Issued Wednesday at 9:00 pm, January 21, 2026

A winter storm with high impacts is expected to bring treacherous conditions to the plateau this weekend. Please stay tuned for all the latest and thank you for trusting me with your forecast! Now is the time to prepare. Please make sure you have a safe alternative heat source if you rely on electricity for heat. With bitter cold temps coming next week, I want you to be safe and warm.

I’ll issue special updates from now until the weekend to give you the latest on my thoughts for the Cumberland Plateau. Follow this site for updates or download the free Meteorologist Mark app from your app store. Thank you for trusting me with your weather!

Don’t forget that I’ll have the daily morning update out tomorrow, too!

Wednesday Evening Weather Update

Winter storm watches are now issued from New Mexico to the Carolinas! Look at all the areas threatened by this winter storm!

The impact map made by the Weather Prediction Center is impressive, as well.

Hurricane Hunters have been out in our storm this evening off the coast of California. They investigate these systems for us when they’re out over the ocean, where’s there is limited data.

And there’s our storm….wayyyyyy out west of us. Pretty cool how we can warn of the dangers of these systems so far in advance, right? Notice the clouds streaming over the Southeast from a very active subtropical jetstream. That jetstream will provide LOTS of moisture for our weekend winter storm. We need it, as we’re almost 2″ below normal on precip for the year.

I made this days ago and I’ve been sharing it ever since. I didn’t put that line in there about Aspirin just to be funny. This day is always a headache. This time around, it’s the European model that decided to go haywire and take everything north. We don’t realy on one model and we don’t knee-jerk react to one model or even one day’s worth of data. We have several models and lots of data to analyze.

The brutally cold air to follow this system could make things even more troublesome. Monday night’s low temps may touch zero or even go into the negative digits. If you lose power with this storm, and many of you are liable to, it could get awfully cold for you if you don’t have a back-up source of heat that does not rely on electricity.

All threats are high. Impacts to travel, trees, and powerlines could all be very significant.

The signal for light wintry precip Friday morning (which I always had low confidence in) has been removed. Friday should be fine. Friday night is when snow may start to develop, increasing in coverage and intensity Saturday morning. Winter storms can speed up at night, so I put those low chances in before midnight to account for that possibility. I’ll be keeping an hourly forecast updated through the weekend. These hourly forecasts are tailor made by myself for the Cumberland Plateau.

I’m sticking with my initial forecast. I don’t react to knee-jerk changes in model data, especially this far out. Once the data from the hurricane hunters gets added, I’ll re-evaluate. I still have low confidence in this forecast, but it’s a good start. Those of you across Overton, Pickett, Fentress, Morgan, and Scott counties may lean toward the higher totals, while the rest of us lean more toward the lower. The mixing in of sleet, as I mentioned last night, is why my totals are as low as they are.

And yes, the concern for ice is still there. After looking at more data, I’m leaning more toward lots of sleet mixing in, with freezing rain only able to accumulate to 1/4″. When you get to 1/2″ ice is when real trouble starts. Winds should stay light, but gusts to 20 mph are possible. My concern is having snow, then freezing rain/sleet, accumulating together on trees and powerlines. That’s a lot of weight and would make power outages likely.

Please stay tuned. I’ll have a fresh update in the morning with all the latest!

You all take care and stay tuned! And prepare for what could be a very impactful winter storm.

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