“Two toughest kids on the block. … Sooner or later, they’re gonna fight.”’
Lt. Col. Andrew Tanner, played by Powers Boothe, may have been referring (thankfully not presciently) to the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1980s movie “Red Dawn,” but it has some resonance with why this has been such a wild past several days of weather for Southwest and Southside Virginia.
Last Thursday brought freezing rain accompanied by lightning (big boom of thunder woke me up!) and, later in the day, severe thunderstorms with hail to parts of Southwest Virginia. (A deadly tornado struck eastern Tennessee in that bout of storms.) Tuesday and Wednesday have been full of snow, sleet, freezing rain, and rain. In days ahead, there will be temperature shooting into the 50s on Thursday, potentially heavy rain over the weekend, a return to windy cold early next, and possibly another winter storm toward the middle of next week.
This past week of weather was a heavyweight bout of sorts between the dominant weather feature of recent mild winters, the warm ridge of high pressure off the Southeast U.S. coast, and the dominant pattern of the cold winter we’ve had so far with high pressure in the general area of western Canada, Alaska and the northern Pacific Ocean pile-driving frigid air from the Arctic across Canada through the central and eastern U.S.
A few months back, it was presumed that the developing La Niña, cool waters in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, would lead to a nearly winterlong pattern of high pressure off the southeast U.S. coast deflecting away cold fronts and winter storms, like had happened often to at least some extent in the past six winters. But La Niña was late and weak in forming, and other climatic factors took control of the hemisphere to bring us a much more wintry winter.
For a while it looked like the Bermuda high, as we sometimes call it, would restore the recent mild order to this winter, and we did have a thawing break from the deep cold of January through much of the first week of February. But the Arctic cold pattern has begun re-establishing itself and looks to take control again next week for a likely colder than normal latter half of February.
These past several days have been the transition between the two, with the combatants trading punches, causing active weather over much of the U.S., including Virginia.
Two more systems in days ahead wlll be tracking well west of our region, pulling milder air up with their moisture. Some cold air may be trapped over snowpack and against the mountains on this Wednesday evening for some additional freezing rain in parts of western Virginia, but much of the ice and snow that has fallen and collected will be gone after Thursday’s mild rush that could reach the 50s for many.
The weekend rain could be quite heavy, but likely will be mild enough to not bring any further widespread wintry weather effects. Behind that storm system, though, colder air begins rushing in for next week.
That takes us to the middle of next week, when weather features may become aligned for a low-pressure to form near the Gulf Coast and run up the Eastern Seaboard — maybe. That could bring another winter storm threat to Virginia and much of the southern and eastern U.S. But of course, at this distance, it might not pan out, or may be somewhat different in its evolution.
We can revisit the details of that in days ahead. We’ll still have some wintry trouble to deal with right now.
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:
