Holston_River_Rambler

You know, we've not had to pull out the old "the energy hasn't been sampled yet" weenie rule for this one yet. Hopefully that's a good sign. The players are lining up: That northern energy is really digging in, almost north to south. It's after that southern disturbance and it's going to catch it.

Tod Howell WBIR throws down the TV met gauntlet: "snow will stick to itself" "rates will overcome"

Lord have mercy:

3km NAM:

Some of those sleet soundings on the 18z NAM have pretty narrow windows for melting. We will hug MRX: "I believe the strong CAA (and resulting increase insnow ratios) and rapid cooling of the atmosphere due to dynamiccooling will support a bulk of the QPF falling as snow."

That's ideal. I want to be stuck in Boone for 3 - 4 weeks. I will be at the base of Grandfather mountain and want to have to march up to the summit to see any hope of rescue from the HISTORIC snow drifts that approach the swinging bridge. Hopefully the NWS will have to invent a new warning criterium for what I will experience. Ultra Blizzard Warning, colored black like the color my flesh would be after only minutes out of doors unprepared. I want to see the tears of those who dread snow and ice to freeze as the flow down their frostbiten faces. They'll have to rename the month of March "Snow," it will be so historic, so dreadful, so cold, so snowy. Roads will be impassable and antifreeze frozen. Spring Break will be a mere legend, a long forgotten dream in the hearts of children, covered like the daffodils and redbuds in feet of icy cement. I want to read a NWS forecast discussion with words like "isothermal," and phrases like "quasigeostropic forcing out the wazoo," "frontogentic mesoscale banding," and "isentropic upthrust." The lifting mechanisms need to be compared to geologic forces, but playing out in meteorological time scales. Heavy. At. Times.

Even gets me in on the snow in Boone with a flatter look. I'm not sure how flat this thing will be though.

Oh yeah, that is eerie, lol

3hr mean snowfall: light green = 1-2 and dark green = 2-3

I've been watching them for most storms and may have missed a few runs here and there, but IMO that is the best SREF run of the season, lol.

SREF Plumes are......uuhhhh......interesting... Might be a fun 12z suite incoming.

6z Euro looks pretty much steady to me:

Hi all over and in the far blue mountains. Sadly I will be just west of Boone (halfway between Boone and banner Elk) for what right looks like a nice plateau TN snow. I've never been there for a storm like this, so what are some reasonable expectations? Most of the models keep the snow west of the mts, but I also know elevation can make a huge difference once the low moves NE and you get the thermal profile crashing. Looks like I will be right at 3200 feet, just off 105 and up a hill. I also suspect the models have a hard time resolving rain and snow lines in the mountains, but don't really have any experience.

Not enough coffee to dig into exciting things like frontogenesis right not, but I think we had a pretty nice slp pass on some of those runs. Been prepping for my Boone trip which all but guarantees someone gets hammered. I'll be following along though and may force the people I'm staying with to drive me the 20 minutes up to Beech Mt.

I guess it would have been more accurate to say the precip is more SW -> NE than SSW -> NNE

0z NAM looks like it will come in better than 18z. Precip. is more WSW -> ENE, instead of SW -> NE. A little flatter flow than 18z. Still a bit of LP into the east TN foothills, but better than 18z IMO.

Yeah: weathermodels is so slow sometimes, the precip type is only out to hour 30 and this is as close as I can zoom

Actually I got a second to grab this (no Kuchera available):

Can't post the map right now, but the 18z Euro looked pretty similar to 12z, maybe even a tick weaker and SE with the precip shield.

I don't think there was a huge change in the 18z NAM. It's still past 60 hours anyway. I think you could argue it was flatter in some ways (surface low placement at 6z Saturday) and more amped in others (surface low strength at 9z Saturday) than its 12z run.

0z EPS left and 12z EPS right:

Looks like the mean went down at Nashville and Jackson KY too. To me that signals that it sees a flatter system overall. Of course all this is based on the SREF and it doesn't always indicate what the NAM will do during that long excruciating wait between the 12z Euro and the 18z NAM.

If the SREF H5 vorticity map is right, the NAM will probably come in flatter too. Probably a good thing with a last minute NW adjustment still on the table.