Spring is just around the corner, and this weekend, Carter County and much of Northeast Tennessee experienced some winter flooding from spring-like rains.
Some signs that spring is almost here: warm temperatures, the trees are budding, forsythia and daffodils are blooming, the grass is greening up and growing, and baseball is being played.
However, don’t be fooled by the calendar nor the appearance of early bloomers. March’s weather can be anything but spring-like. In fact, there are some snow showers in the forecast this weekend. We can certainly understand the itchiness of spring after a long, hard, winter of bitter cold at times.
Rolling your car windows down, opening a window in your house to air out and leaving the jacket in the closet are all things the winter-weary look forward to in the spring. In March, though, any warmth in our part of the country tends to be a tease. One, maybe two days at most, if you’re lucky. Just when you get used to near-room temperatures outdoors, a March cold front blasts through, and it’s back to the 30s and 40s for a couple of days. However, March can be a frustrating month. In fact, some of the most notorious winter storms have occurred in March, crippling travel for days in parts of the affected areas.
The oldest folks in our area still like to talk about the March 17, 1936 snow, which dumped up to two feet of snow in town, 40 inches of snow at Roan Mountain, stranding 100 at Tipton’s Cafe at Roan Mountain.
One byproduct of that increased warmth is an increased risk of severe thunderstorms starting in March. While severe weather can occur any time of year the ingredients align, March is when we typically see arctic fronts become less potent enough to allow warm, humid air to surge north more often in their wake ahead of vigorous jet-stream disturbances swinging out of the West.
According to the National Weather Service, the tornado threat tends to be highest in March in a corridor from the Southern Plains into the Tennessee Valley and Deep South. Central Florida can also be a tornado hot spot in March.
And, just like this weekend, serious flooding can occur in late winter and early spring when heavy rains hit, soaking the ground and resulting in swelled creeks and rivers.
This weekend served as a reminder of what spring floods can do.
The Doe River, usually a docile river, was raging over the weekend, overflowing its banks in many locations. Many remember January 1998, when the Doe raged from Roan Mountain to Elizabethton. The result was deadly flood waters, which destroyed homes, damaged property, and took lives.
We must always be mindful of the weather, how it can change without warning, and the devastating effect it can have on our lives. The main thing is to be watchful and to stay informed.
Also, our hats are off to first responders who were out this weekend — law enforcement officers, firemen, crews from the Carter County Road Dept., Elizabethton Street Dept., and the Carter County Rescue Squad — working to clear roads, rescue families from flooded roadways and homes, and trying to keep our community safe. It makes the going easier and the landing softer when we have these people around.