Let’s do a little time travel.
Go back to a cold morning. (It could even be when you woke up this Tuesday morning.)
Do you recall smelling your neighbor’s fireplace? Maybe you heard a train and thought, “I didn’t know we lived by train tracks?!”
You can blame temperature inversions in the lowest layers of the atmosphere for activating your senses.
What is a temperature inversion?
A temperature inversion refers to when air just above the surface is warmer than the ground level.
You’ll often find this on calm, clear and cold mornings in the fall, winter and spring.
The clear sky is like a bed without a blanket, so all of the day’s warmth can escape back up into space.
This leads to quicker and more emphatic cooling at ground level.
Meanwhile, above the surface, your temperatures can be several degrees higher.
In my first TV market, it was common for a town called Big Stone Gap to be 15-20° cooler than the nearest town- Wise. The reason? Big Stone Gap was 1,000 feet lower in elevation than Wise.
What role do inversions play on our senses?
The layer of warm air above the surface can be thought of as a strong defensive line, trapping the quarterback in the pocket and collapsing in on him.
If the QB tries to escape the pocket, he’s sacked immediately.
Football analogies aside, the warmer air above traps sounds, smells and even sights at ground level.
This is why you’ll often smell smoke on mornings after a fireworks display, bonfire, etc. It’s also why you might hear train horns blowing or animals howling in the distance.
One of my favorite examples of this in any movie is early on in the Polar Express. I’m sure they were totally thinking of meteorology when creating that (ha!).
Why do inversions matter with winter precipitation?
Inversions play a big role on our winters, too.
It’s often tough for us to get an all snow event when forecasting winter weather. If you’ve lived here long enough, you know how quickly things can change to sleet and freezing rain.
Our relatively close proximity to the Atlantic and the warm Gulf Stream gives us that layer of warm air over cold surface air, leading to an annoying mix of precipitation.
What can we expect this coming winter?
WRAL meteorologists will release the 2025-2026 winter outlook on WRAL’s 6:00 p.m. newscast, Monday, November 24, 2025.
Elizabeth Gardner and I will also discuss things in further detail on the WRAL YouTube page.
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Have questions about the weather and how it works?
Send me an email with the subject line ‘Ask the Meteorologist:’ to cmichaels@wral.com.