A WHITE CHRISTMAS? 14 to 18 OF SNOW THIS WINTER? Read on, Possumites... The weather right now is B-O-R-I-N-G, and dont expect anything too very interesting to break loose for at least another week and half. At least. In what could, I suppose, be called news, we are now into meteorological winter. Thats as opposed to astronomical winter which doesnt start until December 21. Meteorologists break the seasons up in line with the calendar, so that December, January and February make up winter; March, April, and May are spring, and so forth. Is it unseasonably warm right now? Eh...yeah, a little, but not as much as most people probably think, and not WHEN most people think either. The average high temp for this date is 54. Depending on where you measured it, todays high was either 58 or 59. Not enough of a departure for most people to even notice. The highs for the remainder of the week and into the weekend will be about the same -- a couple of ticks above normal, but not anything dramatic. What makes it seem unusually warm, even though its almost completely average, is that weve had these shots of unusually cold air the past few weeks. The real difference right now is in the overnight lows. At this time of year, they should be in the mid-30s, but they will most likely run no lower than the low to mid-40s for several nights. The good news on that front is that your heating system isnt going to work very hard for several days or nights! :-) So, when can we expect another shot of cold air? At this point, Im saying...a long time, as in at least near Christmas and maybe even after. What about a white Christmas this year? Well, the odds are against it. Since records began being kept in 1884, we have averaged 10 years between white Christmases -- and I stress *average*. There was a l-o-n-g stretch between 1935 and 1969. We had one in 2010, but you have to look all the way back to 1992 to find the one previous to that. Too, most of the Christmases that are classified as white saw less than an inch -- way less, as in 0.3, 0.6, 0.4, and even 0.1. The 2010 white Christmas was the second biggest at 2.5, pretty significant for this area. The biggest? I remember it well -- seven inches in 1969. Of course, weather changes rapidly and anything can happen. Who knows? Maybe there will be a Christmas Miracle in the Tennessee Valley this year. But dont count on it. What about after Christmas? Is there anything to that prediction a few weeks ago by a local TV meteorologist about Knoxville receiving 14 to 18 of snow this winter? And, of course, hes not the only one crying wolf. We remember that as early as late summer, dire predictions for one of the worst winters in history for this area were popping up all over the Internet. The Possum says, Baloney. 14 to 18 inches would be more than double the average yearly snowfall (6.5) for the valley. The record total is actually 18.2 back in 1952. Most of these speculations about snowfall were made with the assumption of an El Nino, or ENSO event, and we delved into this topic a bit in a previous post. My bet? Well have a fairly normal winter for this area, perhaps a couple of ticks lower on average for temperatures. Maybe a couple to three inches higher on average for snowfall. So, yes, teachers and kiddies, I think youll get a few snow days. But 14 to 18 inches? Sorry, no. Of course, I have been wrong before. But not often ;-)
Posted on: Wed, 03 Dec 2014 03:13:16 +0000