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Wintry The incredible 3 pronged Dec. 1886 winter storm in N GA with nearly 48 hours of precip

GaWx

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Webb and others,
It just so happens that I researched this incredible Dec. 1886 storm's effects on N GA at the ATL library many years ago and made copies of old ATL Journal newspapers that I still have with me. According to the paper, this is what occurred in ATL:

Part 1: The wintry precip. started at 6 PM on 12/3 as a "fine sleet". It changed to snow at 10 PM 12/3 with flakes "nearly as large as feathers". The snow continued til 4 AM on 12/4 when 1.5" was on the ground. Temp.'s during this were ~27 and winds were easterly.

Part 2.: At 11 AM on 12/4 winds were easterly at a whopping 22 mph (strong wedge?) The forecast was for the snow to be over and for light rains to fall. What a huge bust!! Sleet redeveloped during the day 12/4 and continued through the night and through much of the next morning (12/5), when "it sleeted considerably"! (Tony, I hope you see this lol...this sounds like 18+ straight hours of sleet!).

Part 3: That still wasn't the end by any means! On 12/5 at 2 PM, after what appeared to be a shortlived lull, "the snow was falling in earnest, the storm keeping up the remainder of the day and well into the night" (I think til after midnight on 12/6 based on precip. records). It was also windy.

Recap/aftermath: As of the next morning (12/6), "the snow had ceased falling", it was a colder "23.7" degrees, and "the ground was covered with fully seven inches on a level. Had the sleet which fell been snow the depth would have been nearly a foot". So for my records, I have the total as 7" of sleet and snow for ATL.

Summarizing, this storm started as sleet way back at 6 PM 12/3 (that lasted for 4 hours), it changed to snow at 10 PM (which lasted for 6 hours and accumulated to 1.5"), was followed by a 7+ hour break til after 11 AM, then was followed by 18-24 hours of sleet, followed by only a few hours break, and and then close to 12 hours of snow. So, there were 40-46 hours of sleet and snow over an elapsed ~56 hours!! Per the records, a whopping 1.80" of total liquid equiv fell from late 12/3 til early 12/6. There clearly were three different waves of major precip! Regarding the elapsed time of ~56 hours for sig SN/IP, the most comparable I could find (ignoring mainly ZR storms) were nearly 36 straight hours of SN in 1855 (per this same newspaper per an ATL resident who recalls it), 72+ hours (assumed on and off) in Feb. of 1885, and ~48 hours 1/12-14/1982. There were a good number that were near or just over 24 hours including 12/2017, 2/2014, 2/1979, 12/1917, 1/1893 and 2/1889 just to name some. So, though 12/2017's near 24 hours was very impressive, it was far from unprecedented and has been far exceeded a few times

Further north in GA, "In northern Georgia, it is said to have been much more severe than this section". The numbers were, indeed, incredible and unheard of though they were helped a lot because they likely were from pure and drier SN: Mount Airy: 30"; 28" Dalton; Rome: 22-24"!!! These almost have to be at or very near alltime record highs for GA. But remember that it isn't just about these numbers as further south was reduced by lots of sleet, which is much slower to melt. The 7" of SN/IP mixture at ATL was a huge deal from what I read...like cement and nothing like most there had ever experienced keeping in mind that 9" had fallen just two winters prior though spread out over a 4 day period. There was a lot of damage from the total weight of this. So, it isn't always just about the numbers.

I'm guessing that the last prong of this, the heaviest SN, was mainly from a lagging upper level disturbance based on a reanalysis of 500 mb that Webb showed was in AL when the surface low was already offshore the SE coast. I've seen an upper disturbance do this several times in ATL. But that's just a guess.

Edit: Kids throwing snowballs at adult strangers was a big thing in the late 1800s lol. Just about every storm report mentioned this. in a lighthearted way
 
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This event was mentioned on the MRX weather page a few days ago. 22.5 inches of snow fell in Knoxville with up to 42.5 inches in parts of East Tennessee over the 3 day period.
 
Yeah I noticed in looking at the 20CR data that there was a mid level warm nose esp over the Carolinas that likely slashed totals big time east of the mountains even though they were still very impressive even with all the sleet.
 
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