Tennessee is a ridge, a limestone basin, and a river plain, and they do not share a winter. East of the plateau the mountains and the valley floors take snow, ice, and a heating season the west barely believes. The middle of the state rolls through hills, freezes often enough to matter, and lives with severe wind. The west, down on the Mississippi side, is hotter, flatter, and humid for a longer stretch, with thunderstorms that do not wait for evening plans. Call the third you live in before you describe the house.
Cabins and steep roofs occupy the east. Basin houses sit on limestone, and many of them actually have basements. The west mostly does not, because the water table and the delta soils argue against them. Brick ranches, bungalows, and new infill show up in all three, and they fail on different clocks. Attics over the west cook shingles faster. Crawl spaces in the east go cold. A fan dumped into any of those attics still softens a deck. The trade has to match the third of the state, not a generic southern script.
Ice and snow load belong in the east and, often enough, in the hills of the middle. Tornadoes and straight-line wind are a middle and west reality that should be said without turning one storm into a legend. Hail marks roofs across the state. Termites prefer the warmer west and the basin over a high ridge. Humidity is the summer constant, heavier and longer as you move toward the river. A burst pipe in January and a heat-killed condenser in August are both Tennessee. They are not both Memphis, and they are not both a mountain county.
Bring the sheet that lists limits and deductibles if the question is a policy, and say whether the loss is wind, hail, a tree, rising water, or freeze. Bring the symptom and the shutoff if the question is the house. Name east, middle, or west. A Knoxville valley ranch and a house on the bluff above the big river should not be diagnosed with the same opening sentence.
Tennessee will not average itself into one climate while you wait. Pick the trade and call.