fountainguy97

Hrrr looks pretty good.   What is this enhancement along the TN side of the mountains? Especially in Unicoi county. Never seen a precip maxima like that in my county.

This backside band is still 36hrs out. That's still long range for hrrr.  I think If we will be surprised by anything it will be that back end and the following piece of energy.  

3 minutes ago, Carvers Gap said:

Very true.  That happens in NE TN all the time, especially Johnson City.  Models try to smooth out the transition form the mountains to lower elevations when in fact the transition is quite sharp if looking directly from above.  The real pain is when modeling tries to smooth things out between the Plateau and Apps - the distance between the two is pretty narrow up here.  I have set the bar at 1" for MBY.  Anything else is gravy.  With wrecked thermals, downscoping, dry slot, and a low tracking into the Apps....not a great set-up at first glance.  Maybe the eastern valley gets a surprise.  With cold air not already in place, super tough forecast for the pros.  

Yep I'm in the same boat. Tough seeing a lot of 00z and 06z models show 6-8" for me and knowing the cutoff will be way sharper than they are able to show..  I knew this one was a heartbreaker as soon as we went away from the Miller A track.  Going to be a LONG day tomorrow watching areas to my east and west get buried and we get the slot. 
 

my one last hope is wrap around NW flow and maybe that kicker energy will help boost that.

Don't even have to look at models to know it's not good by how quiet it is in here lol.  12z kept hope alive but 00z is literally raining on the parade.  Think it's time to throw in the towel east of the plateau. 
 

edit; wow nam and hrrr have slaughtered snow totals for this event. Reserved to the absolute highest peaks of Western NC. 

This trend toward RGEM at 850mb is where it counts. Eastern areas will like this run.

12km nam through 33 has shifted the surface low south. On the surface its exactly like older RGEM.  still a little north of rgem at 850mb.

18z hrrr looks extremely similar to RGEM/CMC camp through hr 36 at the 850lvl,  Much further south than NAM which is now the outlier of the high res models.  

It's precip shield is still mostly south of TN but it has ticked north this run.  It's long range HRRR so wont be surprised for it to underestimate the Comma

The UK from last night also shows a more traditional Miller A... 

4 minutes ago, Weathertree2 said:

The whole system seems disjointed 

Yeah it is all in that transfer.  You can see how much more solid of a precip shield the CMC has vs GFS. all because of the transfer.  

We are losing Western TN with this type of setup though.

hmmm cmc... no transfer like RGEM. They are related so no surprise.

GFS packs on an additional 24hrs of NW flow. Stacks up additional 6" across mountains.  Thanks to the kicker energy

RGEM shoves the 850 Low abt 100 miles east of other models.  Because of this the Surface low never splits up into TN. Instead it shoots off to the east.  This pulls the back deform band across Eastern TN instead of dryslotting.  Similar to some EURO solutions recently.  The problem is this robs Western areas of the deform band pivot.  So while Eastern TN is better off with more qpf the western portions are much drier.

Major outlier for now.

4 minutes ago, Holston_River_Rambler said:

I've never seen one of these Miller B transfer types in my location, so will be interesting here. The more amped it is, the more it really wants to run an 850 circulation up the eastern valley. 

It's not just temps either. Massive dryslot runs right up the gut of Eastern TN as the transfer occurs.  Deform band crushes to the west. So the way I see it not only are we fighting temps but also the unavoidable downsloping that will probably show up even more pronounced on high res. 
 

For Eastern TN I wouldn't be hopeful for much action at all this weekend unless we get a decent track shift.

Euro is so tempting but I'm just not going to bite here tucked into the west side of the Appalachians.  A LOT of things can severely impact snowfall from an event like this here.  I'm not biting until it's go time.

lol

9 minutes ago, Vol4Life said:

GFS ensemble isn’t bad either...I’d take this in a heartbeat!

This is actually the best mean for most of TN and KY the gefs has spit out so far.  For TN it will come down to how much moisture is associated with the ULL and first low. When the transfer happens we dry up fast besides some back side snow showers. The 12z GEFS has a significant increase in snow across TN Sunday morning.  Fingers crossed that ends up being the case. I'd rather not sit in a dry slot for 30 hrs haha.

EDIT: Honestly, we arnt in a terrible spot to make something out of seemingly a disaster trend.  The EURO is still south. and GFS is very north.  I'll take us being in the middle of those two at this point any day of the week. We wont be looking at a gnarly foot+ across the state but we could see another large swath of 6-7 inches if the cards shake out right.

9 minutes ago, Carvers Gap said:

Trends at 0z are important.  I don't think we will see modeling step back towards a major hit.  

Agree on all points.  I do hold out a glimmer of hope as the Euro op at 6z looked more favorable in terms of location and wasn't as wrapped up.  EPS has more members going hybridB though the mean also  looked weaker which we need.  That is the first time during several runs in which I have seen modeling hiccup.

Definitely still hope. But some GEFS at 06z actually never even transfer really. Just a gut punch up the spine of the apps. The gfs may not be insanely out there in la-la land 

31 minutes ago, TellicoWx said:

For me I've sent the punt team out on the field. If it was only the GFS Op acting goofy would be one thing, but as WPC/Carvers/Webb/etc have noted...the snowy solution is losing the GEFs/EPS/CMC ensembles. The SLP can track however it wants, but 850 track has continuously got worse each suite across all modeling

I'm still seeing some say they favor ensembles but.... overnight the ensembles have come toward the OPs in a big way. We are inside 5 days and touching 4.  The OPs are more relevant now than ensembles imo.

edit: it's also super obvious as I believe Webb mentioned on Twitter that the GFS OP has higher resolution than its ensembles.  It led the ensembles into this NW trend.

Every storm is different but we do often see models "overtrend" in this 4-6 day period and then tick back in the last few days. that's how a lot of NW trends happen. Models dig too much and then tick backwards. This could be a reverse case.  Or it could keep going NW haha

i have to say the GFS has steadily moved NW over the last EIGHT runs.  That is one of the longest and most consistent trends I've ever seen from any storm. 8 ticks in a row. It has to stop somewhere right?

GEFS mean going to be similar to 12z. GFS on the extreme northern end of its ensemble set.  It's pretty safe to not trust that 18z run based on GEFS.

edit: in fact 18z mean js better for TN

As per usual with a large southern storm every option is on the table and will be for at least another 48hrs. 

GEFS and eps both have anything from a clipper style to a suppressed non-event to a classic Miller A.

Until we see ensembles narrow down to a couple of solutions I'll be sitting back. The good news is I almost always go by the "middle road" solution. And that middle scenario would mean a significant storm for portions of the South! 

The gfs has a sneaky NW flow event here in a few days. 

18 minutes ago, Bigbald said:

Hard to beat a good cold snow/high ratio, definitely at the top of the pantheon here. A big bucket lister is to get to enjoy a 2-3 day northwest flow event in somewhere in a cabin in the high mountains. 

It is had to beat. Today just feels like a core winter day in the mountains. How it's supposed to feel when living here. Even though it's not a huge storm I love days like this. Roads covering just by flurries.

The big NW event last year I ended up with 7" over two days. It's a different type of event. Slower paced than a regular system. But just as enjoyable. Other than scraping a steep driveway multiple times a day 

Have to say that snow in the teens is quite annoying. Every road now has a nice coating of snow again. 

Got a half inch of graupel and snow on top. Driveway frozen solid down to 18. Heaviest snow of the storm right now! 

34.7 and light snow. These back side bands look pretty good!