Fall/Winter Banter - Football, Basketball, Snowball?

[Daniel Boone]

1 hour ago, John1122 said:

Northern England is getting blitzed with heavy snow. They average around an inch a year in places that look to be getting 6-10.  Maybe someday our unusually heavy snows will return. Those snow departure maps that were put out the other day were depressing, as our area had the biggest snowfall loss of any area. Ironically, areas along the gulf and deep south were actually getting more snow than they did in the 1960s-1980s.

Yeah, blocks definitely doing it's work for them. Pacifics killing us. 

    Saw video from Airport in Germany yesterday and looked like nearly 2 feet on runway ! Much higher drifts. 

[PowellVolz]

GFS and ECMWF both have severe Sunday Dec. 10. Normally that'd fall apart. However it's family nut-buster, um I mean Nutcraker weekend; so of course, I'll miss visible tornadoes in the South.
I should have a better attitude after the big KU win over UConn. However it's LOW overcast day 2 in a row and I'm salty. 

Next weekend looking really interesting. Severe on the front with NW flow on the back.


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[PowellVolz]

Seen a tweet talking about El Niño winters after severe drought conditions in ETn. Something like 3 of our 4 major droughts during a Nino was followed by some of our snowiest winters on record. One of those was a late 1800’s winter that was the snowiest winter on record for Knoxville. Obviously not suggesting this is coming but it’s nice to have some history on your side. One good thing either way, dry Nino winters seem very rare.


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[Carvers Gap]

10 minutes ago, PowellVolz said:

Seen a tweet talking about El Niño winters after severe drought conditions in ETn. Something like 3 of our 4 major droughts during a Nino was followed by some of our snowiest winters on record. One of those was a late 1800’s winter that was the snowiest winter on record for Knoxville. Obviously not suggesting this is coming but it’s nice to have some history on your side. One good thing either way, dry Nino winters seem very rare.


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It is possible they got that here.  Check page 3 of the winter spec thread during late October.  We have a page or two on those post-drought winters.  I was really surprised to see our driest Sept/Oct were predominantly El Nino.  La Nina falls are often dry and hot...but the very worst were Nino.  But yes, really crazy stat.  I think there must be some loose correlation. 

[Carvers Gap]

18 minutes ago, PowellVolz said:

Next weekend looking really interesting. Severe on the front with NW flow on the back.


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The warm start to December is shrinking with each passing model run.  Here at TRI, we have two different days in which snow might fly this week.

[Daniel Boone]

1 hour ago, Carvers Gap said:

The warm start to December is shrinking with each passing model run.  Here at TRI, we have two different days in which snow might fly this week.

I recall several years ago models would always have to adjust to blocking effects. They would trend colder as we progressed during those episodes. May be at least partially what's going on. 

[Daniel Boone]

1 hour ago, PowellVolz said:

Seen a tweet talking about El Niño winters after severe drought conditions in ETn. Something like 3 of our 4 major droughts during a Nino was followed by some of our snowiest winters on record. One of those was a late 1800’s winter that was the snowiest winter on record for Knoxville. Obviously not suggesting this is coming but it’s nice to have some history on your side. One good thing either way, dry Nino winters seem very rare.


.

I think that Winter Knoxville recorded around 6 feet. I'm thinking a Dr Dewpoint Article by Joe D'aleo on Intellicast had it. 

[PowellVolz]

A 15% day 6 is rare, especially this time of year. Doesn’t look like it as of now but hopefully this isn’t a Dec 11, 2021 scenario.




.

[Carvers Gap]

2 minutes ago, PowellVolz said:

A 15% day 6 is rare, especially this time of year. Doesn’t look like it as of now but hopefully this isn’t a Dec 11, 2021 scenario.




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That cutter is likely gonna be strong.  It probably isn't wrong unfortunately.  Good find.

[Holston_River_Rambler]

Unfortunately, probably looking at a Thunder in the Mountains Watch later this week. 

[Matthew70]

6 hours ago, Carvers Gap said:

That cutter is likely gonna be strong.  It probably isn't wrong unfortunately.  Good find.

That was the KY tornadoes right?

[Carvers Gap]

22 minutes ago, Matthew70 said:

That was the KY tornadoes right?

I don't know honestly.  I don't keep track of severe as much as I do winter wx events.  Right now, this looks like an upper-Gulf Coast states events.  Southern TN could get involved.  But as Powell noted, pretty unusual to see sever wx outlook this far out...

[tnweathernut]

9 hours ago, Holston_River_Rambler said:

Unfortunately, probably looking at a Thunder in the Mountains Watch later this week. 

Good call, but you probably didn't know later this week would be today.  haha........

[Holston_River_Rambler]

I have a friend who is at the foot of Grandfather Mt right now at around 4000 feet and she says all rain there. 

[tnweathernut]

5 minutes ago, Holston_River_Rambler said:

I have a friend who is at the foot of Grandfather Mt right now at around 4000 feet and she says all rain there. 

Honestly, that cell fell apart like a wet taco as it hit the mountains.

[jaxjagman]

9 hours ago, PowellVolz said:

A 15% day 6 is rare, especially this time of year. Doesn’t look like it as of now but hopefully this isn’t a Dec 11, 2021 scenario.




.

Mid South looks better this afternoon during this time,still to early to believe the GFS.Plenty of shear to work with,loss of diurnal heating  the GFS shows instability drops off fast but still several days away

[Holston_River_Rambler]

Absolutely blasting snow on Beech Mt though. 

Here is photo series of it moving in:

 

 

 

 

 

[PowellVolz]

That was the KY tornadoes right?

That was an upper level trough with a weak surface low that tracked from Oklahoma to the Great Lakes. That’s pretty much textbook for severe weather east of the Rockies but this system brought so much more that amplified it. 850mb winds out of the SSW were in the 95 percentile of climatology (40-70mph) overspreading the warm sector near the right exit of the LLJ. The ULJ westerlies were screaming up to 120km but the split flow of the ULJ was the straw that broke its back. When the ULJ crossed the trough, part of the jet veered to the north while the southern part continued east. When the jet spilts like that it leaves a void in the atmosphere. The atmosphere sees that void and tries to fill it in to correct the atmospheric imbalance. So the air below the void rapidly rises to fill it in. We all know what rising air does for storms. Another ingredient to this system was the Elevated Mix Layer (EML) was stronger than normal for this time of year. A stout EML in the warm sector helps hold back the showers and clouds that can mix the atmosphere out which reduces buoyancy. That’s why that system was able to have a few dominant supercells get out in front of the main line and survive as long as it did.

I’m sure I left something out and @jaxjagman can help me out.


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[Holston_River_Rambler]

EPS member 49:

 

[Holston_River_Rambler]

Actually @fountainguy97 I see there was another storm you were talking about now (EPS member 45)

 

 

 

 

 

[Daniel Boone]

Snow Showers here this morning. Quick dusting in valley location that quickly melted. Elevations above 2000 feet still has a dusting to an inch or so up around 3000 ft. 

[PowellVolz]

EPS member 49:

 

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[PowellVolz]

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[Daniel Boone]

Looks alot like '60's Nino's. 

[Daniel Boone]

1 hour ago, Holston_River_Rambler said:

EPS member 49:

 

6z gefs has +EPO next week. If correct may go over to consensus forecasted mild period. We'll see. This may be one of the odd man out years and that gets squelched or even overridden by other drivers as happened in those " odd" year's. Probably not but, there's a little hooe if one doesn't want the canonical Nino December warmth. 

[BuCoVaWx]

I've been meaning to make a post on this topic for awhile, but never got around to it. It will probably be a long read, just a warning lol. Back in late May I started getting what I felt like was a cold. I had a rattling feeling deep in my lungs when I would breathe in deep. I went to the local urgent care on a Monday. I asked for blood work or an X-ray. They thought it was just a sinus infection and wrote out antibiotics. I wasn't satisfied with that, so the next day I went to the ER. It was very busy and the doctor pretty much brushed it off. They too thought it was a sinus infection,no blood work or X-ray, even though I had asked a couple of times. On the next day which was Wednesday, I went to my regular Doctor. She was out for the day so I saw the nurse practitioner. Same story as before, sinus infection. They gave me a steroid shot and an antibiotic shot. So I just accepted that after seeing three different medical professionals, I would just take the antibiotics and everything would clear up.  

Thursday night I started getting severe pains in my upper and right side abdomen. I didn't think much about it. The next day the pain had subsided for the most part during the day. Later that day, the pains hit me even harder than before, so I decided to go back to the ER. This time they did an X-ray and blood work. The nurse came in and said the blood test had shown signs of pancreatitis. After waiting another hour or so the Dr finally came to talk to me. It was the same Dr from the days before. He apologized when he came in. He said you are a very sick young man. I had pancreatitis and pneumonia. They had also spotted a large mass on my upper left lung. He had told me that they needed to send me out to a better facility. They tried to transport me to Johnson City, but there were no beds available. I ended up going to Pikeville Medical Center.

By the time I am transported by ambulance it's around 2am. They start me on antibiotics for my pneumonia. By the next day the pancreatitis had cleared up. I didn't even have pain from it anymore. As a few days go by the pneumonia slowly starts getting worse. The Drs have me on broad spectrum antibiotics at this point. After being hospitalized for over a week, nothing had changed. Of course I start asking questions and ask if it could be a different form of pneumonia given the antibiotics aren't working. They say of course there could be a possibility but the chances are pretty rare, most of the time it's bacterial. A day after I ask these questions they decide to do a bronchoscopy. They do the procedure but will take a few days to get results. The night of the operation, I noticed it's getting harder for me to catch my breath. They crank the oxygen up as high as it goes in the hospital room. 

The next day they do an X-ray and the mass is growing. They start talking about the possibility of doing a biopsy. Things started spiraling downhill pretty fast after the X-ray. The Dr comes in and says they are going to move me to ICU, but won't do life support at first. No one had mentioned anything about things being to that severity so my family and I are all in shock and worried. We start asking questions trying to figure out why they were taking me to ICU. The Dr really didn't give much of an explanation. I definitely noticed my breathing was getting much worse. By the time they took me to ICU, I was on a very large amount of oxygen. Eventually putting me on a CPAP machine. That night I start running a fever. It was around 102 to 104. They weren't able to keep it as low as they wanted. The next day they put me on a ventilator and decided at this point it's best to put me in a medically induced coma on life support to take some of the pressure off of my lungs to heal. They put me to sleep. That was on June 6th. I wake up on July 4th, completely out of it. Had no idea where I was or what was going on. My mother and fiance were by my side, smiling, crying and hugging each other. I try to talk, but nothing is happening. My mother asks if I know where I am. I shook my head no. I was at UK hospital in Lexington KY. 

They had made the decision to fly me out to Lexington on June 9th. My fever was out of control, it was 107.5 when I arrived at UK. Before I left Pikeville they had found that the pneumonia was fungal. They were treating me for the wrong fungus. They had diagnosed me with Histoplasmosis. UK had determined that I had a fungal infection called Blastomycosis. Several days after arriving at UK, they put me on ECMO. The best way I can describe it is sort of like blood dialysis. It filters all of the blood to 100% oxygenation, giving the lungs a chance to rest and hopefully heal. ECMO is a last resort. The procedure itself has only 50% survival rate. I had went into A fib during ECMO, so I had to be laid prone for either 16 hours on stomach and 8 on back, or vice versa. My survival chance between ECMO and Blastomycosis was at 30%. I was on it for 2 weeks, and gradually started to heal. By the time I woke up, I couldn't move anything. I had Critical Illness myopathy. I was still on the ventilator and had a trach in as well. After weaning me off the hard medicines I started slowly realizing the severity of my situation. I stay in ICU until August 1st. Then I get moved 2 doors down which is out of ICU. 

Because of the ECMO, I had a fistula where the cannula was inserted in my right groin. I had surgery August 4th to correct the fistula and a pseudo aneurysm. The surgery site gets infected. I start running a fever again, so they do a washout on August 21st. After that, there is still signs of infection so they do a second washout on the 25th. 3 surgeries in 3 weeks! They put a wound vac in to help heal the site. They found the infection to be CRE. It's an infection that targets weaker immune systems in hospitals. The doctor informed me it is a very serious infection that can lead to heart problems, brain infections and meningitis. At this point I'm just ready to go home. They put me on a 6 week antibiotic. One of the strongest made. 3 times a day, each bag cost around $600. Very powerful stuff. Of course with it being so powerful, it has a slew of side effects and is very dangerous itself. 

The whole time I'm in UK, they work with me in physical therapy. It wasn't much at all but enough to get me a bit more independent. My insurance wouldn't accept me into any acute rehab facilities. Thankfully the wonderful people at UK set me up with a scholarship at Cardinal Hill rehab hospital in Lexington. I was there for a little over 2 weeks. I finally got to come home on October 13th. I'm doing physical and occupational therapy 3 times a week. I'm in a wheelchair for now, can walk short distances on a walker. I'm slowly regaining my strength, but still have a long road ahead. 

One thing I have learned from this experience is all of the small things I have taken for granted. In the snap of a finger everything can change.

The doctors think I contracted blastomycosis from black mold spores. I was renovating my bedroom and the wall below the air conditioner in my room was starting to rot. I had only discovered it a couple of weeks before I got sick. Blastomycosis affects 1 in 100,000 people and can get it from soil, rotting wood and trees. I had diabetes prior to contracting blastomycosis, so it made everything much worse. 

Thank you all for reading this. I just wanted to share my story. So if I don't get to share any snow photos this year, that's the reason. I still have windows, so if we get a good storm, I'll definitely share those!

[John1122]

Thanks for letting us know. 

I hope you get well and get back out there. You went through alot and hopefully all the set backs are over and your hard times are in the rear view! 

 

 

[Daniel Boone]

Man !, so sorry that you went through all that . That's just unreal ! Thank God you're healing. Praying for a complete recovery. 

[BuCoVaWx]

Thank you guys very much! It's been a crazy ride for sure. There were a couple of positives from it. I got to skip a whole month of summer, closer to fall and winter! And I lost 90 lbs, which resolved my diabetes. I've gained about 40 lbs back from muscle and a better appetite. I don't recommend my signature weight loss program though lol

[Matthew70]

3 hours ago, BuCoVaWx said:

I've been meaning to make a post on this topic for awhile, but never got around to it. It will probably be a long read, just a warning lol. Back in late May I started getting what I felt like was a cold. I had a rattling feeling deep in my lungs when I would breathe in deep. I went to the local urgent care on a Monday. I asked for blood work or an X-ray. They thought it was just a sinus infection and wrote out antibiotics. I wasn't satisfied with that, so the next day I went to the ER. It was very busy and the doctor pretty much brushed it off. They too thought it was a sinus infection,no blood work or X-ray, even though I had asked a couple of times. On the next day which was Wednesday, I went to my regular Doctor. She was out for the day so I saw the nurse practitioner. Same story as before, sinus infection. They gave me a steroid shot and an antibiotic shot. So I just accepted that after seeing three different medical professionals, I would just take the antibiotics and everything would clear up.  

Thursday night I started getting severe pains in my upper and right side abdomen. I didn't think much about it. The next day the pain had subsided for the most part during the day. Later that day, the pains hit me even harder than before, so I decided to go back to the ER. This time they did an X-ray and blood work. The nurse came in and said the blood test had shown signs of pancreatitis. After waiting another hour or so the Dr finally came to talk to me. It was the same Dr from the days before. He apologized when he came in. He said you are a very sick young man. I had pancreatitis and pneumonia. They had also spotted a large mass on my upper left lung. He had told me that they needed to send me out to a better facility. They tried to transport me to Johnson City, but there were no beds available. I ended up going to Pikeville Medical Center.

By the time I am transported by ambulance it's around 2am. They start me on antibiotics for my pneumonia. By the next day the pancreatitis had cleared up. I didn't even have pain from it anymore. As a few days go by the pneumonia slowly starts getting worse. The Drs have me on broad spectrum antibiotics at this point. After being hospitalized for over a week, nothing had changed. Of course I start asking questions and ask if it could be a different form of pneumonia given the antibiotics aren't working. They say of course there could be a possibility but the chances are pretty rare, most of the time it's bacterial. A day after I ask these questions they decide to do a bronchoscopy. They do the procedure but will take a few days to get results. The night of the operation, I noticed it's getting harder for me to catch my breath. They crank the oxygen up as high as it goes in the hospital room. 

The next day they do an X-ray and the mass is growing. They start talking about the possibility of doing a biopsy. Things started spiraling downhill pretty fast after the X-ray. The Dr comes in and says they are going to move me to ICU, but won't do life support at first. No one had mentioned anything about things being to that severity so my family and I are all in shock and worried. We start asking questions trying to figure out why they were taking me to ICU. The Dr really didn't give much of an explanation. I definitely noticed my breathing was getting much worse. By the time they took me to ICU, I was on a very large amount of oxygen. Eventually putting me on a CPAP machine. That night I start running a fever. It was around 102 to 104. They weren't able to keep it as low as they wanted. The next day they put me on a ventilator and decided at this point it's best to put me in a medically induced coma on life support to take some of the pressure off of my lungs to heal. They put me to sleep. That was on June 6th. I wake up on July 4th, completely out of it. Had no idea where I was or what was going on. My mother and fiance were by my side, smiling, crying and hugging each other. I try to talk, but nothing is happening. My mother asks if I know where I am. I shook my head no. I was at UK hospital in Lexington KY. 

They had made the decision to fly me out to Lexington on June 9th. My fever was out of control, it was 107.5 when I arrived at UK. Before I left Pikeville they had found that the pneumonia was fungal. They were treating me for the wrong fungus. They had diagnosed me with Histoplasmosis. UK had determined that I had a fungal infection called Blastomycosis. Several days after arriving at UK, they put me on ECMO. The best way I can describe it is sort of like blood dialysis. It filters all of the blood to 100% oxygenation, giving the lungs a chance to rest and hopefully heal. ECMO is a last resort. The procedure itself has only 50% survival rate. I had went into A fib during ECMO, so I had to be laid prone for either 16 hours on stomach and 8 on back, or vice versa. My survival chance between ECMO and Blastomycosis was at 30%. I was on it for 2 weeks, and gradually started to heal. By the time I woke up, I couldn't move anything. I had Critical Illness myopathy. I was still on the ventilator and had a trach in as well. After weaning me off the hard medicines I started slowly realizing the severity of my situation. I stay in ICU until August 1st. Then I get moved 2 doors down which is out of ICU. 

Because of the ECMO, I had a fistula where the cannula was inserted in my right groin. I had surgery August 4th to correct the fistula and a pseudo aneurysm. The surgery site gets infected. I start running a fever again, so they do a washout on August 21st. After that, there is still signs of infection so they do a second washout on the 25th. 3 surgeries in 3 weeks! They put a wound vac in to help heal the site. They found the infection to be CRE. It's an infection that targets weaker immune systems in hospitals. The doctor informed me it is a very serious infection that can lead to heart problems, brain infections and meningitis. At this point I'm just ready to go home. They put me on a 6 week antibiotic. One of the strongest made. 3 times a day, each bag cost around $600. Very powerful stuff. Of course with it being so powerful, it has a slew of side effects and is very dangerous itself. 

The whole time I'm in UK, they work with me in physical therapy. It wasn't much at all but enough to get me a bit more independent. My insurance wouldn't accept me into any acute rehab facilities. Thankfully the wonderful people at UK set me up with a scholarship at Cardinal Hill rehab hospital in Lexington. I was there for a little over 2 weeks. I finally got to come home on October 13th. I'm doing physical and occupational therapy 3 times a week. I'm in a wheelchair for now, can walk short distances on a walker. I'm slowly regaining my strength, but still have a long road ahead. 

One thing I have learned from this experience is all of the small things I have taken for granted. In the snap of a finger everything can change.

The doctors think I contracted blastomycosis from black mold spores. I was renovating my bedroom and the wall below the air conditioner in my room was starting to rot. I had only discovered it a couple of weeks before I got sick. Blastomycosis affects 1 in 100,000 people and can get it from soil, rotting wood and trees. I had diabetes prior to contracting blastomycosis, so it made everything much worse. 

Thank you all for reading this. I just wanted to share my story. So if I don't get to share any snow photos this year, that's the reason. I still have windows, so if we get a good storm, I'll definitely share those!

I am very sorry you went through all you did but am thankful you survived & are healing.  I know you may have heard this but it sounds like you had Covid pneumonia like me.  Reading your post brings back the nightmares of being on ICU.  Though now we have that mystery pneumonia in China spreading that is resistant to many antibiotics.  My mom had an unknown pneumonia many years ago.  They had to remove half her lung to save her.  To this day they never could tell what kind of pneumonia it was. A friend on our travel soccer team she was on ECMO also for 3 months. She had Covid pneumonia.  It’s truly an amazing machine. Really glad you reached out.  May you continue to get well & hopefully heal back to 100%.  I have healed from my covid pneumonia but my lungs only function half & will never be more. Prayers & thoughts.