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We might flirt with snow by the weekend. But looking beyond that from this Valentine’s Day, there are big questions about whether snow lovers in Southwest and Southside Virginia might get stood up by a potential colder pattern — a thought that is absolutely heart-warming for throngs of regional readers yearning for that early spring the groundhog promised — or if there might be yet another wintry kiss for them.
We’ll get more to the meteorological discussion of upcoming weather at the end of this column, but for something a little lighter on this holiday of love, let’s take a few minutes to ponder our collective weather likes and dislikes, something I’ve grown attuned to in interacting with regional readers in more than two decades of writing about weather for The Roanoke Times and Cardinal News.
Snow is, by far, the most polarizing weather topic I cover. There have always been large and vocal segments of my readership who love it and detest it. This was made clearer than ever by the feedback I got in various forms from readers after last week’s column discussing the possibility of a colder, snowier pattern ahead. A sample of responses:
· “Snow only causes us pain and suffering …”
· “All of the snow. I want it.”
· “I will take rainy theme over snowy theme any day!”
· “Let it snow….let it snow….let it snow.”
· “Bring on spring.”
· “Bring it on! “ (talking about snow in this case)
Snow love has different levels. I have had a few people over the years who have made it clear that if it isn’t a foot, it’s not worthwhile. Those people are unhappy a lot. More common are snow lovers who want as much snow as possible, as frequently as possible, in small, medium or large increments, all season. The last couple of winters haven’t been kind to them, and southern Virginia winters even in the best of times can be frustratingly inconsistent for snowfall. Then there are what could be described more as snow likers, who enjoy having a snowfall or two of a few inches but are fine moving on after that. Many of them in our region are at that stage after the Jan. 15 snowfall, aside from the Southside counties that missed out.
Snow haters are less nuanced — no flakes, anytime, for any reason. Occasionally there is some grudging respect for how beautiful things look with a wet snow that clings to every branch and melts by noon. But the best snow is no snow, for this crowd.
Both sides have points. Snow can be gorgeous, fun, miserable and downright dangerous. People slide off roads and get heart attacks shoveling. Schedules and plans are thrown into chaos. But some of the scenes produced in the region’s mountains and hills are absolutely breathtaking.
Sometimes opinion polls will reveal an athlete, musician or politician who is, at once, the most loved and hated in their field at the same time. Snow comes close to being that for our regional weather, but I don’t think it quite rates tops for either love or hate.
The most loved weather, by far, is sunshine and about 60 to 80 degrees.
It is hard not to love a sunny day that’s not too cold or too hot just for being able to go outside and do almost anything without either having to bundle up or getting soaked with sweat. Even a lot of the snow-loving crowd would prefer that we skip right to sunny, warm days if it’s not going to snow, dodging all the chilly, damp stuff in between snow and short sleeves.
Sunshine and the 80- to 95-degree range is probably next loved. You start losing some folks who don’t like hot weather as the mercury moves up, but plenty of people love water recreation, for which this range is ideal. At least some people genuinely like downright hot weather, but lots of folks really begin to peel off the love of sunny days when we start getting above 90 or 95. Heat waves, with multiple days 95 and above, are broadly unpopular.
Sunshine and the 45 to 60 range would probably rank third most liked. It’s not warm but it’s not cold either, and in the winter this is an acceptable range for people who don’t like anything cold. Sunny days can brighten the mood for lots of people who get depressed by shortened days.
Drop below 45, and sunshine doesn’t matter as much to those who like sunny warmth, as it’s just still cold. That said, just being cold even without snow has a considerable fan group, usually with significant Venn diagram overlap with snow lovers.
Rain is not popular, even when it is needed. A soaking rain is begrudgingly accepted by most when it is understood we are in a drought or need some wildfires put out. People with agricultural interests, or a garden or lawn they care for tenderly, are often keenly aware of the need for regular but not overwhelming rain, understanding its practical importance. But even then, it can still ruin someone’s daughter’s outdoor wedding just down the road. I get only a few people who tell me they enjoy rain, in and of itself, in an emotional sense.
Flooding rain is of course widely disliked by just about everyone, but its effects are so geography based, this dislike ranges from abject fear in flood-prone areas to minor inconvenience for people living high enough where the water drains away from them.
If the most feared weather is considered most hated, then, thanks to what happened in 2012, having a derecho — or anything remotely resembling a derecho — at least vies for the most hated weather. Nothing gets people more nervous now than seeing a row of red-core storms on radar in West Virginia headed our way. “Is this a derecho?” people start asking almost immediately. Most of the time it has not been a derecho when that’s been asked, and since June 29, 2012, when roughly half the region lost electrical power in winds that gusted as high as 81 mph, even those that might have been marginally derechos have not been anything like that derecho.
People obviously don’t want to get hit by tornadoes but they are so infrequent in our region, usually toward the lesser categories on the Fujita scale (Glade Spring 2011, Appomattox County 2016 and Lynchburg/Amherst County 2018 among obvious exceptions), and affect such narrow paths that they just don’t register much as an intense fear or dislike for most people who haven’t directly experienced one, here or elsewhere. In fact, when a tornado does occur that is visible to many, it becomes a sort of novelty that people seem excited about seeing.
Thunderstorms have a considerable fan club. They might not if we lived in a region that often had high-end severe storms with baseball-sized hail and long-track tornadoes. But I get many excited exclamations from people hearing the first crackle of thunder in the spring or seeing a nice shelf cloud or even some small hail or reasonably gusty winds. More people have told me they enjoy thunderstorms than have said they like just regular rain.
But thunderstorms do evoke fear for many, and rightfully so, with multiple hazards — especially lightning, which doesn’t require a particularly severe storm — that can cause death and destruction.
There is commonly a curiosity about tropical systems even though our region is very rarely directly affected by them when they are still well-organized and infrequently affected by them even in a weakened inland form. Part of that is because so many residents of our region make an occasional pilgrimage to the Carolinas or even Florida for beach fun, and the tropical threat can hang over those plans especially toward late summer and fall. But the occasional tropical systems whose remnants come into our region and wreak havoc — usually flooding, but occasionally wind or tornadoes — also cause eyes and ears to perk up at the mention of potential hurricanes.
Wind and fog can often be problematic — we had plenty of fog on Monday this week, lots of wind on Tuesday — but it seems that these conditions are just understood to occur fairly often and don’t really engender deep like or dislike widely. (Sadly, a person died in Russell County when a tree was blown onto a home Tuesday.)
But if there is one kind of weather that generates the most universal hatred as it is being forecast or it is developing, it is freezing rain.
Ice storms usually allow people who love and hate snow to put aside their differences for bipartisan disgust.
For snow lovers, an ice storm means moisture with temperatures below freezing is being wasted on something besides snow. For snow haters, it is just another manifestation of icky, cold wetness.
Then, throw in power outages and damage to trees when ice storms start really getting nasty. Ice also often occurs in marginal temperature situations where forecasts can’t quite be precise enough for our region’s varied topography and minute fluctuations aloft, so there is often the added “blown forecast” tension (rightly or wrongly) of someone not getting some snow they expected or it turning 33 and just being rain at someone else’s house.
The silver lining, quite literally, with freezing rain is when we have just a light coating and the sun comes out shortly afterward, for a reflective light show that is among the most incredibly gorgeous spectacles in all of weather.
Yes, I do know a very small number of people who say they like ice storms.
My job here is not to judge or criticize or take sides in people’s weather likes and dislikes. As someone who has driven college students toward, not away from, tornadic storms on 13 storm chase trips; who spent a 50th birthday hiking through blinding snow squalls in West Virginia; who heard the sizzle on downtown rooftop as lightning zapped somewhere close by while watching a storm approach; who has stood feet away from a flooded river photographing its raging, muddy currents, I have little ground to throw stones at anyone else about the weather they find enjoyable or interesting.
I generally try to note most weather we have from the angle of both its fans and detractors. I’ll save weather being described as “fortunate” or “unfortunate” for a few obvious cases where lives are in peril or major property damage is involved in whatever is happening or not happening.
Generally, though, my personal philosophy on weather can be summed up by something I tweeted recently as a reply.
If you’re not with the weather you love, love the weather you’re with.
Winter weather ahead?
The possible batting order for winter storm potential discussed here a week ago looks less formidable at this mid-February writing.
Some of the features that would help funnel Arctic air southward and possibly lock it in over the latter half of February are coming undone, largely because of continued strong westerly Pacific flow aloft. So the idea of a prolonged wintry pattern to finish out February seems to be doubtful at this point.
What we do have, however, is the potential for a couple of Arctic air surges that could interact with storm systems.
The first of these occurs Friday night and Saturday, when there is the possibility of snow and rain over much of Southwest and Southside Virginia. Depending on the track, interaction and evolution of a couple of different upper-level impulses, plus the speed and depth of arriving colder air, this situation could go several different ways. The lean as of early Wednesday is to a minor brush with some wet snow, but please follow later forecasts to see if anything changes. If this were to turn into a more widespread threat of substantial snow, I would post something new here on Cardinal News later this week.
After a couple of days of pretty cold weather with teens/20s lows and 30s/40s highs, temperatures perk back up toward the 50s for highs next week, which is actually near normal for mid to late February in most of the lower-elevation parts of our region.
We may see another cold front by late next week, with uncertainties about how it may interact with any additional storm systems. Do not rule out another wintry weather flirtation sometime around the 24th or so.
We won’t even get into March now, which often seems to have a mind of its own compared to the preceding winter months, especially during El Niño.
We’ll revisit the developing weather pattern in a week as much could have changed in either a warmer or colder direction.
Journalist Kevin Myatt has been writing about weather for 20 years. His weekly column, appearing on Wednesdays, is sponsored by Oakey’s, a family-run, locally owned funeral home with locations throughout the Roanoke Valley.
