What were you doing fifty years ago this month?

Well, if you were big enough to handle a shovel, you might have been shoveling snow.

The great eastern snowstorm of November 1950 buried much of the eastern U.S., from the Great Lakes to the southern Apps, in a surprise early-season snowfall usually seen only in the interior Rockies.

The bulk of the snow fell in the western slopes of the Appalachians, where as much as 24 in. of snow fell in places like Portsmouth, Oh., and 21 in. in Huntington, W. Va.

But as far west as the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee, more than a half-foot of snow blanketed the ground and several inches of snow were recorded in parts of the northern mid-state.

Why is this history important? To point out ahead of what I’m about to say that even though they’re very rare, November snowstorms are not unheard of in our neck of the woods.

Some models — not the GFS, which this site usually relies on, but some — are indicating a low pressure system interacting with an upper level trough that is expected to set up over the eastern U.S. and deliver cold temperatures to the Mid-South by late next week.

I’m not saying that this is going to be November 1950 redux. I’m not even saying our area has a reasonable chance of seeing accumulating snow.

But what does look possible is that the western slopes of the Apps could be in for their first measurable snow of the season by late week. And even here on the northern Plateau, we could see our first snow flakes of the season flying around by late Thursday or Friday.

Colder weather for sure

We’ve talked for a while about the possibility of a cold shot of air filtering into the Southeast by Nov. 4. Yesterday, I highlighted what the models are currently saying about that possibility. Generally speaking, it looks like we could see the coldest air of the season so far by late next week and/or next weekend. The National Weather Service is already forecasting temperatures struggling to get into the 50s on Saturday, and that’s still six days away. Chances are, you’ll see that forecast revised downward as we get closer to the weekend.

The GFS computer model is also struggling to catch up to what’s going to happen. The latest GFS model output statistics, hot off the press, suggest that we’ll see a high temperature of only 44 degrees in Scott County on Friday, and a high of 42 degrees on Saturday. That’s cold any way you slice it; our normal high for this time of year is about 60. And that 44 reading on Friday might be a little misleading. In all likelihood, that would be a nighttime recording as colder weather filters in. Our daytime high on Friday may not get out of the 30s.

And the GFS has also suggested that we’ll see enough moisture in the atmosphere to perhaps wring out some snow flakes mixing in with light rain showers Friday. Chances are, any mixed or wintry precipitation would occur over higher elevations, higher than 2,000 ft. But there’s still time for this to evolve and if more cold air mixes down through the lower levels of the atmosphere than is currently expected, we could see some snow flakes flying around in valley locations. Already, soundings using GFS model data indicate that the atmosphere will be cold enough to support snow flakes around here.

So…no, no accumulating snow around here. But the first snowflakes of the season? It sure looks possible. And some places to our east/northeast could see a little accumulating snow for the first time this season. And if a storm system does develop, as some models indicate, it’s going to be interesting to watch and see what happens.

By the way, that November 1950 snow storm began on Nov. 23. The sun had three more weeks to sink in the sky. But that still doesn’t mean early November snows are impossible. Many are too young to remember that 1950 snow storm, but you don’t have to be all that old to remember the 1966 November snow that fell across Scott County. Six inches of snowfall were recorded in Oneida. The date? Nov. 3.

Rare, but not unheard of.

* The last time Scott made the playoffs and Oneida didn’t? Twenty-six years ago: 1984. SHS defensive coordinator Tony Lambert was a member of that ’84 district championship team.

* For Scott, this is the first back-to-back trips to the postseason since 1993-1994, when Gary Sexton came to Huntsville from Ohio and led the Highlanders to the postseason right away. Sexton is the father of current SHS gunslinger Jacob Sexton.

* Claiborne County has made two trips to the playoffs since the new school opened: 2005 and 2006. They gave up 64 and 70 points to Fulton and Catholic.

* Another example of why this system doesn’t work: In Class 1A, Sunbright finishes third in District 4 with two losses. Copper Basin finishes second in District 5 with one loss. But Sunbright gets the No. 2 seed…which means a first round bye and a home game in the second round. Copper Basin has to play (against a very tough Harriman team) in the first round and travels to Sunbright if they get to the second round.

* Class 1A: No. 1 Coalfield gets a bye and will host the winner of No. 4 Greenback and No. 5 Cloudland in the second round. That will be a very tough matchup. Greenback has been pretty good much of the way this year. No. 2 Sunbright hosts the winner of No. 3 Copper Basin and No. 6 Harriman in the second round.

* Class 2A: No. 1 Hampton gets a bye and will host the winner of No. 4 Boyd Buchanan and No. 5 Unaka in the second round. No. 2 Wartburg gets a bye and will host the winner of No. 3 Rockwood and No. 6 Oliver Springs in the second round. This is an interesting quadrant. Boyd may be a 4-seed, but if they catch fire, look out. Wartburg-Rockwood should be a war for a right to face Hampton (or Boyd) in the semifinals.

In Quadrant Two, the two best 2A teams in the state will likely meet in the quarterfinals — Trousdale County and Signal Mountain. I’m not sure why TSSAA didn’t shift Trousdale west to split ‘em up.

* Class 3A: The two best teams, Alcoa and CAK, will rematch in the quarterfinals in Quadrant Two. Not that it matters. Go ahead and engrave Alcoa’s name on the trophy.

* Class 5A: Powell (#1) and Anderson County (#4) will meet in the second round. Yikes.

Scott High is a 6-seed in Quadrant One in the TSSAA’s Class 4A bracket.

This is the best scenario the Highlanders could’ve hoped for (other than winding up in Quadrant Two and getting to host a game, which TSSAA wasn’t going to allow to happen).

The Highlanders will play at Claiborne County in the first round next Friday night. Claiborne is No. 3 and has a 7-3 record, but this is an excellent matchup for Scott. Claiborne has beaten only two .500 or better teams this season (Chuckey Doak and South Greene) and were beaten handedly by Gibbs (34-0) and Greeneville (56-8). They only beat Union County 21-0 and Cosby 26-0, and those are two bad teams. This is a game Scott should win. In fact, I dare say they’ ll be the favorite in this one.

If you can get by the first round, the second round opponent will be Gibbs, which will beat Sequoyah in the first round. Which means you wouldn’t have to face Greeneville until the quarterfinals. Gibbs is an excellent team this year, but I don’t think that game is un-winnable for Scott…while Greeneville probably would be. Of course, you’ve got to earn the right to play Gibbs first, and that only happens if you take care of business in round #1.

1.) Tennessee is one of the nation’s Top 25 teams for the first half. But then the third quarter comes along and they collapse. Oregon, Florida, Alabama. Same thing today, right

? Two turnovers, 14 points? Wrong. There was a little second half resolve there for a change. It was nice to see. Resilience, meet Tennessee. Tennessee, resilience. I hope you guys get well acquainted because you’ll need one another if the Music City Bowl is in your future.

2.) Tyler Bray looked like an SEC quarterback today. He has beautiful form and release and a good frame to be a BCS quarterback if he can put some meat on his bones. He isn’t there yet. But for all the defending of Matt Simms I’ve done the last three or four weeks, Bray clearly won the job today. The guys on the Vol Network post-game show said they’ll be surprised if Simms doesn’t start next week. I’ll be surprised if he does.

3.) Matt Simms after the game, according to tweets by Wes Rucker: “It wasn’t like I dropped back and threw it to the other team” (a reference to Bray’s pick-six)…”I didn’t say anything to (Bray.) They were going to give him plenty of chances.” With our roster situation, you can’t afford to kick Simms off the team. But if I’m Derek Dooley, there’s some serious discipline measures in Simms’ future. And he doesn’t sniff the field against Memphis next week.

4.) Eric Gordon, you’re killing me. Do we have another return man on this team?!?

5.) We’re eight games into the season and we’re still seeing guys line up out of position? That’s unacceptable. I don’t know if it’s coaching, but it’s inexcusable.

6.) On the flip side, Tennessee is the least-penalized team in the SEC. Considering how many freshmen and inexperienced players the Vols are playing, that’s tremendous, and speaks well of the coaches.

7.) Speaking of bowls, Tennessee’s back is now against the wall. With a 2-6 record, the Vols cannot lose again and hope to be bowl-eligible. More than one person predicted before the season started that the Vols would start 2-6 and then win the next four as the offense began to gel. Each of the four games remaining on the schedule are winnable, but can this young team string together four straight wins in four straight weeks? It’ll be very difficult…especially considering every team left on the schedule (except Memphis) could easily beat UT. The remaining teams aren’t as weak as UT-Martin or UAB, but they’re definitely not as good as the six teams the Vols have lost to.

8.) I like Dooley and I think he will ultimately succeed at Tennessee. And I like Justin Wilcox and Jim Chaney. But if I were a coach, there are two areas I would be seriously looking at: offensive line and secondary. Those are definitely the weak points of this team. And a lot of it appears to be strategy. On the flip side, you might give those coaches the benefit of the doubt. UT’s personnel in the defensive backfield isn’t very good. Eric Berry and Dennis Rogan are sorely missed. As for the offensive line, they’re very talented but also very young. It was well discussed coming in that they only had three starts among them. On the other hand, we’re eight games in. You might be a greenhorn coming into the season but you had better be a grizzled old veteran by the end of the season. Harry Hiestand has an excellent resume.

9.) If there is an assistant coach on the staff who is definitely worth his salary, it’s Chuck Smith. The defensive line is by far the thinnest position on the team. Smith has done quite a lot with what he has to work with.

10.) This freshman class at Tennessee is going to be very, very good by the time they’re through. And even though most UT fans are anxiously awaiting the arrival of Justin Worley (UT commitment for the 2011 class), the QB for the next three years just might be part of this freshman class. Bray shows some raw potential.

A warmer-than-usual fall threatens to turn cold just in time for the start of November (and the start of Tennessee’s muzzleloader deer season).

The GFS model has been showing a fairly strong cold shot impacting much of the eastern U.S. around the Nov. 4 time frame for a couple of weeks now. The model h as w

avered a little from time to time on exactly how strong that cold shot will be, at times suggesting we could even see some snow flurries in parts of East Tennessee. But the main thing is that the GFS and the ECMWF (European) model are both showing this cold snap next Thursday-Saturday, Nov. 5-7.

How strong this cold air mass proves to be will probably not be certain until we get much closer. The combination of a very fast Pacific pattern and subtropical ridging from the Atlantic has proven to dominate the pattern so far when it looked like colder weather might be possible. But at the very least there should be a cool-down next week from the temperatures we’ve been seeing. If everything pans out like it could, we will see our first widespread hard freeze of the season and high temps that struggle to get into the mid-50s for two or three days.

Taken literally, the GFS’s model output statistics show a high of 57 on Thursday, 52 on Friday and 53 on Saturday.

Temperatures will rebound fairly quickly to the above-average warmth we’ve come to expect this autumn, but another cold shot looks possible less than a week later, around the Nov. 11-12 time frame.

WARM OCTOBER? The average temperature for October has been 54.4 degrees in Oneida. Believe it or not, that’s actually below average. Since 1971, our average October temperature has been 55.0 degrees. This follows September, when our average temp was 66.0. The 30-year average in September is 66.4. Even though it has seemed like a warm fall, it’s actually been very average.

Two reasons: The perception that it has been a warm fall has been enhanced by a lack of cold shots that we typically see this time of year. But we also haven’t seen a lot of extremely hot days like we often see sprinkled in during the month of October.

The second reason: We’ve enjoyed very good weather all autumn long. Low dew points and a lack of cloud cover at night have allowed temperatures to plummet, helping to off-set daytime temperatures that have actually been warmer than usual. Our average high temperature in October has been 71.2. Our 30-year average high in October is 69.0. Two degrees is a fairly significant departure from normal. On the other hand, our average low temperature in October has been 37.6. That’s an even greater departure from normal. Our 30-year average low in October is 41.2. So colder-than-average nights have helped to offset warmer-than-average days and create an overall temperature that is slightly below average.

NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center is forecasting above-average temperatures for our area all the way through January.

Oneida 54, Jellico 22. There are two ways you can approach a game when you’ve been eliminated from post-season contention: you can come out feeling sorry for yourselves, or you can come out determined to make the most of the opportunity before you and send out your seniors on a good note. Oneida chose the latter, overwhelming a hapless Jellico team in spectacular fashion. The Indians put 47 points on the board in the first 18 minutes before choosing to call off the dogs midway through the second quarter. With two blocked punts returned for touchdowns and an interception returned for a score, the Indians dominated in every phase of the game. The second half was won by Jellico as Oneida substituted liberally and waltzed to its fourth win of the season.

Scott 38, Stone Memorial 7. This one was surprisingly lopsided. The Highlanders sent a message to every 4A playoff team on the east end of the state: beware the under-seeded Big Red. It was a 31-7 game at halftime as Scott ran away with what was expected to be a competitive game.

Gibbs 21, Austin-East 13. Gibbs scored on a 30-yard fourth down run with less than a minute remaining to extend its one-point lead, then recovered a fumble to hold on for the win, wrapping up a 9-1 regular season and its first district or region championship since 1992. This one is also important because Gibbs’ quarterback Chris Legg was carted off the field in the first half. If that injury is serious enough to hold him out of next week’s first round playoff game, that could be important for whichever team faces the Eagles. And while it’s a long shot, that whichever could be Scott.

Anderson County 46, Clinton 6. Rivalry? What rivalry? Spanking is more like it.

Coalfield 39, Oakdale 0. It was 32-0 at halftime.

Greeneville 56, Claiborne County 8. Claiborne County isn’t that impressive, but they had lost only two games coming into tonight. I’ll say it again: Greeneville will be your state champs in Class 4A.

Marion County 42, Lookout Valley 20. This is one of two last-gasp hopes for Oneida. The Indians needed Lookout Valley to win.

Peabody 49, Gibson County 6. The other last-gasp hope. Oneida needed Gibson County to win.

Hampton 45, Cloudland 8. If the Bulldogs have finally learned to play defense, they could wind up being the team to beat from this side of the state in Class 2A…well, except for Signal Mountain.

Fulton 48, Union County 13. Impressive, but this was 1-8 Union County…who gave up 46 points to Pigeon Forge and 50 to Grainger County. Fulton is a (slim but) possible first round matchup for Scott.

Grace Christian 46, Greenback 0. Grace wasn’t impressive earlier in the season but they’ve really turned it on as of late. A strong contender in Class 1A.

Loudon 22, Kingston 13. Scott lost to both of these teams but may be better than either one.

Oliver Springs 34, Clay County 27. The Bobcats put an exclamation point on their wild card playoff bid.

Rockwood 34, Harriman 12. This Rockwood team is looking very good. It’ll be hard for them to get past the third round but they could give somebody fits in that quarterfinal.

Wartburg 41, Sunbright 21. Good for the Bulldogs. This is the best season they’ve had in a long, long time. I hope they go far. Remember when Oneida had them on the ropes back in week three?

Cannon County 37, Upperman 36. Well, somebody had to win…

Gordonsville 59, Pickett County 6. I honestly think Oneida’s middle school team could beat Pickett County this year. But if they stick with it, the program will see better days.

Smith County 41, York Institute 0.

It’s been a tough year for the boys from Jimtown. This loss guarantees that the Dragons won’t make the playoffs.

Trousdale County 47, Red Boiling Springs 7. Someone needs to knock off Creasy’s boys this year. But saying is easier than doing…although Signal Mountain might be up to the challenge.

Douglass 24, Memphis Northside 22. Hey, congrats on your third win of the season, Douglass. Enjoy your playoff bid in Class 2A…but you didn’t need tonight’s win to get in, of course. You were in with two wins. (Thanks, TSSAA.)

…Please stop filling up my mailbox with attack mail.

Every piece you send me lessens any enthusiasm I might have for voting Republican.

Thank you.

Knoxville News Sentinel columnist Greg Johnson scorns Congressman Lincoln Davis for his attack ads:

And character assassination is the best U.S. Rep. Lincoln Davis, D-Pall Mall, can do.

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FiveThirtyEight now gives Republican Dr. Scott DesJarlais a 70-plus percent chance of winning Davis’ 4th Congressional District seat. So Davis dug up records from a divorce DesJarlais went through a decade ago and continues to run ad after ad after ad impugning DesJarlais’ character, credibility and mental competence.

What Davis doesn’t want to talk about is that he is a Democrat and any vote for any congressional Democrat in 2010 creates a chance for Nancy Pelosi to remain as speaker of the House. Davis doesn’t want to talk about how his is the party of tax-and-spend liberalism. He doesn’t want to talk about his vote for Obama’s failed stimulus plan. And he sure doesn’t want to talk about how the federal debt has increased by $5 trillion since he voted for Pelosi for speaker in 2007. So Davis talks about DesJarlais’ divorce. Pathetic. Shameful.

Rescuers in Colorado are search

ing for a Huntsville man who went missing on a hunt there earlier this week.

Tim West was last seen on Tuesday while hunting in Colorado.

West, the son of Highland Steel founder Clell West, is among a group of Scott Countians including Huntsville Vice Mayor Mark Love who are elk hunting in Colorado this week.

His hunting comrades last heard from West when he left for Tuesday’s hunt.

Search and rescue teams are actively searching the area where West was believed to be, and a number of his family and friends are headed to Colorado from Scott County to assist in the search efforts.

UPDATE: Family members say West was last heard from late Wednesday and indicated that he is in good condition. Crews are still attempting to locate his position.

UPDATE II: Missing hunter has been rescued.

From the realm of cluelessness comes this anti-hunting rant from a sports editor…in Georgia, of all places:

When you are at war, it’s you or your enemy. You look for the upper hand. You find an elevated position, sit for hours or even days on end and wait. That’s fine. At least your enemy knows you’re out there.

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OK, maybe sometimes it doesn’t (special ops get a bit more liberal with how the Geneva Conventions are interpreted). But a deer has no clue. When you sit in a tree stand and wait for a deer to come through your baited area, it’s just a matter of time. At least when I hunted, I walked the terrain. I walked around. I tracked deer. I looked for signs of bedding or tracks and went off of that to try and bag a buck. Not a doe because killing female deer in California is illegal unlike in Georgia (for some reason. What? Population control? Humans need population control more than deer). Hunting from a deer stand with a rifle was illegal too. Even if it weren’t, I would have never done it that way. Where’s the sport in sitting your lazy butt in a tree stand and waiting for a deer to pass by?

The emphasis is mine because, well, once you realize the guy is from California, it all makes more sense.

As for being lazy, Mr. Briggs has obviously never hauled his backside out of bed at 4 a.m. and set in a tree stand from before daylight until after dark, just to head home for a few hours’ rest before being back in the stand again before daylight to repeat the process.