Carvers Gap

Hey, I actually like one big storm to take all of the leaves down!!!! LOL. I don't like getting nickel and dimed with leaf work. I like seeing howlers come through and just strip every leaf.

Rains have definitely increased IMBY. It looks like spring here with all of the green. So far this is the antithesis of September last year. Leaves should look awesome this year.

So, is modeling correcting towards a weaker La Nina. Saw that mentioned as a possibility in the MA winter thread? If so, that is a significant.

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.

Yours looks good as well! Just finished. Whew. We extended the edges of those tarps that are doubled over above. Used big splits from the woodpile as anchors. Our set-ups look remarkably similar! I use wheat straw to hill-up my potatoes since I don't have a don't of ton of extra dirt. We put it down earlier this week - hoping that provides support for the tarp and extra insulation. The wind is a pain. Unfortunately, it has gone to dead calm for now - right as we finished! Sets the stage for quite a cold night up here. Need some wind to help with mixing to shorten the time below freezing. Good luck, Stovepipe and to our other gardeners and farmers!

This is what it looked like Thursday night. Getting ready to head out now and get it ready - in the driving wind and drizzle. Was trying to let the wind dry things off a bit, but looks like this upslope stuff is going to be here off and on. For scale, the hoop house is about four feet tall and the fence is 6' tall.

I have some of that on order. First year trying that type of corn. Do you like it? Probably won't get here until next week, so I am stuck planting it next week pretty much no matter what. Plus, my real fight is with raccoons later in the summer. LOL. I am probably going to have to break down and put an electric fence around the garden. Yeah, I would probably wait. It is unlikely the corn would be up by the time it frosts/freezes. However, the ground would be pretty cold and might hurt germination rates. If it isn't the cold that is a problem, it is the really wet fields. Tougher call in Knox Co. NE TN is an easier call as the cold looks likely this weekend. The problem with planting later is if the season goes really dry while it is producing corn. Tough start to a very important growing season in the SE. Keep us updated on how it does this summer!

There are a couple of islands in the Holston that we only see when TVA has the generators off. That summer with the drought(where G-burg burned) those islands had grass growing on them. LOL. They rarely had water over them as the feeder streams were so low - even generation schedules rarely flooded them. Past two years, I rarely see those islands at all now. If anything, I have seen some high water marks in those areas that I have never seen before, usually just after big thunderstorms. Might be an adventure today! We got hammered with heavy rain yesterday.

I was afraid of that. Well, if we are going that direction then let's go with strong La Nina and cool the Pacific some so a better gradient returns during future winters. I am not digging this cool April. The West is working on a really good decade of winters.

Verbatim that is a good looking sea surface signature. @nrgjeff, what do you think about the waters depicted in the GOA there? Also, that is a pretty cold signature in the North Atlantic. How might that affect us?

Big cutters during April are bad mojo.

Folks in the northern Rockies have to be licking their chops. Yeah, have to think a drought is coming and will be abrupt. Preparing mentally to be hand watering the garden for at least the second half of summer. Fortunately, saved a ton of money on A/C this winter. Going to spend it all to cool this summer. LOL!

There is a remembrance service at 6:00PM central in Cookeville. A press conference will follow immediately which will provide updates. Local authorities are still trying to locate dozens of people in an effort to determine their whereabouts. They may very well be in hotels or with family members. Trying times for sure. If folks on the forum know a displaced person due to the weather events of last night, make sure they have checked-in with local authorities.

Some good radio work being done by 94.1 out of Cookeville, TN. Been some great information all day on the station. Survey team reported 175+mph winds and was on the ground for 50 miles. Nashville area was listed as an EF3. They will be in Putnman Co tomorrow to investigate the damage there. So, we should get some updates about the intensity on the Plateau after their work there. https://newstalk941.com

One of my former students is working radio right now in Cookeville. He has been on the air for twelve hours straight.

Just awful.

My thoughts and prayers are with those families affected by the tornado. Hate to hear about your brother's and mom's homes @Matthew70.

@Stovepipe, when do you plant your tomato and pepper seeds? Also, when do you drop them in the ground...seems like you put yours in earlier than me? I am considering an earlier start this year...

@Stovepipe, tomato seedlings are up. Peppers always take longer, but a few of those are up. Eggplant, dill, and basil are up on the seed starting racks. My tomato varieties this year are some early season heirlooms combined with varieties with strong disease resistance. Shooting for some earlier varieties to avoid late season blight and septoria. Since I am starting my own plants from seeds this year, I am hoping that my variety choices and seed starting practices will eliminate some of the disease in my tomatoes a couple of years ago. I also left the garden fallow last summer. I know that stuff stays in the soil for a long time, so hoping this will up my chances for a better harvest of the red fruit. Garlic and bunching onions from the fall are going to be a strong harvest. They are looking really good.

Looks like since the AMO flipped(just looking at that graphic), we have had three moderate/strong Ninas that have been cold during winter and seven AN. I always thought 95-96 was weaker off the top of my head. That said, seems like as long as the Nina is not a super La Nina...we get lots of extreme cold and warm. I definitely think we needs as strong of a La Nina as we can get - even if we have to sacrifice a winter to do so. Seems like the following winters after Ninas can be pretty good. We are long overdue for this shake-up, and I think this has had a lot to do with the AN temps in the Pacific. @john11 can probably answer this, John how do we do during strong and moderate La Ninas. Seems like weaker ones are colder.

Oh yeah, understood they comments regarding spring. Was just picking your brain about later in the year.

@nrgjeff I know strong Ninas are not great for winter in the East. However, given how 3.4 has amped phase 6 of the MJO this current winter...do you feel that a Nina winter might actually be an improvement even with its leaning towards a warm pattern? Not sure we see a winter warmer than this one even with a La Nina. I know we do see extremes - both cold and warm. Also, looks like that might push a warm end to summer and beginning to fall(referencing Jax's last post)? Anyway, I think a La Nina of moderate or strong strength is needed to "reset" the Pacific SSTs. Been a while since we have had a good one and the Pacific reflects that I think...

Had a leaky chimney. Got up there and fixed it yesterday evening. Very thankful that is done and fingers crossed that the new sealant works! 6" of rain by Thursday. Not good!

Seriously great site, @John1122. I could spend days there. This is line graph data from the same site. I would set forth the idea that four time periods are skewing normal model tendencies during the past 90 days(early Nov, mid Dec, early Jan and mid Jan). Looks like there is a big bust in December where models missed by 10-15 degrees and early and mid January where models busted by 7-10+ degrees during week one and two. Overall, January misses have skewed model tendencies...as we know January has not been a good month for modeling. I know the big bust in early January was where modeling was too cold. I am assuming the miss in December is also the same based on the idea that we have been head faked twice and Christmas being warm was a huge miss. For example, the December 13th 12-day forecast would actually verify on December 25th which we know was warm. I might assume Novembers model numbers were actually too warm as twelve days after October 30 were a period of severe cold. December and January were both well documented bad time frames for modeling as was early November when modeling completely missed the cold. What would be interesting is to see the rest of the year. Not sure how to dig those up. Interestingly the GFS ensemble was better than the Euro at spotting cold last November from the d12 range. It was nearly two degrees better than the EPS(albeit bad scores for both). As suspected, the GEFS spotted the cold snap in mid November. So overall, I would suggest normal model tendencies are skewed and potentially might misrepresent modeling as being "too cold" because of an anomalous two month warm period(December to January). So it is a tale of two contrasting biases. In early November(when the pattern changed to cold) the models were too warm. During December and January, modeling was too cold during near record warmth as modeling almost always has trouble with extremes. So, those maps above have two months of cold bias and one week of warm bias. So, makes sense they are skewed. So, I think we have to consider current model tendencies but be wary of using past performance as and indicator of future performance. For example, I think many assumed modeling in December(that predicted warmth) was possibly wrong, because its past performance had been too warm in early November. The warm December forecasts verified. It is possible that the same thing will happen in reverse where modeling busts high. Not saying that will happen, but the antecedent performance of November certainly did not continue into December. In other words, sometimes modeling mistakes can move from a cold bias to a warm bias vey quickly as occurred in November.

Good find. I wouldn't argue with many of those, but I think(am nearly certain) the EPS has a really strong warm bias from d10-15 and also for the Weeklies. It is usually significantly warmer at 2m than any of the American model output. Not sure how those are generated, but the 90d timestamps might be skewing those. I can say from personal experience, the EPS has a warm bias in d10-15. Maybe the miss earlier in January and over Canada last week is skewing those maps as the past 90 days of modeling have had some wicked busts where modeling verified much warmer than modeled d10-15. Additionally, I would think that modeling would have some sort of correlational coefficient rating based on where features verified on a map - I would be interested to see those as well.