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Power outages were mounting rapidly on Monday morning across Southwest, Southside and Central Virginia, as icy coatings from freezing rain were sagging tree limbs and power lines in many locations.
As of 8:30 a.m., approximately 63,000 utility customers were without power in Virginia, according to utility data aggregator poweroutage.us, mostly along and south of the U.S. 460 corridor running the southwest corner of the state to Richmond.
Franklin County reported the most without power at over 10,000, while nearly 7,000 were without power in Campbell County, over 5,000 in Bedford County, and nearly 4,000 in Montgomery County. Tazewell County in Southwest Virginia and Buckingham County in Central Virginia each topped 2,000 without power, with almost 2,000 in Amherst County north of Lynchburg.
UPDATE, 2:25 p.m. The outage eventually ran as high as 105,000 but now stands at about 89,000. Of those, 54,200 in Virginia are Appalachian Power customers in Virginia, with 12,700 in Franklin County and 9,200 in Bedford County.
An Applachian spokesman said “early assessment shows some outages may linger into the middle of the week.”
More than 300,000 had lost power as of Monday morning in a stripe of states from Missouri to Virginia following a winter storm that spread snow, ice and sleet, while also spawning severe thunderstorms and torandoes in the South.
The system’s main precipitation band was crossing Virginia on Monday morning, with snow in Northern Virginia, rain along the southern fringe and in Hampton Roads, and a wintry mix in between. It had cleared most of the western half of the state by 8:30 a.m., with light and patchy precipitation behind it.
Snowfall amounts of up to 8 inches have occurred in Northern Virginia, with 2 to 5 inches of combined snow and sleet common in most of the state. Ice accretion from freezing rain of ¼ to ½ inch in many locations has caused tree limbs to break and power lines to be pulled down.
Many Virginians awoke to an inches-thick glacier of snow infused with sleet and coated with glaze ice covering their yards and neighborhood streets. With cold temperatures throughout the week and only brief rises above freezing, melting will be slow.
Most of the southern half of Virginia will poke above freezing later today, but an Arctic cold front will bring windy and colder weather tonight through midweek. Lows in the single-digits and teens are possible by Wednesday and Thursday mornings.
Wind gusts over 30 mph may cause additional damage to trees and power lines that remain coated with ice.
The main band of precipitation will exit the state later today, with showery mixed precipitation behind it, and some bands of light snow developing by afternoon and evening with minor additional accumulations possible.
There is another potential winter storm system to monitor for Friday and Saturday, but many details of that are uncertain at this time.
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: