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December 8-10 Storm Discussion


Holston_River_Rambler
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Dry slot is slowly working its way up the Northeast Tennessee Valley. Wraparound snows are just not strong enough to fill it back in. Looks like it may be several hours before the 2nd punch from the west side of the state gets here. Not complaining though as we have 9 inches on the ground.

That second wave isn’t looking healthy. We needed it closer to the main system to feed off it. Maybe when it moves over here it will backfeed some.


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4 minutes ago, BlunderStorm said:

The comma head is getting close to spinning around here. It could be close. The least that can be said is the snow seems to be moving out slower and slower the further up the valley it goes especially on the western side. 

 How much have you got now blunder ? Wound up with about 5 here b4 it mixed with lt sleet as temp. Went above freezing. Already lost a half inch from melting and compaction.

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7 minutes ago, Daniel Boone said:

 How much have you got now blunder ? Wound up with about 5 here b4 it .iced with lt sleet as temp. Went above freezing. Already lost a half inch from melting and compaction.

2.2 inches. I'm thinking 3 inches in total when all is said and done. I would say it it is still falling at a moderate clip and the temperature is just at freezing.

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Congrats to everyone who got snow, nice cold flood here lol. Looking back I can't help to think of the model solutions that broke the ULL apart into multiple pieces during the transition, with some performing a 90° turn. Just a theory of mine, but I believe that is what may have happened. Instead of a smooth transition, we ended up with multiple pieces at varying layers that jumbled everything up (warm, cold, warm, cold throughout the column). If that is the case, modeling wise our technology hasn't reached that type of resolution ability yet. An interesting system to go back over tho.

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I've rarely been so mad at models but looking at them they were close for a long time.  Hate to say it but the GFS whipped the Euro (and everyone else) badly on thermals. The NAM won the precip totals.  Snow map, I'll give that to the rgem. It buried the NE areas and had the odd map where southern areas of Campbell got more snow than northern. And once you ratio the totals here were about right.  

All in all one for the books along 81, one for the the rest of the valley to remember with caution. When CAD is happening during a storm, it's unlikely to work for anyone west of Knoxville.  

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MRX AFD for tonight:

For later tonight however, the backside of the shortwave trough axis
will shift back overhead. Model soundings show the column saturating
vertically back into the dendritic growth zone again around and
after midnight as this occurs. This supports snow spreading back
southward across much of the forecast area tonight. No significant
changes in that regard as previous forecasts showed at least a
rain/snow mix spreading south to the Georgia border late tonight and
into Monday morning. There are some doubts with regard to
additional snow accumulations tonight. Have another 1-2 inches
advertised in the higher terrain tonight, with another half an inch
possible in the central and northern valley. Some guidance suggests
more is possible, others less, so the going forecast is a middle
ground approach. Suspect this is in good standing given the
expected low level temperature profiles.
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11 minutes ago, John1122 said:

I've rarely been so mad at models but looking at them they were close for a long time.  Hate to say it but the GFS whipped the Euro (and everyone else) badly on thermals. The NAM won the precip totals.  Snow map, I'll give that to the rgem. It buried the NE areas and had the odd map where southern areas of Campbell got more snow than northern. And once you ratio the totals here were about right.  

All in all one for the books along 81, one for the the rest of the valley to remember with caution. When CAD is happening during a storm, it's unlikely to work for anyone west of Knoxville.  

If I'm not mistaken, the GFS is the one that had the 90° turn with some of the pieces while the rest were more smooth. I know I dismissed it as Goofy being Goofy, but maybe it's resolution/algorithm wasn't allowing it to tell a complete story. While the higher resolution models, can "see" things better, thier algorithms as designed to smooth out such "noise". One thing I am taking away for this storm modeling wise, if you see pockets of 850s/925s showing up it's a red flag that something is just not right in the thermals regardless of what transition is going on.

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Regarding tonight's moisture, the Euro tries to spinup a weak 850 vort over mid SC, NAM is farthest East just off the coast but dries out the upper layers quicker, while the GFS takes the middle ground. Euro/GFS are both saturated enough thru 700 layer. Loc of the weak impulse and drying from the NW varies the snowfall from 1/2" to 2".

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Congratulations to everyone who received heavy snow accumulation. I know it didn’t work out for everyone (including me), but it was an interesting system to track. There’s always something to be learned from each system.  I’m hoping some of us can get a small consolation prize tonight.  It looks like lift is increasing and we are starting to get better saturation in the snow growth zone.

 

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  • Mr Bob unpinned this topic

This should probably go in the obs section, but in later years while searching for this storm i thought it would be appropriate to have the accumulations map so you could not only see the storm discussion, but the map for how the storm turned out....  if mods would prefer to move it, no worries.  I just know if I’m looking for this storm in future years I won’t be searching for the obs.  haha

86386330-3CDA-448A-826F-C12BE2C3A9C4.jpeg

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Folks, TRI dropped a 49 year old record with this storm.   TRI set the all-time, single day December snowfall record.  I think someone mentioned that before, but here is the newspaper article. 

https://www.johnsoncitypress.com/Weather/2018/12/10/Official-snow-total-Tri-Cities-Aiport-9-7-inches-breaks-49-year-December-record

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Hearing that Gate City has been hit pretty hard.  [mention=6441]1234snow[/mention], how are all doing?
https://www.wjhl.com/local/thousands-still-without-power-after-winter-storm/1652263559
 


Thanks for asking, Carvers. Power is finally back on. Across the road is still out. I live in Yuma which is across the Clinch Mountain from Gate City and closer to Tennessee. Power has been coming back slowly in sections. Most of Scott County lost power and several still don’t have it. The amount of trees and limbs that came down with this one was significant. I think 11,000 people were still out this morning. Feel really bad for those who don’t have an alternate heat source as the low was 15 last night.

AEP and tree crews have been doing an outstanding job. There are some crews here from Ohio as well. A lot of areas in this county are very hilly/mountainous and are tough to get to. Several people saw 15-17” in the higher locations. Those weren’t reported to NWS and doesn’t show up well on accumulation maps.

I buried freezer and fridge stuff in the snow, so I was able to save most of that. My back is pretty darn sore from shoveling. The snow was extremely heavy in this one. #Saltlife wouldn’t of mattered in this storm.

High temps never got out of the 30’s today. The melt has been slower than yesterday.
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Folks, TRI dropped a 49 year old record with this storm.   TRI set the all-time, single day December snowfall record.  I think someone mentioned that before, but here is the newspaper article. 
https://www.johnsoncitypress.com/Weather/2018/12/10/Official-snow-total-Tri-Cities-Aiport-9-7-inches-breaks-49-year-December-record


Many southern cities now have a greater snow total than Anchorage, Alaska which is sitting at 7.3” for this season! KTRI basically hit their season normal with one storm.
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The heavy snow line here was above 2500 feet. 

Below that 2.5-3 inches were standard. I normally would not have felt bad about getting 2.5 inches here. But it was tough to see the 10+ modeled get down to 20-25 percent of that.

At 2500 feet there was 7 inches. 

At 3500 feet there was 14. 

So totals almost doubled with every 1000 feet of elevation or so.

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