Saturday Evening Update

Happy first day of March everyone! As usual it has been a very long while since I have updated the blog, and again I apologize. I will try my best to keep it updated from now on. There is plenty to talk about in the weather department, so lets get right to it. What promised to be a very interesting storm early next week is now beginning to look rather "blah" on the models if you know what I mean. At one point it was looking like a rediculously powerful storm would affect us, but recent models are not deepening this storm nearly as much as they were around our region. Many, if not most, of the models were thinking that we would actually see some snowfall on the back end of the storm on Tuesday after the main rains came through and strong cold air advection occured. However, now the storm looks weaker and thus the cold air intrusion isn't nearly as strong as was being predicted, and since the storm is weaker, the "backlash", or "wraparound" moisture looks very minimal as well. So, our snowfall chances have basically fallen apart here over the last day and a half or so. There is also a chance for the moels to go back to their original thinking, but normally, being this close to the event, they begin to really hammer down on details, so I think the concensus is for a weaker storm with perhaps some strong storms ahead of the front on Tuesday. That is the other aspect of the storm that needs to be talked about also. Many folks, especially to our South, could experience some very powerful storms, especially on Tuesday. In fact, most mets. are very concerned about the potential for severe weather, but I think the biggest threat will be to our South where they do need to keep a very close eye on what could be heading our way come early next week. Knowing how significant the severe weather outbreaks have been thus far this winter season, I'm afraid that this one could be very bad as well. So PLEASE stay tuned for updates. These are very serious events, and I think everyone has learned a lesson about the importance of safety in severe weather threats...namely the terrible tragedies that occured in West TN and so on during the last outbreak.

Now, Tuesday will bring colder weather, but I really don't see much hope for snow across our area. West Tenessee could be a different story, and several inches could fall. But I think if you head especially up towards Paducah, KY is where you'll really start to see the significant snowfalls with perhaps some people seeing more than 8" of the white stuff.

Again, strength of the storm is everything, and right now it's not looking nearly as powerful as it was, but that is something that I will be watching very closely as Tuesday draws closer...any difference in strength and ESPECIALLY location of the Low Pressure center will be crucial to not only our winter weather chances, but our severe weather chances as it comes our way also.

So what about beyond midweek into late week? Well, that's a really hard question to answer right now, as the models have had poor run-to-run consistency, and they all have different solutions. So I'll be updating that as better handling comes along. But I will say that we need to keep an eye on winter weather chances, and cold air appears likely sometime late next week.

I also want to point out real quickly that we are less than two weeks away from the anniversary of the Storm of the Century in March of 1993. As many of you remember, that storm dumped nearly 2' of snowfall in the city of Chattanooga, with even more in surrounding regions. That was an amazing storm, and I plan on writing a little bit' about it on the 13th of March. What a storm...

That's it for now. Will update later!
~Jordan