Historic Tennessee Valley Cold, Snow, and Ice Events

[John1122]

Looking back at January 1982, which was one of my favorite winter months here. Wondering what each of your memories are of it if you remember it at all. The local airport weather reporting stations don't jibe with what happened imby  but what happened here is mirrored in the two closest stations operating close to me at the time, one a few miles west of me in Campbell Co and the other about 20 miles north of me in Williamsburg Ky.  

 

[John1122]

I knew I had this somewhere. It's from the early February 1996 storm. The article inside mentions 14-16 inches being wide spread across the area. None of the airport stations in East Tennessee have anything close to that officially recorded. I think Tys has 8 inches, Tri has missing data and Chattanooga has maybe 3 inches recorded but they mixed for a long time. 

The storm was so impactful that this special to the paper came out 9 days after the storm, school was out in Knox County from February 2nd until February 12th after this. 

I'm not even sure if it made the list of high impact winter storms MRX put out a year or two ago. 

[dwagner88]

On 8/10/2021 at 12:23 AM, John1122 said:

I knew I had this somewhere. It's from the early February 1996 storm. The article inside mentions 14-16 inches being wide spread across the area. None of the airport stations in East Tennessee have anything close to that officially recorded. I think Tys has 8 inches, Tri has missing data and Chattanooga has maybe 3 inches recorded but they mixed for a long time. 

The storm was so impactful that this special to the paper came out 9 days after the storm, school was out in Knox County from February 2nd until February 12th after this. 

I'm not even sure if it made the list of high impact winter storms MRX put out a year or two ago. 

I had very little snow and 4-6” of sleet from this one. Best sledding in my entire life. It also took forever to melt.

[John1122]

3 hours ago, dwagner88 said:

I had very little snow and 4-6” of sleet from this one. Best sledding in my entire life. It also took forever to melt.

I knew Chattanooga itself was freezing rain and sleet for a while at the airport. Sounds like you got more sleet than them. I bet it took 2 weeks for you to melt off with how cold it was after and how sleet works. 

[Daniel Boone]

On 8/10/2021 at 12:23 AM, John1122 said:

I knew I had this somewhere. It's from the early February 1996 storm. The article inside mentions 14-16 inches being wide spread across the area. None of the airport stations in East Tennessee have anything close to that officially recorded. I think Tys has 8 inches, Tri has missing data and Chattanooga has maybe 3 inches recorded but they mixed for a long time. 

The storm was so impactful that this special to the paper came out 9 days after the storm, school was out in Knox County from February 2nd until February 12th after this. 

I'm not even sure if it made the list of high impact winter storms MRX put out a year or two ago. 

Wound up with 10" here from that one. All Snow. From TN/VA Line to Morristown 14 to 16" fell. Lollipop of 18" reported I think near Hamblen, Hawkins, Hancock line.

[MattPetrulli]

I was wondering if there was an efficient way to look at old snow events in east TN. I am looking for a snow event around January 2010 that produced several inches in my area but can't find any articles or anything about it.

[Daniel Boone]

On 8/18/2021 at 1:42 PM, MattPetrulli said:

I was wondering if there was an efficient way to look at old snow events in east TN. I am looking for a snow event around January 2010 that produced several inches in my area but can't find any articles or anything about it.

There were several that month, depending on your location. Jan. 30 being the most prominent one. NWS Office's throughout area should have some data/info regarding Snowfalls that month. Google Jan. 2010 Snowstorms. There's plenty. Narrow to Tennessee Valley Snowstorms if you just want that.

[John1122]

On 8/18/2021 at 1:42 PM, MattPetrulli said:

I was wondering if there was an efficient way to look at old snow events in east TN. I am looking for a snow event around January 2010 that produced several inches in my area but can't find any articles or anything about it.

The NWS only has Sevierville with .8 inches of snow for the whole month January 2010. At TYS they record 13 days with snow falling but it all only adds up to 3 inches for the month. 1 inch on the 7th, 2 inches on the 29th and 30th with a trace recorded on 10 other days. 

The accuracy of these reports are legendary in how inaccurate/unreliable they are, so take them with a grain of salt when your memory is in conflict with them. You're far more likely to be correct. 

[Carvers Gap]

Kind of a fun fact.  January of 1985 began with a high of 71.  

Maybe I missed them in this thread, but I thought it would be helpful to place the 1984-85 winter reanalysis maps in this thread.  Below you will find both the 500mb Geopotential and 2m surface temp maps for Dec '84 and Jan '85.  It was a rare pattern that allowed for a piece of the PV to descend into the eastern TN Valley.  Where I as living at the time had a thermometer which got to -26F.  I can remember being under my house with dad trying to fix broken pipes.  Sweating those pipes might have been one of the most agonizingly cold things I have ever done - just laying on the frozen ground trying to bleed excess moisture out of the pipes.  My dad had also taken a trip to St Louis during that outbreak, and called to let us know that he was basically racing a snowstorm back to TRI.  He barely made it home.  The snow from that storm was around for weeks.  Not sure I saw the ground until February.  The reason it has come up this year in discussion is that the CPC is using it as an analog for their outlook maps.  There reason for using it is likely where the AN heights were located during December - the Aleutians.  The heights over Greenland are not the same as we just have had a -NAO there for much of this warm spell.  But December was incredibly warm.  Also, note the storminess(rain) around Los Angeles.  We have seen that lately.  That said, NOBODY is saying that Jan '85 is going to repeat.  However, the mechanism for that outbreak is not to dissimilar to other outbreaks.   Interestingly, that winter is really defined by a very small time frame.  It got super warm as soon as that pattern left...and we were all happy about that.  As I noted much earlier in the thread, the amount of Saturdays to make up for missed school was not pleasant!   One final note, this is why many of us old timers don't give up on winter early.  When I was a kid, warm Decembers often foretold of January cold.  Not saying that happens this year...we will see.

 

[Kasper]

84/85 Winter

[Shocker0]

On 8/23/2021 at 12:14 PM, John1122 said:

The NWS only has Sevierville with .8 inches of snow for the whole month January 2010. At TYS they record 13 days with snow falling but it all only adds up to 3 inches for the month. 1 inch on the 7th, 2 inches on the 29th and 30th with a trace recorded on 10 other days. 

The accuracy of these reports are legendary in how inaccurate/unreliable they are, so take them with a grain of salt when your memory is in conflict with them. You're far more likely to be correct. 

I know this is an older comment but the January 29-30, 2010 snow was a statewide event and most likely what the other poster is referring to. Almost the entire state got 4-12 inches from it with a warm nose causing some areas to get less, and more sleet and freezing rain.

 

One place the poster can check is weather.gov snow cover maps and can see the snow coverage for every day in January 2010 (I believe they have maps going back to 2003 for snow cover) and narrow it down to what event it was.

[Jed33]

One of my favorite snow events was in January 1997 while I lived in Olive Branch, MS (south side of Memphis) Back then, everyone watched The Weather Channel and listened to the local news for the forecast. We could also access the Iwin network (NWS Interactive Weather Network) if you had dial-up internet. You could read the AFD’s even back then. Anyway, I remember catching Jim Cantore one evening in January. He came on and said. We’re gonna have to watch this arctic front coming in tomorrow in TN around Memphis. Some new data is coming in that suggests a “wave” of low pressure might try to develop along the front. He showed their forecast model and snowfall forecast which had jumped dramatically from zilch to about 2-3in. Of course that was all it took for us to get excited. Jim Cantore, THE weather man said it could snow!!! 

Meanwhile, on IWIN (lol) the NWS had no mention of any snow just a strong cold front. 
 

The next morning, the NWS had added flurries and light snow showers possible to the forecast and meanwhile TWC was saying 2-4in looked likely now for Memphis. I remember waking up and it was about 33/34 degrees thinking well I guess it’s probably not going to do it bc it was sunny. However, you could see some faint growing clouds to the NW. about 45min later the front came plowing through, snow started falling and I ran in to turn on TWC! (No other radar could be gotten faster hardly back then. You’d have to wait for the local news to see it. Unless it was a severe situation. TWC was local every 8min.) I went outside and watched flurries turn into light snow. The snow just kinda kept building over NE AR and W TN and really kinda just stalled out. It more or less just kept maintaining itself and building in the same area. Light snow turned into a dusting. NWS said flurries and light snow showers. Dusting became an inch within an hour. The NWS updated to say you might get a dusting (everyone laughed bc we already had an inch!) an inch turned into 2in and they said well you might get an inch. Basically they were behind by an inch the whole time. Finally after we had 3in and it was still snowing they just said be careful and enjoy it! Ended up with about 4.5in and it stayed on the ground for over a week bc of the cold temps. We dropped to 4 degrees that night and stayed in the teens the next day. The rest of the week was cold but not that cold! All in all it’s one of my favorites bc of how it came out of nowhere and really was a great event!

[John1122]

On 1/26/2022 at 6:36 PM, Jed33 said:

One of my favorite snow events was in January 1997 while I lived in Olive Branch, MS (south side of Memphis) Back then, everyone watched The Weather Channel and listened to the local news for the forecast. We could also access the Iwin network (NWS Interactive Weather Network) if you had dial-up internet. You could read the AFD’s even back then. Anyway, I remember catching Jim Cantore one evening in January. He came on and said. We’re gonna have to watch this arctic front coming in tomorrow in TN around Memphis. Some new data is coming in that suggests a “wave” of low pressure might try to develop along the front. He showed their forecast model and snowfall forecast which had jumped dramatically from zilch to about 2-3in. Of course that was all it took for us to get excited. Jim Cantore, THE weather man said it could snow!!! 

Meanwhile, on IWIN (lol) the NWS had no mention of any snow just a strong cold front. 
 

The next morning, the NWS had added flurries and light snow showers possible to the forecast and meanwhile TWC was saying 2-4in looked likely now for Memphis. I remember waking up and it was about 33/34 degrees thinking well I guess it’s probably not going to do it bc it was sunny. However, you could see some faint growing clouds to the NW. about 45min later the front came plowing through, snow started falling and I ran in to turn on TWC! (No other radar could be gotten faster hardly back then. You’d have to wait for the local news to see it. Unless it was a severe situation. TWC was local every 8min.) I went outside and watched flurries turn into light snow. The snow just kinda kept building over NE AR and W TN and really kinda just stalled out. It more or less just kept maintaining itself and building in the same area. Light snow turned into a dusting. NWS said flurries and light snow showers. Dusting became an inch within an hour. The NWS updated to say you might get a dusting (everyone laughed bc we already had an inch!) an inch turned into 2in and they said well you might get an inch. Basically they were behind by an inch the whole time. Finally after we had 3in and it was still snowing they just said be careful and enjoy it! Ended up with about 4.5in and it stayed on the ground for over a week bc of the cold temps. We dropped to 4 degrees that night and stayed in the teens the next day. The rest of the week was cold but not that cold! All in all it’s one of my favorites bc of how it came out of nowhere and really was a great event!

January 10th/11th 1997. There was 3-5 inches from the Plateau west. Not sure about Chattanooga, Tri, and Knox, very unreliable snowfall data from MRX during that time frame, but it shows those area with 1-2 inches. It was a very cold/high ratio snow. I had 4.5 inches. A coop station near me recorded .35 precip. The airports in East Tennessee recorded much less QPF, like .10 to .15. Probably an error but I am not sure. 

OHX has Crossville, Allardt and Jamestown at 5 inches on .4 precip  Nashville at 3 inches. MEG has 3.6 in Memphis, and a general 3-4 across most of West Tennessee. It ushered in a very cold week. 

[Shocker0]

On 12/27/2013 at 4:49 PM, John1122 said:

The Johnson City event was 1-27-98. The Plateau/Highland Rim event was a week later on 2-4-98. I had 18 inches of snow, Scott County got over 24 inches and most of the area was without power. Two very similar storms.

 

My two most unique storms are the December 2009 event that dumped 4-8 inches of snow over most of Campbell County while mainly rain fell in every direction and a March 1997 event that dropped 5 inches on me in a very elevation driven event. There is a farm with a large barn right at the top of a steep drop here. There was 5 inches on one side of the barn and barely an inch on the other side of it. I doubt I see anything like that again in my lifetime. 

 

I had an uncle driving here from Texas that night and he said the snow was manageable until he got to that crest at the barn, then it was just a white out the rest of the way.

 

So I thought I had a pretty good memory of the December (18-ish?) 2009 event, or non event in Crossville, but maybe not? I remember being at work with rain changing to snow being forecast, but it hung on to rain forever at around 35 degrees and never changed over. And I remember you guys getting the 4-8" you mention, along with McCreary County where i grew up getting 6-8". 

I thought for sure I remembered it being all rain for Crossville where I worked, and Deer Lodge where i lived at the time. However, looking at snow depth maps from that day, it looks like Crossville ended up with 3-5" almost county wide. I wonder if that's true and I'm just misremembering us getting nothing? Or if it's just where we didn't get as much as forecast or something. 

[John1122]

1 hour ago, Shocker0 said:

 

So I thought I had a pretty good memory of the December (18-ish?) 2009 event, or non event in Crossville, but maybe not? I remember being at work with rain changing to snow being forecast, but it hung on to rain forever at around 35 degrees and never changed over. And I remember you guys getting the 4-8" you mention, along with McCreary County where i grew up getting 6-8". 

I thought for sure I remembered it being all rain for Crossville where I worked, and Deer Lodge where i lived at the time. However, looking at snow depth maps from that day, it looks like Crossville ended up with 3-5" almost county wide. I wonder if that's true and I'm just misremembering us getting nothing? Or if it's just where we didn't get as much as forecast or something. 

It appears the snow depth maps are in error. It looks like the very highest spots in Cumberland Co got 2-3 inches per OHX and Crossville proper got 1/4th inch or so. It was the oddest event. It was mainly a snow event for the Tri-Cities and randomly, Campbell County. Oneida got 1 inch. My uncle in Speedwell on the Claiborne/Campbell line got 1 inch. Campbell County got hammered, my power was out for several days. After I had about 5 inches down MRX issued a Winter Storm Warning for the Northern Plateau but it never snowed much in Scott/Claiborne/Morgan.

"PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NASHVILLE TN
555 AM CST SAT DEC 19 2009

...SNOWFALL REPORTS ACROSS THE CUMBERLAND PLATEAU THROUGH 530 AM...

GENERALLY LIGHT SNOWFALL AMOUNTS HAVE BEEN REPORTED ACROSS THE
CUMBERLAND PLATEAU OVERNIGHT. ISOLATED AMOUNTS OF 2 TO 3 INCHES
IN THE HIGHER ELEVATIONS WERE REPORTED IN CUMBERLAND COUNTY.

THE FOLLOWING ARE SNOWFALL AMOUNTS BY COUNTY.

CUMBERLAND....LESS THAN ONE QUARTER INCH EXCEPT 2 TO 3 INCHES IN
ISOLATED AREAS IN THE HIGHER ELEVATIONS.

FENTRESS...LESS THAN ONE QUARTER INCH.

PICKETT...LESS THAN ONE QUARTER INCH.

OVERTON...ONE HALF INCH.

WARREN...LESS THAN ONE QUARTER INCH.

CLAY...ONE QUARTER TO ONE HALF INCH.

[Shocker0]

2 hours ago, John1122 said:

It appears the snow depth maps are in error. It looks like the very highest spots in Cumberland Co got 2-3 inches per OHX and Crossville proper got 1/4th inch or so. It was the oddest event. It was mainly a snow event for the Tri-Cities and randomly, Campbell County. Oneida got 1 inch. My uncle in Speedwell on the Claiborne/Campbell line got 1 inch. Campbell County got hammered, my power was out for several days. After I had about 5 inches down MRX issued a Winter Storm Warning for the Northern Plateau but it never snowed much in Scott/Claiborne/Morgan.

"PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NASHVILLE TN
555 AM CST SAT DEC 19 2009

...SNOWFALL REPORTS ACROSS THE CUMBERLAND PLATEAU THROUGH 530 AM...

GENERALLY LIGHT SNOWFALL AMOUNTS HAVE BEEN REPORTED ACROSS THE
CUMBERLAND PLATEAU OVERNIGHT. ISOLATED AMOUNTS OF 2 TO 3 INCHES
IN THE HIGHER ELEVATIONS WERE REPORTED IN CUMBERLAND COUNTY.

THE FOLLOWING ARE SNOWFALL AMOUNTS BY COUNTY.

CUMBERLAND....LESS THAN ONE QUARTER INCH EXCEPT 2 TO 3 INCHES IN
ISOLATED AREAS IN THE HIGHER ELEVATIONS.

FENTRESS...LESS THAN ONE QUARTER INCH.

PICKETT...LESS THAN ONE QUARTER INCH.

OVERTON...ONE HALF INCH.

WARREN...LESS THAN ONE QUARTER INCH.

CLAY...ONE QUARTER TO ONE HALF INCH.

Yeah that is strange. I'll try to find some of the maps I looked at. I just dont remember it ever changing to snow at all from where I worked (SE Crossville) all the way home to Deer Lodge. Where I live now probably would've been one of the 2-3" areas based in Elevation but I worked at a different place back then and never came out this way. Definitely was a weird one because I believe we were forecast to get a big storm but ended up with practically nothing.

 

The opposite was February 16, 2004 when I lived in McCreary and we were supposed to get a big snow along with most of Tennessee, but we got 0 and random parts of Scott, Morgan, and almost all of Cumberland got 8-12" from it. I'm not sure if it was elevation based or just like thunderstorms hitting in certain spots but as snow. We went to church that night in Robbins, TN (well, tried) and were seeing people headed north on Highway 27 with snow caked to their front bumpers even though it was bone dry in Oneida. Finally when we got to Robbins and started climbing a hill to the church we ran head on into heavy snow, the hardest I've seen yet. We turned around after getting to the top of the hill where the church was and there were already a couple inches on the ground as we headed back and cars were in the ditch. By the time we got to the bottom there was no precipitation once again. I remember we got a newspaper from Morgan County later in the week and a backhoe was shown clearing the roads after a foot of snow hit there. Campbell might've got a lot in that event too but not sure. It seemed SW TN, up to the Plateau and Scott/Morgan did for sure but not sure from East of there  Strangest snow I can remember and sounds possibly similar to the 2009 event.

[John1122]

44 minutes ago, Shocker0 said:

Yeah that is strange. I'll try to find some of the maps I looked at. I just dont remember it ever changing to snow at all from where I worked (SE Crossville) all the way home to Deer Lodge. Where I live now probably would've been one of the 2-3" areas based in Elevation but I worked at a different place back then and never came out this way. Definitely was a weird one because I believe we were forecast to get a big storm but ended up with practically nothing.

 

The opposite was February 16, 2004 when I lived in McCreary and we were supposed to get a big snow along with most of Tennessee, but we got 0 and random parts of Scott, Morgan, and almost all of Cumberland got 8-12" from it. I'm not sure if it was elevation based or just like thunderstorms hitting in certain spots but as snow. We went to church that night in Robbins, TN (well, tried) and were seeing people headed north on Highway 27 with snow caked to their front bumpers even though it was bone dry in Oneida. Finally when we got to Robbins and started climbing a hill to the church we ran head on into heavy snow, the hardest I've seen yet. We turned around after getting to the top of the hill where the church was and there were already a couple inches on the ground as we headed back and cars were in the ditch. By the time we got to the bottom there was no precipitation once again. I remember we got a newspaper from Morgan County later in the week and a backhoe was shown clearing the roads after a foot of snow hit there. Campbell might've got a lot in that event too but not sure. It seemed SW TN, up to the Plateau and Scott/Morgan did for sure but not sure from East of there  Strangest snow I can remember and sounds possibly similar to the 2009 event.

I believe it was a system that tracked South and East of the forecast area and Oneida and into Kentucky was too far NW.  It was February 15th 2004. There was an arc of snow from Cumberland, to Morgan, to Anderson, to Campbell and Claiborne County and east along the border but not as heavy to the East. I missed work the next day because I had 8 inches of snow and people in West Knoxville didn't believe me. Wartburg, Lancing, and Southeast Scott like Winfield had 8 to 12 inches as well. Norris had 4 inches and so did Tazewell to the East. Johnson City got 2 inches but almost .8 precip. So it must have changed over to snow or from snow there. Morristown had 1.7 inches of snow, and .7 precip. 

Knoxville got rain, Oak Ridge got rain, Lenoir City got rain. 

[Shocker0]

57 minutes ago, John1122 said:

I believe it was a system that tracked South and East of the forecast area and Oneida and into Kentucky was too far NW.  It was February 15th 2004. There was an arc of snow from Cumberland, to Morgan, to Anderson, to Campbell and Claiborne County and east along the border but not as heavy to the East. I missed work the next day because I had 8 inches of snow and people in West Knoxville didn't believe me. Wartburg, Lancing, and Southeast Scott like Winfield had 8 to 12 inches as well. Norris had 4 inches and so did Tazewell to the East. Johnson City got 2 inches but almost .8 precip. So it must have changed over to snow or from snow there. Morristown had 1.7 inches of snow, and .7 precip. 

Knoxville got rain, Oak Ridge got rain, Lenoir City got rain. 

That's possible. That's a very sharp cutoff though. For Robbins to get dumped on and Oneida to get blanked like that. I just remember waking up disappointed after all the hype lol. Good article on it here from the Huntsville POV
 

https://www.weather.gov/hun/hunsur_2004-02-15#:~:text=A snowfall map from Feburary,shade indicates more than 6”.

[Shocker0]

Look at that cutoff right at the border :O

 

[John1122]

12 minutes ago, Shocker0 said:

That's possible. That's a very sharp cutoff though. For Robbins to get dumped on and Oneida to get blanked like that. I just remember waking up disappointed after all the hype lol. Good article on it here from the Huntsville POV
 

https://www.weather.gov/hun/hunsur_2004-02-15#:~:text=A snowfall map from Feburary,shade indicates more than 6”.

It's odd to see that track and not a bigger precip field. Oneida, London KY, Somerset KY and Middlesboro KY all recorded 0 qpf, as did Big Stone Gap and Wise VA. However, Pennington Gap and Abington got 4 to 5 inches. 

[Daniel Boone]

33 minutes ago, John1122 said:

It's odd to see that track and not a bigger precip field. Oneida, London KY, Somerset KY and Middlesboro KY all recorded 0 qpf, as did Big Stone Gap and Wise VA. However, Pennington Gap and Abington got 4 to 5 inches. 

Yeah, remember that one well. I had 5" in Jonesville. Just 2 miles south of me in southern Lee County there was 8" . Stickleyville in eastern Lee at base of Powell Mountain had 9". Northern Lee received no precip. Amazing sharp cutoff.

[Daniel Boone]

Here's a link with pics of a major Snowstorm that encompassed a large area, including ours. It stretched from NE Georgia all the way to NewYork. Mainly west side of Apps. It is Lee Counties biggest on record with Pennington gap recording about 3 feet !

      My parents spoke of it being up to the windows on the level. The local paper has an article on it. Very interesting. Would post if there were room.

 

[John1122]

From the site Fountainguy talked about in the January thread. It's more accurate with some events than the NWS storm reports. 

Here is the blizzard of 1993 and the February 1998 events. 

I believe MRX showed something like 9 inches in Claiborne County for the blizzard. It's much more accurate for my area than most of the NWS stuff on both events. Especially since the official record shows a trace of snow total for the month of February 1998 for my area and Scott Co. 

Misreporting is why snowfall averages fell so dramatically. 

 

[John1122]

Snow on top of snow in 1996.

I believe this is also a major missing data period for MRX. 

[John1122]

I already made a post about how so many of our periods of great winter weather are EPO influenced and I'm going to move to here for more. 

I'll start with 2003. 

There were two snow events in these periods. 

Knoxville had 2-4 inches on the 16th and 3-5 on the 23rd. 

Highs in the lower 20s and lows from 3 to -3 across the area. 

EPO

NAO

MJO was c.o.d Ph 6-7 then 3 days in c.o.d 8 before quickly going back to c.o.d 7 and diving across the c.o.d towards 2-3. 

The coldest days of this were the two days that followed the times the EPO was below -200. 

The NAO remained positive throughout February. The EPO spiked back negative again in Early Feb. Knoxville had 10 straight days BN. Had 1.5 inches of snow Feb 6, a trace Feb 8th, 1 inch Feb 9th, 2 inches Feb 10th. The MJO was low amp 3-4 during that time frame. 

[John1122]

2006 we had multiple snowy days in February, including a big one imby around V-Day give or take a day or two (going on memory here) and quite a few snow showery days and well BN temps. The coldest days were around the 18th/19th at around -15 to -20bn. 

EPO

NAO

MJO 8-1 low amp.

[John1122]

The best of the best will see -AO/-NAO/-EPO/+PNA but that's rare. 

The NAO holds bigger influence the further east, especially along the East coast but I've found articles today that talk about how favorable the -EPO is for even New Jersey. 

The EPO is a much better cold delivery mechanism and imo we are going to struggle more with temps than precipitation in any given winter. 

There are times when all the teleconnections fail us but there are very few great winter periods here that didn't have a -EPO in the mix but quite a few nice storms and periods without the -NAO. 

[GaWx]

 On this date in 1892 - A winter storm in southwestern and central Tennessee produced 26 inches of snow at Riddleton, and 18.5 inches at Memphis. It was the deepest snow of record for those areas. (David Ludlum)

 Also on this date in 1892, Nashville got blasted with 17.0” of snow (17" on 3/17)! This was and still is the heaviest calendar day of snowfall on record there by a good margin. And it fell after 4.3” fell the prior two days! Chattanooga got 0.9” on 3/17 and 0.3” on 3/18. Knoxville got 3” though it was recorded on 3/18. Atlanta got 0.3” 3/17-18.