Updraft bases of towering cumulus clouds line up north of Blacksburg on Tuesday evening, June 4, as sporadic showers and thunderstorms moved through parts of Southwest and Southside Virginia. Drier weather is expected to set in for the latter part of the week into the weekend and early next week. Courtesy of Jeff Noble.
Updraft bases of towering cumulus clouds line up north of Blacksburg on Tuesday evening, June 4, as sporadic showers and thunderstorms moved through parts of Southwest and Southside Virginia. Drier weather is expected to set in for the latter part of the week into the weekend and early next week. Courtesy of Jeff Noble.

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The squall line had not even arrived on Sunday, May 26, before the questions “Is this a derecho?” began being posed on social media.

A few hours later, the question about the D-word was overtaken by those about the T-word — was it in fact a tornado that scattered debris in part of Salem?

The T-word question was a quick and obvious yes, confirmed by the National Weather Service — see the second part of this notebook column for a link to yet another conclusive proof.

That leaves us with the D-word question, which I haven’t seen directly addressed by any official sources.

·       Enter the Cardinal Weather heat prediction contest. See the last segment of this weather column.

It is the opinion of this court of meteorology that a derecho did occur in our region on May 26, based on the most widely accepted parameters for such a definition.

Severe storm reports were widespread from the Mississippi River to the Mid-Atlantic region on Sunday, May 26. This map does not include numerous reports from late the overnight period farther west, and the reports that are displayed are from multiple thunderstorm clusters and supercells, not one derecho event. It does appear many over Kentucky into Virginia were from a single squall line that might have qualified as a derecho. Courtesy of Storm Prediction Center, NOAA.
Severe storm reports were widespread from the Mississippi River to the Mid-Atlantic region on Sunday, May 26. This map does not include numerous reports from the overnight period farther west, and the reports that are displayed are from multiple thunderstorm clusters and supercells, not one derecho event. It does appear many over Kentucky into Virginia were from a single squall line that might have qualified as a derecho. Courtesy of Storm Prediction Center, NOAA.

You can make the case that wind damage reflective of nearly continuous severe-level wind gusts occurred all the way from Oklahoma and Kansas to Virginia. But early in the storm cluster’s life, it was more of a collection of supercells than a more cohesive squall line. Many large and destructive tornadoes were spawned in the early stages of the storm line as it moved near the Oklahoma-Kansas and Arkansas-Missouri borders.

The May 26 storm cluster acted most like a classic derecho across much of Kentucky eastward through central Virginia, when it formed a bow echo pressed forward by a cold pool behind it formed by downdrafts, with near-continuous damaging wind reports and over 300,000 customers losing electrical power in three states, including about 60,000 in Virginia.

A shelf cloud marks the arrival of a thunderstorm with heavy rain over the Clearbrook area of southern Roanoke County on Tuesday, June 4. Scattered showers and storms have been occurring early this week, but not with the same organization or intensity as the severe storms of May 26 that spawned a tornado at Salem and many reports of straight-line wind damage across Southwest and Southside Virginia. Courtesy of Mickey Mixon.
A shelf cloud marks the arrival of a thunderstorm with heavy rain over the Clearbrook area of southern Roanoke County on Tuesday, June 4. Scattered showers and storms have been occurring early this week, but not with the same organization or intensity as the severe storms of May 26 that spawned a tornado at Salem and many reports of straight-line wind damage across Southwest and Southside Virginia. Courtesy of Mickey Mixon.

·       Short-term weather: Sticky, showery weather with scattered storms that has dominated early week in Southwest and Southside Virginia will give way to a much drier and somewhat cooler pattern through the weekend into early next week, with mostly 70s and lower 80s highs and mostly 50s lows, perhaps some 40s in outlying areas. Through mid-June, the hottest temperatures are expected to build under a heat-dome high into the Western U.S., with the clockwise rotation of the high digging a cooler jet stream trough into the East.

That would be a track of over 400 miles, depending on where exactly the start of the more derecho-like segment of the storm’s history began, well above the 240 miles of nearly continuous severe-level wind gusts required for derecho status. The damage path was also wider than the necessary 60 miles.

The May 26, 2024, derecho, if we can call it that, was not as powerful as the June 29, 2012, derecho. If anything, this should continue to de-mystify the term “derecho,” which could be reasonably applied to about five wind-damage events in our region since 2012. None of those were a 2012 redux but all left significant damage and power outages.

Just because it’s a derecho doesn’t mean it will be like THE Derecho.

A still frame from Tyler Anderson's video of the May 26 Salem tornado appears to show a funnel aloft along with a power flash at the surface. Many weaker tornadoes often do not develop a full condensation funnel from cloud to ground, but rather have a ground circulation beneath a high funnel, with the circulation in between not marked by clouds. Courtesy of Tyler Anderson.
A still frame from Tyler Anderson’s video of the May 26 Salem tornado appears to show a funnel aloft along with a power flash at the surface. Many weaker tornadoes often do not develop a full condensation funnel from cloud to ground, but rather have a ground circulation beneath a high funnel, with the circulation in between not marked by clouds. Courtesy of Tyler Anderson with added description by Kevin Myatt.

Best and worst tornado imagery

If you have not yet seen it, it’s worth a click here to see the video WDBJ (Channel 7) posted from Gary Faw, who was a motorist in Salem on May 26 when a tornado crosses the road in front of him near where Colorado Street curves into Apperson Drive.

This is an amazing dashcam video clearly showing the ground swirl of the EF-1 tornado with estimated winds of up to 105 mph, spinning debris, and power flashes as transmission lines and transformers are hit. One large white piece of debris tossed across the road at a low angle was the metal roofing material that ended up leaning against an abandoned bank building.

Roofing material was blown against an abandoned bank building by the May 26 Salem tornado. Photo by Dutchie M. Jessee.
Roofing material was blown against an abandoned bank building by the May 26 Salem tornado. Photo by Dutchie M. Jessee.

The power flashes seen in the Faw dashcam video are also visible at a greater distance in Tyler Anderson’s previously linked video from an elevated location near the Salem VA Medical Center. Anderson’s video picks out a brief overhead funnel and a whirl of debris at the surface.

While we’re on the subject of tornado imagery, let me take this opportunity to say, categorically, that any and all images you see, without exception, on social media that depict a fully condensed classic tornado funnel reaching from cloud to ground and purporting to be from Salem on May 26 are FAKE.

Stunning colors light the sky, dotted by the moon, over Highland County during the May 10 aurora display. Courtesy of Michael Bedwell.
Stunning colors light the sky, dotted by the moon, over Highland County during the May 10 aurora display. Courtesy of Michael Bedwell.

Aurora returning?

The sunspot cluster that spawned the coronal mass ejections that led to the epic May 10 aurora event, seen as far south as the Caribbean with many colorful photos right here in Virginia, is rotating back around to our side of the sun. This has led to some speculation that auroras may again start being visible farther south than they usually are once again.

At this time the emissions appear to be weaker than those in the first half of May and thus far NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center has been warning about G1 and G2 geomagnetic storms, when we generally need the G4 and G5 types to get aurora visibility in our part of Virginia. The May 10 event was the first G5 geomagnetic storm in 21 years, and its aurora display may be among the most extensively visible far to the south in as much as 500 years, according to NASA.

It’s hard to get an event of that magnitude to repeat, but we are still in a period of heightened solar activity, and so we’ll be on the watch for aurora potential in weeks ahead — at least the kind that can be seen from a rural ridgetop.

A fire burns along Twelve O'Clock Knob south of Salem in Roanoke County on March 18, one of more than 400 fires that occurred in Virginia during the spring wildfire season. Courtesy of Ellis Gross.
A fire burns along Twelve O’Clock Knob south of Salem in Roanoke County on March 18, one of more than 400 fires that occurred in Virginia during the spring wildfire season. Courtesy of Ellis Gross.

Record spring wildfire season

The Viginia Department of Forestry has reported that the spring fire season (Feb. 15 to April 30) in Virginia had 411 wildfires that burned nearly 20,000 acres, the worst spring fire season in 30 years. This was about 10 times the acreage burned during the 2023 spring fire season.

The forestry department said 29 homes and 28 other structures were damaged in spring fires, but fire suppression efforts saved 750 homes and 400 structures worth about $163 million.

The four largest fires of the spring were associated with a March 20 outbreak in the Shenandoah Valley, but the season’s fifth largest fire, the Moore Hollow Fire, occurred in Southwest Virginia’s Lee County in late February, burning 525 acres.

Prolonged below-normal precipitation from February through April contributed to the wildfires. May has brought more widespread rainfall that has alleviated dryness in most parts of Southwest and Southside Virginia.

The spring fire season follows a similarly rampant fall fire season that produced the 11,000-acre Matts Creek fire in northern Bedford County, the 4,000-acre Quaker Run fire in Madison County and the 1,000-acre Tuggles Gap fire in Patrick County, among others, in November.

A solar halo appeared above Blacksburg on May 31 as sunlight was refracted through high-altitude ice crystal cloudiness. Courtesy of National Weather Service.
A solar halo appeared above Blacksburg on May 31 as sunlight was refracted through high-altitude ice crystal cloudiness. Courtesy of National Weather Service.

Cold end to warm spring

Lows in the 30s and 40s, including the freezing mark of 32 at Burke’s Garden, occurred on the last day of May, belying a meteorological spring (March 1-May 31) that was among the warmest on record at several locations.

It was the warmest spring on record at Roanoke, based on average temperature, at 61.8 degrees, beating out 2012’s 61.5-degree spring. With records going back to 1912, five of the 10 warmest springs at Roanoke have occurred since 2010.

It was the second warmest spring on record at Blacksburg at 55.6 degrees, edged out by 55.7 in 2012. Blacksburg’s records go back to 1893 but six springs were disqualified for having 10 or more days of missing data. 2012 and 2024 are the only springs since 2000 among the 20 warmest at Blacksburg.

Lynchburg had its fourth warmest spring on record, averaging 59.7 degrees, dating to 1893. Spring 2012 is the warmest on record for Lynchburg at 60.1 degrees. Lynchburg also has not seen the same clustering of warmer springs in recent years as Roanoke, with 2022’s 58.9 average the only other years since 2000 ranking among the top 10.

It was the 10th warmest spring going back to 1917 at Danville, averaging 60.6 degrees, one of three springs since 2010 among the 10 warmest. Spring 1929 leads the list at 62.2 degrees, with 2010 tied for sixth at 61.1 and 2012 ranked ninth warmest at 60.9.  

Spring warmth this year was mostly related to the lack of late cold spells and cool nights rather than runs of unseasonably early hot temperatures. Danville and Lynchburg have yet to reach 90 degrees in 2024, while Roanoke did so for the first time on May 22, which is about three days later than the historical average for first 90-degree temperature.

Many colors paint the western sky over southwest Roanoke County on Sunday, June 2, as the sun sets. Courtesy of Christine Saunders.
Many colors paint the western sky over southwest Roanoke County on Sunday, June 2, as the sun sets. Courtesy of Christine Saunders.

Cardinal Weather heat prediction contest

Speaking of 90-degree heat, be sure to enter the second Cardinal Weather heat prediction contest, with entries accepted through June 14 at midnight. Select two sites in the below list, guess the hottest temperature recorded between June 15 and Aug. 31 at each one, and email them to weather@cardinalnews.org along with your name and locality. Multiple entries are allowed on a single email — get the spouse, kids and whoever else involved. Whoever is closest in total degrees missed between the two picks will win a $25 gift card and a trumpeting of their forecasting prowess in a September edition of the Cardinal Weather column.

The list of regional sites to choose from are: Abingdon, Appomattox, Blacksburg, Burke’s Garden, Clintwood, Covington, Danville, Galax, John H. Kerr Dam, Lexington, Lynchburg, Martinsville, Roanoke, South Boston, Wise, Wytheville. Pick two of those and let me know what you think the hottest temperature will be this summer at those locations.

For information on the historic range of highest summer temperatures for these sites that may help serve as a guide, see the last Cardinal Weather column linked here.

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.

Kevin Myatt has written about Southwest and Southside Virginia weather for the past two decades, previously...