Carvers Gap

Been a week since I last posted. My wife is in the medical field, and I have been delivering band fundraiser mulch. Time has been at a premium. Finished the last run today just as schools were shut down for a couple of weeks minimum. I appreciate everyone for keeping the fires lit. Best wishes to everyone during the coming months, and my hopes are certainly for continued warm and humid weather. Sounds kind of weird, but this crappy weather pattern we have had all winter might actually have been a blessing in disguise.

Folks in the northern Rockies have to be licking their chops. Yeah, have to think a drought is coming and will be abrupt. Preparing mentally to be hand watering the garden for at least the second half of summer. Fortunately, saved a ton of money on A/C this winter. Going to spend it all to cool this summer. LOL!

After days of rain, snow, severe...this weekend was a pleasant reprieve. The sun was out and skies were blue on Saturday and Sunday. We drove down to Chucky Doak on Saturday for individual ratings on music instruments. Reminded my of Montana. Greene County is a beautiful area of the country.

Brief snow shower here in west Kingsport.

The day started out fairly comfortable. Wind is now blowing. Temp is 43 with a wind chill of 36. Should be the last day that feels like winter for some time. Radar is showing some pretty intense snow squalls in SW VA and SE KY. Typical early March wx.

There is a remembrance service at 6:00PM central in Cookeville. A press conference will follow immediately which will provide updates. Local authorities are still trying to locate dozens of people in an effort to determine their whereabouts. They may very well be in hotels or with family members. Trying times for sure. If folks on the forum know a displaced person due to the weather events of last night, make sure they have checked-in with local authorities.

Some good radio work being done by 94.1 out of Cookeville, TN. Been some great information all day on the station. Survey team reported 175+mph winds and was on the ground for 50 miles. Nashville area was listed as an EF3. They will be in Putnman Co tomorrow to investigate the damage there. So, we should get some updates about the intensity on the Plateau after their work there. https://newstalk941.com

With La Nina conditions forecast to develop, will be interesting to see the range of observations from the beginning of this thread to the last. An incredibly stormy night has come to an end. The sun is out. Please reference the severe thread regarding the powerful tornado that swept through middle TN overnight. Our thoughts and prayers are with the people in that region. If you are a new poster and not comfortable in posting in the pattern discussion thread, this is a great place to start. Give it a shot!

One of my former students is working radio right now in Cookeville. He has been on the air for twelve hours straight.

Just awful.

My thoughts and prayers are with those families affected by the tornado. Hate to hear about your brother's and mom's homes @Matthew70.

@Stovepipe, when do you plant your tomato and pepper seeds? Also, when do you drop them in the ground...seems like you put yours in earlier than me? I am considering an earlier start this year...

@Stovepipe, tomato seedlings are up. Peppers always take longer, but a few of those are up. Eggplant, dill, and basil are up on the seed starting racks. My tomato varieties this year are some early season heirlooms combined with varieties with strong disease resistance. Shooting for some earlier varieties to avoid late season blight and septoria. Since I am starting my own plants from seeds this year, I am hoping that my variety choices and seed starting practices will eliminate some of the disease in my tomatoes a couple of years ago. I also left the garden fallow last summer. I know that stuff stays in the soil for a long time, so hoping this will up my chances for a better harvest of the red fruit. Garlic and bunching onions from the fall are going to be a strong harvest. They are looking really good.

Going to roll with moderate to strong La Nina, -QBO, MJO 4-6 quiet, more blocking than normal. Lots of conflicting signals which result in periods of extreme warmth and extreme cold that result in slightly AN temps, but bouts of severe cold at times. Going to be moderate/strong Nina vs high latitude blocking. I am not sold on a -NAO, but do feel the EPO/PNA and AO will cooperate at times. I feel it is a decent gamble to say that it will be cooler than DJF from this winter. Just hoping the La Nina doesn't take hold during summer as it will get very hot and dry if so. I suspect August and September have the potential to really be warm and dry.

Looks like since the AMO flipped(just looking at that graphic), we have had three moderate/strong Ninas that have been cold during winter and seven AN. I always thought 95-96 was weaker off the top of my head. That said, seems like as long as the Nina is not a super La Nina...we get lots of extreme cold and warm. I definitely think we needs as strong of a La Nina as we can get - even if we have to sacrifice a winter to do so. Seems like the following winters after Ninas can be pretty good. We are long overdue for this shake-up, and I think this has had a lot to do with the AN temps in the Pacific. @john11 can probably answer this, John how do we do during strong and moderate La Ninas. Seems like weaker ones are colder.

Oh yeah, understood they comments regarding spring. Was just picking your brain about later in the year.

@nrgjeff I know strong Ninas are not great for winter in the East. However, given how 3.4 has amped phase 6 of the MJO this current winter...do you feel that a Nina winter might actually be an improvement even with its leaning towards a warm pattern? Not sure we see a winter warmer than this one even with a La Nina. I know we do see extremes - both cold and warm. Also, looks like that might push a warm end to summer and beginning to fall(referencing Jax's last post)? Anyway, I think a La Nina of moderate or strong strength is needed to "reset" the Pacific SSTs. Been a while since we have had a good one and the Pacific reflects that I think...

Had a leaky chimney. Got up there and fixed it yesterday evening. Very thankful that is done and fingers crossed that the new sealant works! 6" of rain by Thursday. Not good!

Seriously great site, @John1122. I could spend days there. This is line graph data from the same site. I would set forth the idea that four time periods are skewing normal model tendencies during the past 90 days(early Nov, mid Dec, early Jan and mid Jan). Looks like there is a big bust in December where models missed by 10-15 degrees and early and mid January where models busted by 7-10+ degrees during week one and two. Overall, January misses have skewed model tendencies...as we know January has not been a good month for modeling. I know the big bust in early January was where modeling was too cold. I am assuming the miss in December is also the same based on the idea that we have been head faked twice and Christmas being warm was a huge miss. For example, the December 13th 12-day forecast would actually verify on December 25th which we know was warm. I might assume Novembers model numbers were actually too warm as twelve days after October 30 were a period of severe cold. December and January were both well documented bad time frames for modeling as was early November when modeling completely missed the cold. What would be interesting is to see the rest of the year. Not sure how to dig those up. Interestingly the GFS ensemble was better than the Euro at spotting cold last November from the d12 range. It was nearly two degrees better than the EPS(albeit bad scores for both). As suspected, the GEFS spotted the cold snap in mid November. So overall, I would suggest normal model tendencies are skewed and potentially might misrepresent modeling as being "too cold" because of an anomalous two month warm period(December to January). So it is a tale of two contrasting biases. In early November(when the pattern changed to cold) the models were too warm. During December and January, modeling was too cold during near record warmth as modeling almost always has trouble with extremes. So, those maps above have two months of cold bias and one week of warm bias. So, makes sense they are skewed. So, I think we have to consider current model tendencies but be wary of using past performance as and indicator of future performance. For example, I think many assumed modeling in December(that predicted warmth) was possibly wrong, because its past performance had been too warm in early November. The warm December forecasts verified. It is possible that the same thing will happen in reverse where modeling busts high. Not saying that will happen, but the antecedent performance of November certainly did not continue into December. In other words, sometimes modeling mistakes can move from a cold bias to a warm bias vey quickly as occurred in November.

Good find. I wouldn't argue with many of those, but I think(am nearly certain) the EPS has a really strong warm bias from d10-15 and also for the Weeklies. It is usually significantly warmer at 2m than any of the American model output. Not sure how those are generated, but the 90d timestamps might be skewing those. I can say from personal experience, the EPS has a warm bias in d10-15. Maybe the miss earlier in January and over Canada last week is skewing those maps as the past 90 days of modeling have had some wicked busts where modeling verified much warmer than modeled d10-15. Additionally, I would think that modeling would have some sort of correlational coefficient rating based on where features verified on a map - I would be interested to see those as well.

One can get a pretty good idea of the places most at risk for flooding with this graphic. This is a 30-day total precip map for the forum region.

River systems controlled by dams should likely be OK initially as many of the lakes are already at low pool and can handle the influx. That said, probably the bigger concern would be urban streams and rivers not controlled by dams. We haven't had much flooding up here(NE TN) yet. The ground is fairly saturated, so thunderstorms training over one area would be a big concern. Fortunately, only the tops of the eastern mountains have snow and not a lot. If there was 12-18" of snowpack, we would be in serious trouble on this side of the valley. You all in the mid-state seem to have had more rains just based on observations in this forum. The far eastern valley has a little wiggle room but not much.

@John1122 @tnweathernut Seems like we are missing some big storms in there, particularly the JC snow during the lat 90s. I do realize that these are for the airport stations. But have to think the big JC storm needs a mention. Does this look correct to you all? Also, seems like the Feb '96 storm is missing? https://www.weather.gov/mrx/snow

I lived on Papermill at the time. Definitely true that they got much less than surrounding areas. Seems like we got 4-6" there with lots of ice. I drove home to Kingsport that weekend and was shocked at how much snow other areas had received. Snow from two storms was now piled in parking lots. Great write-up John...and that is the data that was missing from MRX I think. Is it back now or did you have to use media reports?

Yeah, I think the western and middle Pacific are pretty much going to be AN SSTs for DJF. I figured the eastern regions might warm a bit. Kind of a weird set-up and why an analog package may get beat-up pretty good this winter as many(including you an I) have noted. Hey, the SOI is tanking...not sure what that is going to unleash.