The Great Knoxville snowstorm of November 1952

Here is another writeup I wrote earlier this year and will post it here for reference... if you haven't seen this one on the other site it was pretty interesting. I decided to write about this storm because some features of the early 50's Nina's and this one are simular... there were two anomalous snowstorms back in the early 50's....the Great App storm of 1950 and the anomalous snow in East TN that occurred on November 21st and 22nd of 1952.

Here is a nice comparison between the two storms
http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/080/mwr-080-11-0227.pdf

I found out there was alot of information on the the Great Appalachian storm of 1950 but I couldnt find much on the Nov 1952 storm. This storm still holds Knoxvilles 24hr snowfall record at around 18 inches, and from the surface maps that I did find after a very detailed search.... I think it was more of an ULL snow as the surface features didnt seem all that impressive but the upper level features seem to be very strong. This snow occured in a deformation band or "wrap around" type snow.

There are so many details that "The Great Appalachian storm of 1950" and what i'm referring to as The Great Knoxville snowstorm of 1952 have in common....these are just some of the more noticeable things to me.

Both storms occured in the early 50's which was at the beginning of a very long and cold phase of the PDO

Both storms occured in November.

Both storms retrograded back towards the Great Lakes.

Both storms occured under La Nina conditions.

Both storms occured during a Negative NAO blocking pattern.

Both storms formed along a strong cold front.

Both storms seemed to get and fetch plenty of moisture southward from the Great Lakes.

Both storms had intense High pressure systems off to their northeast.

Both storms had very intense winds in their western quadrants.

Both storms were enveloped in negatively tilted trough's.


I posted this to try an document what caused the Anomalous snow way back in 1952 and maybe try an start a wikipedia article on it ...so if anybody has any data to add to this it would be much appreciated. I will try an find more info about this storm later but there doesn't seem to be much on the web about this one.

Nov 21 1952



Nov 22 1952


ULH Nov 22 1952


Notice the PDO was just entering a very long and cold phase when these storms happened that is very similar to the current PDO's value



And here is an article I sumitted to wiki that got turned down twice...I finally just gave up...those people are very picky

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/The_Great_Knoxville_Snowstorm_of_1952