to belly into the coast only, we could do better than my above forecast. 4. Precip is likely to be BN in MBY. That means even if it gets cold, we have fewer pitches to swing at. But honestly, last winter was pretty crappy. We can always do worse, but odds are that this year won't be. 5. Nina winters usually have a tendency to send some severe cold into the SE even though the overall winter is AN in the norms. 6. QBO. It has stalled a bit lately. If it comes back up, we have trouble. We do not want a short negative phase. My guess is that this stall might mean that get 1-2 more months of negative(referring to the 14 month phase lasting a bit longer) than normal. That means we could make it most of winter with a decent QBO. It would be better if the QBO were to go positive in late April or May vs March. 7. Wildcard....Just how hot will it get this summer/early fall in the SE? Seems like once the furnace turns on, it takes a lot of time to evacuate that air. So far, so good. Last year, I was feeling pretty good during July about a nice fall...and then September just went bonkers. As for snow, everybody wants to know how much we are going to get. The answer is that it is absolutely impossible to know. I think our best chances will be early. After that, one would think that January and February will provide some very long timeframes between chances. That said, it just "seems" the weather pattern from the past two years right is switching up. We are out of shoulder season which fooled me into thinking the pattern had broken early last winter(the pattern being a little pocket trough forming ad nauseam over the Mountain West in the front range). With some big heat already being felt in the Mountain West and a transient ridge reforming every few weeks there...makes me think we are seeing a transition. So, I am less negative about the upcoming winter. My gut says it will be better than I describe above, but my brain says to beware of moderate to strong Nina patterns - they are generally hostile to winter in the SE. So, I will go with BN snowfall, but maybe closer to normal than many will forecast, but better than last winter. Short and sweet with no graphics.