Nashville may get 4+ inches of snow Friday. Here’s how that stacks up with previous years.

The National Weather Service has forecasted that between four to six inches of snow will fall in Nashville Friday.

Snowfall has been mixed in recent years. The city got nearly 8 inches last year, no snow in 2023 and more than 13 inches in 2022. 

The city had an average of about 5 inches of snow in the 1991-2020 range, which forecasters currently use as the official “climate normal.” 

Read more: Snow expected to impact Middle Tennessee travel

Looking back further, and using all available data, the city’s average annual snowfall is about 8 inches. (The weather service set up in Nashville in 1870 and started collecting snow measurements in 1884.) 

In the past 140 years, there have been 31 years that Nashville received at least 12 inches of snow. But only two years happened in the 21st century: 2003 and 2022. About half of the remaining years had 4 inches or less of snow — 11 had less than one inch of snow, including 2023 — and the other half had 4 to 12 inches of snow. 

The current record for the highest annual snowfall is nearly 39 inches of snow in 1960. 

Caroline Eggers WPLN News

The National Weather Service started collecting snowfall data in 1884. Not all years have complete data.

Most of Tennessee gets about four to six inches of snow per year. Some areas in the Cumberland Plateau and East Tennessee have annual averages of about 10 inches. 

One place seems otherworldly compared to the rest of the state: The Smoky Mountains. Mount LeConte, gets an average of about 77 inches of snow every year. Some years, the mountain receives over 100 inches of snow, according to the Tennessee Climate Office.