Utility crews made enormous progress across Virginia late Sunday into Monday, reducing the number of customers without electricity to only about 4 percent of what it had been late Sunday, ahead of expected widespread snowfall on Wednesday.
Only 8,382 utility customers were without power early Monday evening, according to utility data aggregator poweroutage.us. That number topped 200,000 for the second time in four days Sunday as winds gusting over 50 mph blew through much of the state a day after flooding rain in Southwest Virginia. That number also topped 200,000 on Thursday morning following a midweek ice storm focused on southern Virginia, and power had not been fully restored to all who lost it in the ice storm when the winds roared behind a cold front Sunday.
The most remaining outages were in Albemarle County, with over 1,800, and in flood-ravaged Dickenson County in the southwest corner, with over 1,400. Outages were reduced to several hundred along the Blue Ridge in Roanoke, Floyd, Carroll and Grayson counties, where ice was particularly damaging early in the week.
Appalachian Power, which accounted for about 5,000 customers without power in Virginia, said on its website that it expected full power restoration by Thursday.
More inclement wintry weather is expected Wednesday. Winter storm watches are up from Martinsville and Danville north to Lynchburg and eastward across Southside and Central Virginia, where 4 or more inches of snow may accumulate. Snow is expected across Southwest Virginia also, but in lighter amounts. The snowfall forecast is still subject to up and down movement as several factors of the coming storm system remain undetermined.
No ice is expected with this round of wintry precipitation. Cold temperatures with teens and 20s lows and only 30s to 40s highs are expected to linger into the weekend before some milder weather next week.
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:
