nrgjeff

Good news for the Plateau, Mountains, and maybe Nashville. Both waves appear to be night and morning timing now. Gosh, when did snow forecasting get as diurnal as severe forecasting? Anyway seems like a dusting to half inch along and north of I-40, except that ends on the Plateau (inclusive of course). Upper Plateau and into Kentucky looks like 1-2 inches, locally more Plateau. Bad news: Great Valley boundary layer is still a no-go. Even Nashville looks better than TYS and MRX. I have trouble taking out TRI, but the models are not friendly. Tonight looks like cyclonic flow plus short-wave hybrid, decent moisture left over. Friday night and Saturday morning looks less juicy now. Southern Apps may get their turn though.

Flooding might be worth a thread, or go ahead in the existing Flooding thread. Keeps this one winter. Then we got severe going too in that thread. Mississippi sup on the marine warm front as I type. 12Z Euro came in similar Friday and Saturday. Cyclonic flow aloft with short-wave Friday. Another wave from the southwest Saturday. Both look cold enough Plateau and Mountains.

Lookout Valley west of Chattanooga, flooding on I-24 per Covenant Transport Met. I-24 was closed as of 3pm Eastern Wednesday.

Enhanced risk for central Mississippi into northwest Alabama! Well Dixie has a funny idea of how to do an overnight rave. Jokes aside, I'd ditch the hatched but 10% might be OK. I'd introduce 30% wind though. But the HRRR! But the SFO run? OK back to weather. Both versions of the NAM temper things compared to the HRRR. NAM looks believable given all the cloud cover. However the marine warm sector has made it well north in Mississippi. North Alabama is still conditional on precip. I actually like the wind fields not pegged out, just seasonably strong. However the low level CAPE lacks. Don't take much at night in Dixie, but it needs to be more than 50. LI looks good because it is above the warm layer aloft. Figure storms can root for a couple Mississippi tornadoes this afternoon. Alabama might get to sleep well with just wind if it does not destabilize in the low levels. Believe the sounding is a bigger problem than upper level wind directions relative to the boundaries. It's a quasi-lifting boundary not a CF in the risk area. Either way, I think it's mainly wind. 2pm Central Update: South Mississippi supercell rooting on the marine later warm front. Other cells coming out of Louisiana may root in Mississippi.

Friday seems to have perked up on cyclonic flow aloft, lingering moisture, and a little short-wave. Upper Plateau to Mountains is favored, along with well north of I-40. Boundary layer struggles continue. Saturday downshifted some models, probably because that short-wave fills with time. However the column is forecast colder than it was yesterday. Saturday looks better along I-40. Thickness, partials, 700 mb are all colder. OK it might snow a little in Chattanooga, but boundary layer likely denies sticking. GFS totally trashed the 6-15 day. Dammit! Hopefully that convection over Indonesia is just diurnal. If so the GFS got tricked like SFO celebrating early! If not, we are SFO and the MJO is the relentless Chiefs offense.

Saturday has downshifted a bit, but Friday looks good NWF. Two small events, NWF and clipper ain't bad. Arguably it's even better skiing. Friday looks juicier behind the main rain. Plus a short-wave is forecast so it is hybrid NWF and cyclonic flow aloft. Saturday that short-wave is filling a bit, but the temp profiles look colder compared to forecast yesterday. Despite lower QPF, snow amounts are not that degraded mountains. I'm not sure about a big time snow chase; but, I definitely like the skiing. These NC ski areas are specialists in artificial snow augmentation after rain. It'll be fine. Still early on the track, Catty/Maggie vs Avery Co. Hopefully ALL!

ECMWF both 00/12Z stays friendly for mountain snow lovers. Weekend mountain snow event might not be getting much NWS or media attention since they have to deal with the heavy rain first (over a wider area). Day 5 is a crap shoot in the South, except in the Mountains where terrain can forgive tracking errors. Vort max dives through the Plains and pivots Tenn Valley, not bad if you want a juicy clipper hybrid. 500/700 vorts are both at/north of I-40; so, lower elevations probably will be disappointed by a warm boundary layer. (Partial thicknesses are not as cold as total 1,000-500 mb). However temperature profiles and partial/critical thicknesses look great at elevation. It is a little early to drill down those charts, but again mountains offer a forecaster some cushion. 12Z Euro finally got to Saturday. Its vort max is slightly south and surface Ts slightly colder mountains. Hope this turns out to be great news for ski areas, both the operators and the skiers / riders. Snow conditions should be good, in contrast to other cold following rain fronts. If 3-8 inches of new snow accompanies snow-making overnight, it'll be pretty nice skiing and riding this weekend.

Weekend snow north of I-40 (and perhaps along parts of I-40) looks decent this morning. Euro remains on board, and even ticked south overnight. Still awaiting 12Z Euro. I still think snow will not make it south to the 540 thickness line / 0C at 850 line. Low levels look warm and much of the event is Saturday daytime. 500/700 mb vort max still along/north of I-40. Finally, who believes Chattanooga will get snow? Shows 540/0C over town, but nah. OK, serious again, the more reliable output still keeps snow an elevation event for the Plateau and Mountains. However snow levels are a touch lower, and accumulation at elevation a bit higher. Surface HP comes in behind the system. Might get some cold enough air for BNA/TYS/MRX but it's tough w/o HP already in place and/or dropping from the N/NE. Tri Cities has a slightly better shot at snow, esp if some wrap-around. While it's a little early to drill down partial thicknesses, they are not as bullish as the total 1,000-500 mb thickness. They are almost as far south, but not quite. The 1,000-850 mb hints at warm boundary layer. The 850-700 mb hints at the vort max a bit north. Again it's early for that tool, and I only have it on the GFS. Looking ahead. Carvers offers a path to a nice encore. It could happen given IO Pac convection. Some is in a decent spot. However the IO is firing too. Depends when/how long that meanders over warmer phases of Indonesia. Also if any northern stream TPV energy fails to catch the West trough, SER will be stubborn. Euro is with Carvers. Fingers crossed.

Saturday looks like an elevation snow north of I-40, perhaps limited to just the Upper Plateau and Mountains. TRI might get lucky, but currently looks like too much WAA up the Valley. That and concerns Carvers notes above. Thickness and 850 mb look right, but that darn boundary layer spoils again. Upstairs one sees the 500 mb and 700 mb vort maxima go at/north of the area. It's cookbook meteorology, but pretty reliable, that sucks.. the life out of the system. Sure enough 2m progs are too warm to stick. Exception would be a narrow moderate to heavy snow band. Always possible cool air gets trapped MRX north - even better for TRI. Current progs show nothing like that, but it's day 6. Unfortunately I'm fairly confident taking out TYS and BNA. I'm not even thinking about CHA. Looking farther out, watching the SER re-appear after some weekend modeling feels like probably how SFO fans felt 4Q. Too early? On the bright side, we KC fans felt like when a TROWAL surprises with big snow after starting as rain. Might be my only chance this winter to write TROWAL.

Yes I barely survived the heart pounding come-back. Thank you all. KC Chiefs alleviated my winter malaise in about 6 minutes of Q4. Amazing end to a 50 year wait! Back here in the Valley, those snow slides above. Zero Chattanooga, lol!

Despite all the advances in numerical weather modeling, that hybrid in-situ (local surface ridge vs huge high) CAD with dry then saturate column keeps surprising. Congratulations to those who received snow today! And to the ski areas! The need it going into a weekend.

I agree with Carvers that we are hunting for a quick break within an awful pattern. The coveted 2-3 weeks of cold is almost off the table. The freak storm on a sharp baroclinic boundary? Heck, that can happen into March historically. Seriously, I think in the current regime we have February to get lucky. Normally sustained cold is hard to come by after February 15. However a one-off snow can happen almost as easily in late February as in early Feb. Even if the troughs do not reshuffle (see Carvers previous pages too) the other path is a stout system ginning up on that (forecast) tight temperature gradient early to mid-month. Upstairs the jet stream will probably be strong too. Miracles can and do happen on sharp baroclinic zones. Of course it could be heavy rain or severe too. Despite my rants, look for me in the severe thread, I still hope for something winter. Forget the charts for just a minute. January and February I consider the snow months. It's only half-time. November and December are dark cold months, less daylight than here at the end of January, but also less snow. While starting 3rd period (hockey) for cold temps / met winter, it is just half-time for snow. Of course it needs to be below freezing to stick daytime after 15 Feb. And we need some really big breaks!

Euro weeklies are a pile of rubbish. Yeah we got cold fronts in both the 6-10 day and 11-15 day, but the West trough just keeps reloading. IO and Indonesia convection just keeps blossoming (mild signal). Weeklies are less reliable 4-6 weeks; but, I'll sadly capitulate the next 3 weeks are trash. Then by late February it takes are more robust cold anomaly to deliver. Look for me in the severe weather thread. Might as well get started early and often!

Agree Doke Azubuike got away with more then 5 fouls Saturday. Doke is his nickname at KU. Tennessee played a solid game. I do expect the Vols to keep improving. Defense is good when someone like Doke is not catching lobs. Of course when they are not playing Kansas I cheer for Tennessee. Springfield MO does not like to hype blizzards. I remember out there they'd be WS warning while everyone else went blizzard warning or ice storm warning (if frozen). There is an augment for just one warning; but, specifics also help differentiate threats. Entire NWS is thinking about fewer warning categories with greater highlights of threats in text. I'm way behind in the new Feb/March thread. Is it pretty depressing? Honestly can't believe how we find new ways to flush winter. I guess read the Climate Change subforum.

KC Chiefs play our first Super Bowl in 50 years. I will be in the panic room on Sunday. I have a West Virginia ski trip planned in February. Every winter we manage to find worse weather patterns. I'm really not sure which makes me more neurotic, but the European weekly charts are trash!

Absolutely, for the whole subforum region. Preach it! North vort max first (for temps) works north of I-40 and at elevation but we know how it goes for Chattanooga. Post frontal choke job! Agree though I am happy for others who get snow, within our subforum or even another region (NC). Maybe Super Bowl weekend. OK 30 minutes 'till Rumble in Lawrence KS. I forgot to watch Game Day, but they probably just talked about 'the chair' and fight. Of course that won't happen today. Everyone enjoy the game!

Kansas version of the Panic Room is fighting including WWE style chair. Only a folding chair would have been a better match. But this is the Allen Field House analog, lol! Expect the Jayhawks to be low key Saturday. Self is extremely disappointed in them for fighting. They'll play their defense and quick game, but no drama. Azubuike will still be there blocking, and shooting from the field. His free throws are still a work in progress - kind of like winter!

Ferris Bueller at the Chicago Art Institute. At least that's what I see.

Wow @Holston_River_Rambler those are great satellite interpretations on page 4. I think in some cases winds converge lee side of a single mountain or narrow range. Bernoulli effect accelerates air moving around the mountain; then, it converges lee side. This does not explain the effect perpendicular to long ranges. Could be some kind of wave interaction. Finally Sunday night it seems some sort of low level wave was retrograding down the front from the northeast. Could have resulted from low level air sloshing around mountain ranges at FROPA. Also could have been some sort of gravity wave. Yeah it's billiard ball meteorology again, lol!

LOL @tnweathernut Panic and Banter are pretty similar during winter in the South. KCHA did have flurries this morning, I mean just a few spits of flakes barely even flurries. Looks like elsewhere had more fizzards and snow showers per surface charts and the Obs thread here.

Panic room is in effect. Cold pattern forecasts fell apart like the Houston (blue) lead over KC (red) last weekend. That Asheville flight would have come in handy for AMS, but I did not go. Instead I'm in the panic room. Oh well. Everyone have a good weekend!

I'm breaking up with Himawari. That fell apart horribly in just a few days. What did the models miss? I wonder if a Southern hemisphere tropical cyclone threw off things earlier. Massive flare up of convection in the Modoki zone (Mon/Tue) ended up drifting south of the Equator and a topical cyclone developed. Early week models assumed sustained that convection, with or without a TC. The TC takes most of the energy south with it. North of the equator convection has calmed down. Indonesia and Malaysia have some new thunderstorms, though mostly diurnal. Anyway it is not a favorable area for SE cold. Models want to flare up the Indian ocean soon, with a ridge over South China in several days, which is not helpful for us either. Massive cold fail is a disappointment. However the US southern stream remains active. Next week is cold/dry. Models still show a cuter Jan 24-25. After that Ensembles are all over the place with storm tracks. Even the warm EPS has a few lows south, but yeah cutters too. One just hopes for south with cold air in place (from somewhere, lol).

An even bigger version around the Smokies. If south or southeast low level winds accelerate around mountains it would enhance low level inflow. Then farther off the ground south to southwest winds could be guided to turn with height due to the direction of the Valley. I'm just speculating on a hypothesis. Similar debate is ongoing for central Oklahoma (Moore/Norman) and the southeast facing Canadian River Valley. That's low levels only of course. The Plains can take care of its own mid-levels. In both cases it is hard to prove causation, but correlation is notable. They have tried to model the OK case.

Just in European weeklies might. And the 12Z EPS is Frozen. Sadly I don't remember anything in 2017 though. Must have been the one that broke the snow drought for Mid Tenn. Southeast Tennessee was missed. Our last gems were 2015 and 2014. That does not count travelling to Calhoun, GA I think December 2017. At any rate it's time for some action forum wide! Keep our fingers crossed. ECMWF weekly charts are lit for 3 straight weeks starting next week. Big AK ridge AND above normal heights Western Canada. It's +PNA though not textbook Bering Sea / Aleutians. Important thing is cold dumps east of the Rockies. None of that West tough BS. It's full tilt trough Greenland to SE USA. Please be right.

Porch chase Saturday, January 11, 2020: East Brainerd, Chattanooga, Tenn. Friday evening I noticed actual and forecast soundings still lacked low-level CAPE. The skinny mid-level CAPE would have been plenty with more low level push. Frontal lift is just forced, and gives that squall line. More low-level CAPE would have given convective push for a broken line. Then I saw videos from Texas of the lowest contrast Dixie slop one can imagine. Decided not to chase Saturday. Saturday morning I awoke to a chase partner discussing an outing to North Alabama. I encouraged him like I believe is the right thing to do, but reiterated my plan to stay home and watch sports on TV all day. He had one other; so, I felt OK encouraging him not solo. He started to reel in his target to Lookout Mtn. I reminded him if he's going out, he might as well go all the way to Sand Mountain. The latter is flatter, bigger, and has lots of agriculture - which means fewer trees up top. Indeed tornado warnings were issued from Cullman Co. northeast. Meanwhile back in Chattanooga Kansas hoops was laying an egg at home so I switched to Weather Nation via Roku TV. Sling has zero weather. Then when it got real locally over-the-air TV for coverage was appropriate. Goodness I felt like I'm back in Wichita waiting to get slammed! I was tempted to drive 10-15 minutes to either US Express or Costco because either place has excellent visibility. Tornado warning went up for Soddy Daisy; so, maybe I could see that at at distance from US Express. Another area of weak rotation was approaching Ringgold; and, one can see a little bit at one of the I-75 exits. Costco was removed from the list, sitting between areas of interest. NFL Playoff started so I stayed home. Usually indecision is not rewarded well. In this case, the porch chase was a gem! High winds to 60 mph buffet the house. A few minutes prior I am pleasantly surprised at how much one can see through trees in the winter. I know that from watching sunsets, but had to remember for severe. No real shelfie, so I was glad I did not go to another spot for nothing. However the clouds are ominous and exciting. It gets dark and one can see the flat rain look behind the leading edge of angry rolling clouds. Occasional CG flashes bright with booming thunder. As low clouds race from south to north the wind picks up markedly. Sheets of rain about two blocks away rush from my left to right, looking west. Lightning thunder flash boom! The curtain of wind blown rain approaches quickly, but I can discern it enveloping each house and group of trees. Some sheets of rain are separated while the wall rapidly advances at me. Rain is horizontal as it sweeps over my home and locations. It slams against south-facing windows. I get to a north-facing window. Yeah center of the house is what we preach. Wind whips between the houses like TWC hurricane videos. Probably 60 mph this case but only for a couple minutes. A couple more CG strokes are vivid with sharp cracks of loud thunder. Trees sway but not like they would with leaves. Torrential rain continues along with 40-50 mph winds another 5 minutes. Wind dies down but occasional CG and thunder continue. About 2 hours later moderate rain ends with an orange sunset and rainbow. That my friends, is so Great Plains!