Fall foliage, sky and clouds create a red, white and blue autumn scene in southern Roanoke County on a recent early November afternoon. Photo by Kevin Myatt.
Fall foliage, sky and clouds create a red, white and blue autumn scene in southern Roanoke County on a recent early November afternoon. Photo by Kevin Myatt.

A lot of those long dry spells we talked about last week came to an end Sunday night, but some new weather history was made with high temperatures last week.

Our weather has temporarily backed off from that warmth — some below-freezing lows on this Wednesday morning and many places won’t make it to 50 with yet more still-needed rain on Thursday — but the overall trend favors warmer than normal temperatures moving into next week as broad high pressure aloft continues to dominate the eastern U.S. But there may be some cracks starting to show up that could have us feeling a little more holiday-appropriately chilly toward Thanksgiving week.

Pushing colder air from the northern latitudes into a widespread warm regime will likely create a wide variety of turbulent weather across a big chunk of the United States — and there may even be another tropical system involved, moving up from the Caribbean.

Next week may be one of those weeks with just about every weather condition imaginable in the central and eastern U.S.

Dark rain clouds begin to move in over Bull Mountain in Patrick County, as seen from Fairy Stone State Park, on Sunday afternoon, Nov. 10. Photo by Kevin Myatt.
Dark rain clouds begin to move in over Bull Mountain in Patrick County, as seen from Fairy Stone State Park, on Sunday afternoon, Nov. 10. Photo by Kevin Myatt.

What’s ahead

Nothing major will be changing in our weather through at least the middle of next week, and probably some days beyond.

After this newest round of chilly showers we’ll start warming up again, though probably not many 80s as we saw last week. Blocking high pressure is primed to start building in the northern latitudes and that will force a large blob of cold air southward next week, first into the Rockies and central U.S., then pushing eastward. A deep-diving jet-stream trough will lead to a period of active weather over much of the central and eastern U.S. This will likely include widespread rainfall, severe thunderstorms and tornadoes, and heavy snowfall. Much about where and when these various weather events occur is vague at this stage.

A major variable is how much a tropical system expected to form in the Caribbean this weekend — the possible future Tropical Storm/Hurricane Sara — will factor into the developing weather pattern. It is possible this storm gets pulled northward by a deepening upper-level low in the central U.S. next week, possibly threatening Florida again and injecting moisture into the broader storm.

For our region, there may be a period of significant rainfall and maybe thunderstorms, followed by a windy cold blast and mountain snow showers, toward the latter half of next week or early in the week before Thanksgiving. None of this is etched in stone, but the developing pattern suggests that some major changes and big shifts are afoot before we put the first morsel of Thanksgiving turkey in our mouths.

A stunning sunrise paints the sky over Roanoke in October. Courtesy of Sue Vail.
A stunning sunrise paints the sky over Roanoke in October. Courtesy of Sue Vail.

Record November heat

Several record warm temperatures, daily and monthly, were set in and near the Cardinal News coverage area of Southwest and Southside Virginia last week.

  •  Lynchburg hit 85 degrees last Thursday, Nov. 7, not only a record high temperature for the date going back to 1892 (though the most recent Nov. 7 record was 84 just two years earlier in 2022), but the warmest temperature ever recorded in the Hill City for any date in the month of November during those 132 years. Lynchburg highs of 81 on the days either side of Thursday also set daily records for Nov. 6 and Nov. 8.
  • Roanoke topped out at 83 a week ago on Wednesday, which was the hottest Nov. 6 on record going back to the start of records in 1912, beating 82 in 2015. It also tied the warmest November temperature on record, also reached in 2022 (Nov. 7), 2016 (Nov. 2), and 1950 (Nov. 1). Roanoke also reached 82 on Nov. 7, just barely missing that 83 record in 2022.
  •  Danville also hit 85 last Thursday, setting the daily record by beating 83 on Nov. 7, 1975, and barely missing the November monthly record of 86 set on Nov. 3, 1974.
  •  Blacksburg poked a new daily record high on Nov. 8 at 79 degrees, beating 77 in 1975, and tied one with 2015 on Nov. 7 at 77.
  •   The Tri-Cities Airport in Tennessee, across the border from Bristol, broke the record on Nov. 7 by hitting 82 degrees, beating 78 from two years earlier, and then tied the Nov. 9 record set in 2020 at 78.

You will notice from these records there is a noticeable lean toward more recent years making up the bulk of the records being tied and broken, which of course fits into broader global and national climate trends for warming temperatures.

Warmer than normal temperatures are expected to return next week over much of the eastern U.S., but the blue colors to the west signify colder air starting to pool that will likely flow our way in the days before Thanksgiving. Courtesy of Climate Prediction Center, NOAA.
Warmer than normal temperatures are expected to return next week over much of the eastern U.S., but the blue colors to the west signify colder air starting to pool that will likely flow our way in the days before Thanksgiving. Courtesy of Climate Prediction Center, NOAA.

The current acute cause of the warm early November weather, not just in our backyard but over much of the eastern two-thirds of the nation, has been broad stagnant high pressure aloft. This set up soon after Hurricane Helene’s remnants left us and has caused the long warm, dry spell, only challenged by a couple of brief, relatively weak cold fronts.

The high kept Hurricane Milton and Hurricane Rafael deflected well south of us — Milton hit Florida hard while Rafael spun to a slow demise in the Gulf of Mexico after striking Cuba  — and prevented any storm system from tracking in any trajectory that would be able to sweep much Gulf of Mexico or Atlantic moisture our way for significant rain.

We’ve started to see some erosion of that pattern this week with a couple of showery rain systems, ending Lynchburg’s 38-day streak of having no measurable rain on Sunday just before it could reach a record 40 days. As we’ve discussed, there may be bigger changes next week and beyond.

Fog rises off the mountains of Montgomery County on Monday morning, Nov. 11, following overnight rainfall, the most significant and widespread rainfall our region has seen in weeks, though most amounts were well under an inch. Photo by Kevin Myatt.
Fog rises off the mountains of Montgomery County on Monday morning, Nov. 11, following overnight rainfall, the most significant and widespread rainfall our region has seen in weeks, though most amounts were well under an inch. Photo by Kevin Myatt.

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. Sign up for his weekly newsletter:

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