Snow in Downtown Knoxville, January 2025

For the second year in a row we’ve gotten a significant snow in January. I’ll take it. In the early 1980s when I moved to Knoxville, multiple snows a year seemed normal. In recent years we’ve missed entire winters. I appreciate the snow, enjoy it, and then want it to give us a break for a minute. This one checked all the boxes.

I’ve photographed Knoxville in the snow for most of the nearly fifteen years I’ve documented downtown. After a while I began to feel I’d taken all the shots. Of course, that isn’t literally true, but there are the standard shots like the Tennessee Theatre blade, the Sunsphere, Rowing Man. I do love photographing the statues, so I did that again. Our statues really tell a unique story about our city: Abraham Lincoln, a fireman, a doctor, two suffrage statues, and a Russian pianist. I’d guess we may be the only city with that particular mix.

As I walked, I also tried to consider which shots were not there last year, shots like the sculpture on Krutch Park with its miniature people running about in the snow, or the large sculpture on Summit Hill. Of course, it’s Governor John Sevier’s first winter in the elements. What would these additions look like in the snow? It also struck me that there are spots that may not be visible next year, like the back side of the Daylight building. I stopped by the Lord Lindsey. Will it continue to sit as it is?

I took a shot of the partial snow cap on the Sunsphere, only to have a close-up encounter with it a few minutes later. As I stood on the Clinch Avenue viaduct over the World’s Fair Park, two separate avalanches fell from the top of the structure landing with a very impressive thud. Fortunately, I wasn’t directly under it and I’m glad because I suspect that would have bode ill for my continued health. Unfortunately, since I didn’t know it was about to happen, I missed dramatic photo evidence, but i caught a little of it, as you can see.

I also took a shot of a man very helpfully clearing sidewalks around the convention center with a motorized snow blower. The path it made wasn’t perfect, but it made walking much easier. I can’t help but wonder why we can’t have those going up and down Gay Street or making a path around Market Square. It seems odd that a city-owned facility would have just the thing to clear their sidewalks while the sidewalks in the heart of downtown are largely at the mercy of the sun for clearing.

Other than that, I simply looked around for pretty shots of trees, children playing in the snow, or small splashes of color. It’s always fun to have a snow on the ground in the midst of the Christmas decorations. The tree on Krutch Park looked lovely, as did the entire park with lights aglow. This is a pretty downtown and sometimes the snow helps me focus and remember that. I hope you enjoyed it, as well.

I’ve included my top twenty or so in the larger format and the entire group of 65 below those. You’ll need a laptop or desktop to enlarge them.