Winter made a quick entry this week, as expected, with colder air for longer than has bothered to arrive this early in the past three winters.
There has even been a little bit of snow in Southwest and Southside Virginia, especially in areas west of Interstate 77, with two or three rounds of light snow already. But there won’t be enough to dash through in a one-horse open sleigh anytime soon.
After another bone-rattling shot of Arctic air overnight into Thursday that brings more snow showers across the mountains on knuckle-numbing northwest wind gusts, temperatures steadily warm up over the weekend into next week, likely rising above freezing just in time for what could be a few rounds of rain showers. It’s that typical “get cold, then warm up and rain” sequence we’ve gotten used to in the last few winters.
While snow lovers will be disappointed that this early period of cold doesn’t appear as if it will be accompanied by a big dump of frozen flakes, the arrival of this cold air mass should at least be an encouragement to them (and a warning to those who don’t like snow) that this winter might not follow the pattern of the past two dendritically challenged ones.
This early cold outbreak isn’t so deep and lengthy that we would expect it to be the type that pours itself out once and then goes away for the winter, as sort of happened in the 2018-19 winter, when not much happened after the Dec. 9-10 major regionwide snowstorm and some would say not much has happened in our winters since then. Or as it did in frigid front-end-loaded winters of the past like 1983-84 and 1989-90, when December froze solid and snowed some while the rest of winter was pretty mild. Going back into years of yore, the monstrously cold, icy and snowy early winter of 1917-18 gave up the ghost just after the new year and winter really didn’t come back until 1920.
There is still more cold air where this came from and some pretty solid indications that it will pour back into the U.S. in weeks ahead, though exactly which part of the country experiences the bulk of coming cold shots will be decided by shifting weather pattern factors. It probably gets back here sooner or later, maybe by late month.
While it is looking more doubtful that this winter will become the classic La Niña winter, with a semi-permanent ridge of high pressure off the Southeast coast of the U.S. deflecting most cold air masses and storm track to the northwest, and a semi-continuous west-southwest flow off the Pacific Ocean sweeping in milder air, we will probably see some semblance of that pattern from time to time. We appear to be headed into that for mid-December.
At this early stage, however, it appears likely we should expect that we will see significant dumps of cold air from the tundra again, and perhaps again and again, over the next three months. The question then becomes whether or not storm systems will connect with the track and timing necessary to lift moisture into that cold air for the kind of widespread plowable winter storm Cardinal Weather country hasn’t experienced since January 2022 and has scarcely had since that big early December dump in 2018.
There is no strong reason to believe, at this point, that this winter will feature a strong and swift southern branch of the jet stream continually bringing a train of wet systems across the southern U.S. We haven’t really had this pattern since it showed up for a while in December and January a year ago during the height of El Niño, the wet storm systems it produced mostly deflected to our west and northwest keeping us more in rain than anything wintry. Not having these kind of storm systems is a big reason we’ve spent most of 2024 in and out of varying stages of dryness and drought, including currently.
The classic winter storm pattern for our region involves deep Arctic air driven southward by strong high pressure over western North America and trapped over the eastern U.S. by strong high pressure in northeast Canada and Greenland, with wet storms following along the southern branch of the jet stream near the U.S.-Mexico border and Gulf of Mexico.
We may yet see this pattern show up for a week or two. But for now, it doesn’t appear alternating between a La Niña-like mild, dry flow from the southwest and a cold, northwest flow from the tundra is likely to bring that about.
So, even though next week may turn out a bit wet, that is why I am leaning dry with the forecast for winter as a whole, and therefore, below normal with snowfall. The cold air will be there, I think, for longer than it has been in either of the past two winters, probably averaging roughly normal in temperature balanced against milder periods in between. But the moisture will be intermittent and most of the time fairly light, I am thinking.
Sooner or later, we’ll get an Alberta clipper stronger than the weak southeast-diving disturbances that have brought light snow to some of our region in recent days, or we’ll get a setup where southwesterly flow lifts more copious moisture over cold air trapped against the mountains. So I think we end up with a little more snow than the past two winters in most places, but below normal in most locations in Southwest and Southside Virginia.
Saturday closed out the entry period for the annual snowfall prediction contest. I make it a point each year to put my own numbers on the board for the same locations I asked readers to guess for.
My expectations are closer to normal in the western parts of our region, where I think upslope snowfall on northwest winds flowing over the mountains, better access to Alberta clippers and southeast-moving disturbances, and a bit better elevation on marginal temperature setups will enable more snow to fall. But eastward and in lower elevations, I’m guessing below-normal amounts — again — for snowfall, though these below-normal amounts are more akin to those of our 2020-21 and 2021-22 numbers rather than the last two winters, a nearly snowless one most places in 2022-23 and a one-hit wonder (except for snowless in Southside) for most in 2023-24.
Here are my guesses at snowfall rounded to the nearest inch from Dec. 1 to March 31 for the 10 locations in this year’s snowfall prediction contest with the historic average in parentheses. As with any other winter forecast you see, take it with a grain — maybe even a shaker or a truckload — of salt. But I’ve got to do what I asked my readers to do.
Abingdon: 12 (Avg. 13)
Appomattox: 6 (Avg. 13)
Blacksburg: 15 (Avg. 21)
Burke’s Garden: 35 (Avg. 38)
Clintwood: 33 (Avg. 36)
Danville: 3 (Avg. 7)
Lynchburg: 8 (Avg. 15)
Martinsville: 4 (Avg. 9)
Roanoke: 10 (Avg. 18)
Wytheville: 15 (Avg. 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:
