As a thick cover of freezing fog blanketed Knoxville earlier this morning, the National Weather Service issued an advisory cautioning residents about hazardous travel conditions. With visibility reduced to a scant 0.15 miles, a shroud of humidity hung at 100%, while temperatures hovered at the freezing mark of 30°F. NWS Knoxville reported calm winds and a dewpoint of 30°F, setting a scene that can, and often does, lead to icy commutes.
Looking ahead, the forecast for Knox and surrounding areas isn’t exactly sunshine and clear skies—not today, at least. Mostly cloudy conditions with a high near 46 are expected later, according to the NWS, and a calm wind will pick up just a touch, veering northeast around 5 mph by afternoon; tonight, however, showers are predicted to roll in after 11pm, and the temperature will dip to around 35 with precipitation chances ramping up to 90%.
In a detailed forecast update, a 50 percent chance of showers lingers into Friday, mainly before 1pm, with a cloudy sky maintaining a grip on the high near 44. The NWS Morristown, TN, elaborates that a calm wind continues, offering only new precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch. As for Friday night, there's a scant 20 percent chance one might catch showers before the clock strikes 1am, after which cloudy conditions hold steady as temperatures fall to 37 degrees.
Their Hazardous Weather Outlook cautions further that from late tonight through early Friday morning, light precipitation enters the scene which most will see as rain but the northern Plateau, northeast Tennessee, southwest Virginia, and the Tennessee mountains will experience enough of a chill for light snow, and a nasty bout of light freezing rain is possible for southwest Virginia and extreme northeast Tennessee according to the NWS advisory it stated "Light accumulations and minor travel impacts are increasingly likely in these areas." Plan your weekend accordingly because while wintry holdovers will transform to mostly rain, it’s expected to taper off Saturday afternoon, giving way to a Saturday night carrying a 20 percent chance of rain after 1am and yet another mostly cloudy Sunday with a high near 47.
