Note: There is a slight chance of some sleet or snow early Friday, especially in the Shoals. This will turn into a chilly rain during the day.

Well, so far this winter season has not panned out too well for winter weather lovers in the Tennessee Valley. Even though Winter officially just began, really the months of December, January, and February are what should be considered winter, those months are called Meteorological Winter, and are more accurate than late December to late March for winter weather chances. Things may or may not improve in coming weeks, but keep hope alive. The official forecast from the National Weather Service group that predicts upcoming climate says January will be much wetter than normal here. The pattern looks to continue to be wet. But cold rain is not what we want. The blue is the heaviest precipitation compared to average.

precip
In addition, they also show colder than normal across almost all of the U.S. for January. This, combined with the moist pattern COULD work out into a big snow event in the Tennessee Valley…or not. The blue is colder than normal.
cold
We need the timing to work out, otherwise we’ll just have cold rain or some snow flurries at the end of rain events.
Some people, especially our northern friends, wonder why snow is such a big deal down here. This is the best way I can explain it:

Snow in the South is wonderful. It has a kind of magic and mystery that it has nowhere else. And the reason for this is that it comes to people in the South not as the grim, unyielding tenant of Winter’s keep, but as a strange and wild visitor from the secret North

-THOMAS WOLFE

Most weather operational models don’t show a good chance at a winter weather event soon for us, but some ensemble members do continue to hint at it, as soon as soon after the new year. Those ensemble members are like if you asked a classroom of students for different solutions to the same problem. In other words, we are not far off from something good, but it can’t be predicted as of yet. Stay tuned, I hope to have more about this in the next few days. As for your New Years weather, prepare for a cold rain New Years Eve if you are out and also on New Years day. Hopefully, some winter weather mischief won’t be far behind. Until next time, “keep snow hope alive”.