Holston_River_Rambler

Hmmm:

Stepped out for firewood and was just thinking the same thing. First cold front I can remember in along while where we could say it has a cold wind in front of it!

The radar doesn't look too bad. You can see that either some are cutting in and out or they are having trouble with how low the precip is: Even a little bit of a connection to the Gulf.

Might could be time to whip out ye olden topo map for analysis and disucssion : I'll be interested to see how my area does, since I'm in a limbo situation. 1300 feet or so, just on the edge of the plateau:

I think that was a textbook ninja Carvers

Looks like Cumberland and Fentress counties in a WSW now too

Well, I thought it couldn't go up much more..... At some point that has to drop pretty precipitously.

Front is pretty easy to see on the radar this AM:

Winter Solstice looking SE over the Great Eastern Valley from Frozen Head SP:

MRX did go with the jet enhancing frontogenesis for the forcing mechanism wrt the front so hopefully that is a good sign for snowfall. I mean, it isn't the big story and it ain't a lot of snow, but even a crust would make the arctic chill more enjoyable for me.

Speaking of Ninos I've been struck lately by the STJ involvement in a storm around the New Year as depicted by the GFS: Watch that little jet streak over Mexico get pulled up into the Pac jet. GFS may not have the details, but it has been very insistent on something like that happening. To be clear I don't think there is a chance for snow with this, just interested to see the STJ

I think we've been in a pretty stable pattern since October: 2.5 warm weeks , 1.5 cold weeks. If that continues we should rotate back through around around Jan. 20th give or take a few days. If it doesn't, we probably have a major pattern change. Raindancewx was mentioning that 84-85 was a good (but not perfect) analog so far as this winter has progressed. He thought maybe Jan 20 - Feb 20 was the best chance for our forum area.

No where to go but down for the SOI?

If anyone is looking for a reason to hug the NAM this afternoon during happy hour, you could consider that it has been trending ever so slightly from a purely N --> S precip shield associated with the arctic front to one that is more SSW --> NNE. I feel like that orientation is better for any anafrontal sort of lift for precip.

It could just be the way pivotal rendered the sounding, but thought I'd look under the hood to see what the Euro saw differently from the CMC and GFS.

Thought I'd check out the Euro soundings to see how it is handling the airmass after the front and I think it gave me a new weenie rule! If the sounding shows the dewpoint being higher than the air temperature, something could be off with the way the model is rendering that particular area:

One of the GFS soundings is pretty awesome in one of the pockets of heavy snow (this one near Monticello KY): 11000' DGZ fully saturated.

CMC still holding strong overnight with the relaxation only idea GEFS looks toasty: EPS: EPS looks like a compromise between the GEFS and GEPS, at least to me.

I can't tell if the GFS is showing a wave running the front to produce the anafrontal precip, or if it is one of those deals where the GFS still thinks there's precip after the front moves through. I think what we want at this point is something like Christmas 2020: You can see the shortwave throwing precip back as the precip shield takes on that weird stretched S shape: I went back to the Dandrige Dollop storm thread and found some of the H5 vort maps to see how that one played out. Sorry these are random snap shots of the models depiction of that storms evolution, but that was all I could find: Euro from about 130 hrs out: CMC from around 144 hrs out: RGEM from about 80 hrs out: Each of those has some indication of a secondary vort lobe that spawns the leeside low. This one is just a wrecking ball, but there are small individual vort whisps that keep some divergence after the arctic air arrives: Euro looks less good with regards to that potential: GFS also has us in *gasp* not the right entrance region of a jet streak, but the left exit (also favorable for upper divergence and lift): Euro is similar, but a little further north with the jet: Those are probably the differences in the amount of precip each model drops after the front blows through. Apologies if that was too much, but I kind of wanted to work through the what and why of the set up, so I could know have a handle on my own expectations lol. I like the leeside idea and want it to work since it has worked in the past (Dandridge Dollop storm, Christmas 2020), but as of now (admittedly 100 hours out) ensembles aren't too thrilled: GEFS:

Ensembles starting to get the floody look way out there. Jet accelerates over the TN or OH Valley as the mean trough dumps in the center of the US and we land on the right entrance region: EPS: GEFS: Could change on a dime, but we know how we do with rain in a La Nina, so......hopefully it passes through or some blocking modulates it south of us.

I'm with you on this NAO stuff. I've yet to see one that helped much. Maybe that'll change when we get the Magical Moderate maybe Modoki El Nino next year. I think the last time an NAO did much was 2009 - 10? I've only participated on the weather boards for a few years now, but before that when I started people were always looking for them. Apparently they've been very rare over the past decade or so, so maybe 09-10 worked so well that after that it was all people could think of? If everything has to be perfect with them, are really just chasing unicorns like 9-10 and 95-96? Some of y'all are a lot older than me though, so maybe you remember better NAO times. Maybe the AMO has to flip for them to really help?

EPS member 15 as promised in the other thread:

Might as well snow good old EPS member 15 in banter too.

Before I post anything for the snow city maps, check out the spread of the EPS members for the temps on the 23rd (I picked Chatty since it is typically a warmer spot): Elizabethton: Nashville: Chatty: Memphis: London, KY: