1-30/2-1-26 Arctic Blast, ULL Snow Event

[Stovepipe]

[Uncle Nasty]

I'll be very surprised if surface temps get above 35 tomorrow in the central valley.  Not that there is a chance of rain lol, just saying, some of these upper 30s progs don't feel right before the precip falls.

I fell asleep before our local 11:00 news last night. The 6 o'clock news had our highs for Friday (now today) at 46°. When (if) the moisture arrives, starting as light rain and then changing to snow when the cold air filters in. Channel 3 has us up to 2". Channel 9 a dusting to 1". Curious what they will be showing in a few minutes with the morning crew. 2" is not much, if we can manage to get that, BUT, with temps in the low to mid 20's for Saturday highs, everything should at least be covered white and stick around a few days. I'd rather have 2" on the ground a few days instead of those 4" snows that melt off within 4 or 5 hours. I'm still skeptical about losing what we might get to virga.

Edit to add: our forecast low was 26°. We bottomed out in Ooltewah at 19° and currently sitting at 20°.

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[Uncle Nasty]

Locals aren't impressed. Mostly to our east with a dusting in Chatty. Snow mainly Cleveland and east.

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[Stovepipe]

14 minutes ago, Uncle Nasty said:

Locals aren't impressed. Mostly to our east with a dusting in Chatty. Snow mainly Cleveland and east.

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What's up with the pink pirate shirt?  

[Tucker1027]

Locals aren't impressed. Mostly to our east with a dusting in Chatty. Snow mainly Cleveland and east.

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Feels like they are being conservative until MRX pulls the tigger… channel 3 was calling from 1-2 inches last night and nothing has really changed since then.

They got beat up last weekend pretty bad


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[Stovepipe]

Kids these days with their Kuchera and what not, I'm going with old school Cobb and 06z NAM for 4.5 inches at TYS for this one.  

[Scottie16]

Could be wrong but it looks ahead of schedule.


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[Uncle Nasty]

What's up with the pink pirate shirt?  

Arrrrr. Spot on with Seinfeld!


Off topic and I apologize, but the more I see Olivia Glass, the cuter she gets. Carry on! She looks good in her pirate shirt.



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[housemtnTN]

19 minutes ago, Scottie16 said:

Could be wrong but it looks ahead of schedule.


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It's looking that way to me as well.

[Reb]

25 minutes ago, housemtnTN said:

It's looking that way to me as well.

Yeah breaking out all over N of us….could be that shallow DBZ that models didn’t pick up. Honestly a great sign for our storm IMO

[bearman]

New totals from MRX

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[BlunderStorm]

Flurries in Rosedale and Honaker.

And so it begins!

Edit: I'll update again when things start getting real. With the last system early nucleation took 10 hours before translating to real rates. If we get an obs thread I'll switch over. Good luck gang.

[GBOVolz]

Not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but the winter storm warning has been changed in Knox County for accumulations of 4 to 8 inches


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[GBOVolz]

Not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but the winter storm warning has been changed in Knox County for accumulations of 4 to 8 inches


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[Vol4Life]

6 minutes ago, GBOVolz said:

Not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but the winter storm warning has been changed in Knox County for accumulations of 4 to 8 inches


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Not that it matters a ton, but I’m seeing the last update was at 12:01 AM with 4 to 6 inches.  Am I missing a new update?

[Holston_River_Rambler]

Once again it is time:

[GBOVolz]

Not that it matters a ton, but I’m seeing the last update was at 12:01 AM with 4 to 6 inches.  Am I missing a new update?

Hang on… I’m a moron. I read the HWF and thought it was the WSW…

Hazardous Weather Outlook

Hazardous Weather Outlook
National Weather Service Morristown TN
1226 AM EST Fri Jan 30 2026

NCZ060-061-TNZ012>018-035>047-067>074-081>087-098>102-VAZ001-002-
005-006-008-310530-
Cherokee-Clay-Scott TN-Campbell-Claiborne-Hancock-Hawkins-
Sullivan-Johnson-Morgan-Anderson-Union-Grainger-Hamblen-
Northwest Cocke-Cocke Smoky Mountains-Northwest Greene-
Southeast Greene-Washington TN-Unicoi-Northwest Carter-
Southeast Carter-Roane-Loudon-Knox-Jefferson-Northwest Blount-
Blount Smoky Mountains-North Sevier-Sevier Smoky Mountains-
Sequatchie-Bledsoe-Rhea-Meigs-McMinn-Northwest Monroe-
Southeast Monroe-Marion-Hamilton-Bradley-West Polk-East Polk-Lee-
Wise-Scott VA-Russell-Washington VA-
1226 AM EST Fri Jan 30 2026 /1126 PM CST Thu Jan 29 2026/

This Hazardous Weather Outlook is for portions of southwest North
Carolina...east Tennessee and southwest Virginia.

.DAY ONE...Today and Tonight

Snow will move into the area from the north this afternoon into
the evening and intensify overnight, especially in the eastern
half of the area.

.DAYS TWO THROUGH SEVEN...Saturday through Thursday

Snow will continue through the day on Saturday before gradually
tapering off north to south during the evening. Heavy snow
accumulations of 4 to 8 inches are expected in the eastern half of
the area with lesser but still significant snow accumulations
further south and west. The lightest amounts will be in the
southern Plateau and southern Valley. Very cold temperatures will
allow snow to accumulate quickly and on most surfaces


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[Holston_River_Rambler]

Johnson City has been upgraded to Major impacts as of this AM on the WSSI severity index:

[GBOVolz]

Johnson City has been upgraded to Major impacts as of this AM on the WSSI severity index:

2-6” inch’s of snow in Knoxville will absolutely cause major issues. People start heading to the ditches when there’s snow in the forecast.


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[Windspeed]

Latest RGEM...

[housemtnTN]

Anyone have a good idea of when this kicks off? I'm seeing noon to 1 or so on future radar (TWC app).

[Holston_River_Rambler]

7 minutes ago, housemtnTN said:

Anyone have a good idea of when this kicks off? I'm seeing noon to 1 or so on future radar (TWC app).

I think at this point noon - 1 is probably a good call, but I would just watch radar and wait for the snow to reach the ground. HRRR is struggling with the radar depiction, even when it initializes with the current radar. You can see below it initializes with the current radar:

 

But loses it in the next frames. 

 

 

[GBOVolz]

Latest RGEM...

This is 10/1 also


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[Holston_River_Rambler]

Still some dry air to overcome. And I'm guessing there are some people looking at the sounding below who have seen a model sounding, but aren't quite sure what it means, so I have put a few (hopefully) helpful tags. 

 

Above sounding is for around 8am this morning ,near Morristown, just as a site kind of in the middle of the area most likely to get snow. 

Red and green lines show the temperature and dewpoint respectively at any given level between the ground and the tropopause.  the ground is at the bottom of the line and the tropopause is at the top. You want those two to be together or close, to get precipitation.

Note that on the above sounding they are still a bit apart, especially lower down in the atmosphere. 

For good snow growth, you want the dewpoint and temperature to be together in the yellow zone, the dendritic growth zone (DGZ). DGZ has to do with temperature. There is additional info about the DGZ for a particular sounding in the box on the far bottom right. 

Temperature and saturation can effect snow dendrite type:

You'll probably see some soundings on here today or have already seen some that shows a HUGE DGZ. 

 

Lastly we have Omega, called so because (I think) it is the greek letter used to denote forcing. I am not a mathemataizer, so here is a description: