Carvers Gap

The RGEM got it mostly right here....timing and p-type and duration.

Boom goes the 12z GFS.

I just drove from Elizabethton to Kingsport. Elizabethton is sleet/zr. Boones Creek is sleet. I26/I81 interchange was snow/sleet. Rock Springs was snow. Kingsport is light to moderate snow. Roads are beginning to be snow and ice covered, especially bridges, shady patches and areas where the snow is falling the hardest.

Models are probably guilty of breaking down the pattern a bit too quickly in the longer range. The 500 pattern will begin to reverse around the 20th with 5-10 days of variability after that. The trough will likely move into the Mountain West. Right now we are kind of stealing a decent month from a winter that maybe didn't support that at first glance. But sometimes it snows where it wants to snow regardless of the pattern. We have about 3 more weeks before we really and truly (probably) take a break.

My February analog package is well AN. I don't see a lot of ways around that. January was the wild card. March can be crazy cold. Again, the control runs of the Weeklies are not super enthusiastic about taking the cold from the East. If anything, they have cold which stretches from Montana to the Apps.

I have watched three model suites since posting about this storm. Here are some observations… 1. We must pay attention to the GFS northwest trend, but remember this Jan 6 system. When it broke from modeling, it began cutting to Michigan. Then, over time it made its way to Tallahassee. It finally settled somewhere in the middle. I suspect it(Jan 6) was too far southeast to begin with. It has now corrected northwestward. I suspect we see the Jan 10 system jog back some. Its ensembles at 12z supported that. I wonder with this Jan 6 system if the best solution would have been to blend the GFS deterministic and the GEFS with about a week to go? 2. The GFS can score coups. It can also miss like it did with the Ohio State game with about a week to go. It under modeled the cold and speed of the cold front. I saw fans with a week to go talking about how the forecast was in the 30s. The GFS can miss. 3. The low in the Lakes is a big problem. I noticed it this morning. 4. This phase is a bit too intricate for my liking. Every, single run at 500 is wildly different, 5. If we want a big storm, we have to live on the edge of the rain and snow line. 6. Gonna take time, looking at ensembles, and looking at trends on deterministic runs. 7. As this gets closer to the coast, it will dial in. But until then, we have a few more suites of wild solutions.

I'm bout to go to sleep. Ya'll get the Euro on board!

It also had the Jan 10th system looking primed. It had it phased which it didn't at 12z.

BTW, the 18z EURO AIFS has some semblance of the same 0z GFS system for the 10th. They aren't too far apart.

I believe the 0z GFS is going to line another up after the 10th.

Both. The Miller A talk and big storm talk is Jan 10. I think John and Boone are talking Sunday. Sorry, I just jumped in. I am not usually up this late!

CMC with ice in the Panhandle....that has been wrong every, single time this year. At 500, the energy gets sheared into about a 3,000 mile ribbon about 200 miles wide. Now, I still think the trailer will cause some mischief as it hits that stalled streamer(no other word for it that I can think of). Gonna be like hitting a hot wire.

Waiting to see if the CMC can gain some latitude. It is cooking something up in the GOM.

The 0z GFS says, "It's Miller time."

Game on, folks. The 0z Icon has it. The 0z GFS has it. Boom.

No real criticisms other than that is just so odd looking.

MIght be the most bizarre weather advisory map I have ever seen.

Just looking at some social media posts. It looks like some areas in Johnson Co, TN, received 2-3" of snow(or more). Some areas of SW VA have been impacted as well by these strong snow bands. I am surprised not to see lightning or hear thunder with these. We have had a 2-3 bands roll through MBY. It has melted know, but it was a heavy dusting to 0.5" of snow at times.

These snow squalls this afternoon in NE TN and SW VA have meant business. Interestingly, there will now be snow on the ground in some places(that weren't expecting it) well before the next system arrives Sunday. There are places in Johnson Co and in SW VA with 1-3" of snow on the ground now. Roads are a mess. Very much overperformed. This cold front has been strong.

MRX afternoon disco excerpt.... An impactful winter storm is possible on Sunday across the region with impacts expected across portions of our forecast area, especially the northern half. A cold, dry airmass will be located across the region on Saturday night with southwesterly flow aloft and isentropic lift increasing ahead of a low pressure system across the Southern Great Plains. This isentropic ascent will produce light precipitation, mainly west of Interstate 75, early Sunday morning with precipitation gradually beginning to increase eastward throughout the day. Very cold, dry air will be in place at the surface. RAP forecast soundings now extend out through 18z Sunday, and these soundings show wet bulb temperatures in the mid 20s. Precipitation will have a difficult time making it to the surface at first with evaporative cooling keeping temperatures colder into the afternoon. This is one of these situations where cold air will already be across the region, and models often do not resolve the shallow cold air very well. This causes many global models with coarser resolution to quickly bring WAA into the area faster than observed. The higher-res mesoscale model guidance is showing this more realistically with temperatures across the northern half of the forecast area struggling to get above freezing until late Sunday afternoon. The RAP soundings are showing this with temperatures across the central valley remaining near 31-32 even at 18z Sunday. Overall QPF totals are not very high, but even light amounts around 0.1 inch would result in hazardous, icy travel. With the southerly flow, downslope and warming conditions across the western mountain foothills will result in a warm nose west of the mountain chain across the foothills. This means that the highest probabilities of freezing rain ice accumulation greater than 0.1 inch will be north of Interstate 40 and northwest of Interstate 81. The highest ice accumulation is expected near the Kentucky line and into southwest Virgina where 0.1 to 0.25 inch of ice accumulation is currently forecast, with locally higher amounts.

Seeing lots of reports that 23 is a mess.

18z NAM jogs north. SW VA under WSW.

Just getting pounded by a band here. Hearing Bristol got thumped.

Yeah, if they get it...odds are that you are as well.

With the exception of a couple of western border counties, all bordering counties in Kentucky(w/ Tenn) have been placed under winter storm watches. edit: Sorry, John....Just saw your post about the same.