Carve that turkey, eat that stuffing, and start putting up the Christmas decorations if you want.
But here’s another tradition your family can add to this Thanksgiving week: Guessing snowfall totals for the winter ahead and sending those guesses to me for a chance to win a $25 gift card and get your prognostication prowess recognized in a spring edition of Cardinal Weather.
Through Saturday night, Nov. 30, at 11:59 p.m. and 59 seconds, I am accepting entries in the third annual Cardinal Weather snowfall prediction contest — which follows a baker’s dozen years of a similar contest in my Weather Journal column in The Roanoke Times. I began accepting entries a week ago.
Here are the rules.
(1) Select THREE locations out of the 10 listed at the bottom of this column.
(2) Guess total snowfall rounded to the nearest inch each of those three will receive between Dec. 1 and March 31. (If you give me fractions or decimals, I’ll do it for you, with halves rounding up.) Snowfall that has already fallen this month, and any that might fall between now and Saturday (not expected), does not count in the season snowfall totals.
(3) Email your guesses to weather@cardinalnews.org. Give me your name and where you live (general location — town, city, part of county — not specific address). It is OK to include more than one entry on the same email, for different family members (no age limits!), or a school group, or something of that nature, just make sure names are clearly labeled for each set of picks.
(4) Deadline for receiving entries is 11:59 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 30.
The winner of a $25 gift card for first place will be whoever misses total snowfall by the least number of inches — guesses and snow totals rounded to the nearest inch — for the best two of their three picks. If there is a tie, we’ll consider the third pick as a tiebreaker. If it’s still tied, whoever sends me their entry first wins.
If I get 200 entries, I’ll boost it to a $50 gift card for first place and $25 for second place. (We’ve got a long way to go to reach that, presently.)
Any and all winners, plus some close runner-up finishers, will be recognized in a spring edition of this weather column.
The locations you may guess for in the contest are listed below. I’ve listed the historic ranges and average for each site to give you some sense of a guide.
Pick three, guess snowfall to the nearest inch, email it to me at weather@cardinalnews.org, and your best two count.
Good luck.
Abingdon: 1 (1991-92) to 55 (1995-96); Average, 13.
Appomattox: 0 (multiple winters, most recently 2019-20) to 56 (1995-96); Average, 13.
Blacksburg: 1 (2022-23) to 67 (1995-96); Average, 21.
Burke’s Garden: 7 (1956-57) to 112 (1977-78); Average, 38.
Clintwood: 8 (2022-23) to 90 (1995-96); Average, 36.
Danville: 0 (multiple winters, most recently 2023-24) to 41 (1947-48); Average, 7.
Lynchburg: 0 (2019-10) to 57 (1995-96); Average, 15.
Martinsville: 0 (multiple winters, most recently 2023-24) to 46 (1959-60); Average, 9.
Roanoke: 0 (1918-19/1919-20 and 2022-23, rounded down from 0.4) to 63 (1959-60); Average, 18.
Wytheville: 1 (2022-23) to 59 (1986-87); Average, 19.
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:
