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A night before the vernal equinox officially started spring, fire burned in an arc on a mountain overlooking the Roanoke Valley, as white particles blew through the air.
Ash? Bloom petals from early maturing spring trees? Nope, they were cold and wet. Snowflakes.
Ironically, the same stiff northwesterly gusts behind a cold front that spread a fire over about 75 acres of Twelve O’Clock Knob in southwest Roanoke County south of Salem among several other sporadic wildfires in Southwest and Southside Virginia also sprayed upslope-driven snow showers over the mountains from West Virginia into western Virginia on Monday night and early Tuesday.
Welcome to the often bizarre portal between winter and spring.
The fire risk continued on this Wednesday, as either a red flag warning signaling high risk of fire spreading or an only slightly less urgent fire weather watch covered the entirety of Southwest and Southside Virginia. (We’ll update here or elsewhere on Cardinal News if any especially large wildfires develop.) Another cold front sweeping through will kick up new winds with extremely dry air in place. Any fires that get started have a chance to spread.
Sporadic mostly small wildfires have developed over the past week across much of Southwest and Southside Virginia, including five in Buchanan County and two each in Halifax County, Roanoke County and Wise County, among others. An orphaned bear cub was saved from a nearly 300-acre fire last week in Wythe County, as reported by Cardinal News.
These wildfires have been mostly brush fires, burning through leaves and dried-out plants along the surface, not tree-consuming forest fires, even when they have burned through woodland areas. Much was the same in November when several larger fires scorched many thousands of acres of forest understory in multiple locations in and near our region. Forest fires jumping treetop to treetop are exceedingly rare in our region for a variety of reasons related to climate, geography and biology.
Unlike in November, our region is not presently in widespread, long-term moderate to extreme drought. In fact, as of last week, not one speck of Virginia was even considered “abnormally dry.” (Latest U.S. Drought Monitor map for Virginia linked here — it updates on Thursday, so possibly might show some new yellow “abnormally dry” zones). Frequent rainy storms in December and January completely eliminated the drought. But rain has become more sparse in February and March, and even when it has been fairly moist, it doesn’t take much late winter or early spring wind behind cold fronts to quickly dry out the surface fuels.
Most of these “wild” fires are human caused. The Twelve O’Clock Knob fire began with a vehicle fire. Gusty winds and dry conditions can spread such fires quickly. That is why many localities are issuing fire bans and weather officials everywhere in our region are strongly discouraging outdoor burning until we get some soaking rain.
That appears likely to happen on Saturday with a storm system lifting abundant moisture over a dome of pretty cool air banked against the mountains. This might have been a solid winter storm setup a month or two ago, but there likely isn’t deep enough cold air for such wintry shenanigans now, though some brief sleet or a few wet snowflakes to start may not be entirely out of the question on Friday in our region’s higher elevations.
Many of you will have some mixed feelings about another Saturday rain. This will make seven of the year’s 12 Saturdays that have been at least a little wet in part or all of our region.
Recent colder air — most places went below freezing on Tuesday morning and many will again on Thursday morning — follows on the heels of a historically warm first half of March. Sunny, unseasonably warm days helped dry out surface fuels even more before the fires, along with helping many trees and flowers sprout blooms earlier than we have been accustomed to in the past.
Warm start to March
The first half of this March — 16 days, actually, slightly more than half, which would be a statistically inconvenient 15.5 — were among the warmest such period on record, based on daily average temperature, at several regional major climate stations.
· At Roanoke, it was the second warmest March 1-16 period on record at 55.6 degrees, trailing only 56.7 from 1921. Data begins 1912.
· At Lynchburg, it was the fourth warmest March 1-16 period on record at 53.8 degrees. Again, 1921 was the warmest at 56.9 degrees. Data begins 1893.
· At Blacksburg, it was tied for the seventh warmest March 1-16 period on record at 48.0 degrees, tied with 1948. Once more, 1921 led the list of warm starts to March, at 51.8 degrees. Data begins 1893.
· At Danville, it was the ninth warmest March 1-16 period on record at 54.5 degrees. Not surprisingly by now, 1921 had the warmest March 1-16 period for Danville at 57.5. Data begins 1917.
· At Tri-Cities Airport across the Tennessee-Virginia border from Bristol, it was tied for the fifth warmest March 1-16 period on record with another recent year, 2016. 1921 couldn’t lead this list as data only goes back to 1938. The warmest start to March on record at this site was 1973 at 58.5 degrees.
The commonality of 1921 as the warmest first half of March on record at four Virginia stations that go back beyond that time highlights an especially volatile period of annual weather from in the late 1910s and early 1920s that featured some extreme cold, extreme heat, heavy snowfall and snowless winters at various times.
Tri-Cities’ tie with 2016 points out another year in our fairly recent past that featured a warm start to March following a winter with a strong El Niño (warm equatorial Pacific waters) occurring. The first half of March in 2016 was seventh warmest at Lynchburg, fifth warmest at Roanoke, sixth warmest at Blacksburg (one spot higher than this March) and second warmest at Danville (seven spots higher than this March, averaging 56.5 degrees).
The 2015-16 winter was generally a mild and wet winter across our region, but had a longer cold period in late January to mid-February than this one did, featuring two snowstorms with 6 or more inches across at least half of Cardinal News’ coverage area. Temperatures flipped quickly to a warm period in late February, punctuated by the deadly Appomattox County tornado on Feb. 24, and continued that warmth into early March.
(The 2015-16 winter was largely the template I used for trying to guess-cast what this strong El Niño winter would do in our region. It was fairly similar with mild temperatures and wetness, but fell short in longevity of a cold period and snowfall. Fortunately, it fell well short in tornado activity, also).
Like much of the calendar, March has generally been getting warmer over recent years in our region, in parallel with broader global and national climate trends. At Roanoke, for example, five of the nine warmest Marches on record going back 112 years have occurred since 2016. (March 2013 and March 2018 were strong exceptions to recent trends toward warmer temperatures in March, ranking among the coldest and snowiest Marches on record for several locations in our region.)
Warm weather in late winter and early spring triggers what seems to be a more frequent agricultural concern of early greening and blooming that is almost inevitably followed by at least a few subfreezing mornings even into April or early May.
The atmospheric pattern ahead suggests somewhat deeper penetration of cooler air masses at times in days ahead but no prolonged chill.
Winter appears to have been over long before the calendar said so, but spring can still nip some buds.
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.