Spring has sprung after coldest winter in a decade, but there will be some chilly speedbumps

This is already “Actual Spring,” not any kind of “Spring of Deception.”

Many of you have undoubtedly seen some version of the online meme listing a dozen or more seasons for Virginia, with this time of year having names like Spring of Deception, the Pollening, Second Winter, Third Winter, and finally Actual Spring.

(People in many states post similar lists, and they all seem to think their state is unique in its changeable weather. But Virginia or any of the other states isn’t special in having “12 seasons” or how many ever you want to count. It’s just how weather varies in a middle latitude climate, especially near the change of calendar seasons.)

Rest assured, that even though you may need a coat and could even see a few snowflakes depending on where you are in our region by Friday morning, “Actual Spring” has actually sprung.

The calendar catches up to the prevailing weather pattern with the vernal equinox on Thursday morning, the official start of astronomical spring. For the purpose of neatly categorizing weather data, spring is already nearly three weeks old on the meteorological calendar, having started March 1.

This year’s atmospheric pattern affecting the central and eastern U.S. pretty much coincided with the meteorological calendar, as March has brought pretty classic early spring weather, even warmer than normal for many days as the jet stream trough has shifted west and high pressure has dominated to the east. That has also included the dark side of spring in the form of a deadly tornado outbreak for parts of the central and southern U.S. this past weekend.

For the Southwest and Southside Virginia coverage area of Cardinal News, ever since the last Arctic air mass of our coldest regional winter in a decade finally gave up in the waning days of February, we have seen more warm days than cold ones, with only brief blustery speedbumps in between the warm spells.

Thursday and Friday will bring another, with some chilly winds behind a cold front by the evening and perhaps, overnight into early Friday, even some snow showers blowing across the mountains. There were a few of those in some of the higher elevations of Southwest Virginia on Monday morning, as well.

Any occurrence of cold temperatures or even snow does not signal “Second Winter” or “Third Winter.” A few windy cold fronts, and some snow showers lifting over the mountains on northwest winds, are as much a part of a Virginia spring as blooming flowers and budding trees.

This will be another short-lived chilly dip, but the coming weekend looks more like mostly 60s highs rather than the 70s to lower 80s of last week.

With some shifts in the upper air pattern, there may be a tendency for somewhat below temperatures to become more frequent in the latter part of March than we’ve seen in the first two-thirds of the month. What we don’t see on the horizon yet, however, is a full-fledged “return to winter,” with prolonged much-below-normal temperatures and widespread snow chances.

As virtually any planters and gardeners know well, we are likely three to seven weeks away from the last subfreezing morning low temperatures in most of our region. Infrequently, there can even be a fluke wet snow to deposit some tardy slush on our daffodils in late March or early April, even when the days before and after aren’t all that cold.

Once the plants bud, bloom and green out a little more, the concern for growing interests will be whether a more determined blast of Arctic air can more forcefully “bring winter back” for several days near the end of March or into April. This can be, and has been multiple times in the past, devastating for fruit growers and other agricultural endeavors.

While being vigilant to keep an eye out for that possibility developing beyond the horizon of what we can reasonably foresee now, it is appropriate to acknowledge that spring is, in fact, here.

Dry air inhibits severe storms outbreak

There were rumbles and certainly some gusts across Virginia on Sunday, but the weather was not nearly as vicious as it could have been with a strong cold front and shifting winds aloft pressing into warmth and moisture.

On Friday evening into early Saturday, several violent and deadly tornadoes ripped across Missouri and Arkansas, as well as adjacent parts of nearby states. On Saturday, additional tornadoes and severe storms clawed the Deep South.

By Sunday, the severe storms threat shifted eastward. While this was never expected to be the caliber of what happened to our west, the Southwest and Southside Virginia coverage area of Cardinal News caught some synoptic breaks that further limited the risk of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes.

A dry air mass ended up getting swept into much of the central and western part of Virginia for much of the day. This caused temperatures to shoot up into the 70s, increasing concerns that instability might grow for an enhanced severe threat.

But without dense moisture to work with, that threat was quelled. A series of narrow lines of storms across our region from west to east during the afternoon and evening. Some of you underneath the bands may have got a few rounds of heavy rain with some thunder. Outside the bands, it was pretty dry.

While the thunderstorms weren’t as widespread or intense as they could have been, gusty south to southeast winds rocked much of Virginia during the day Sunday, causing scattered reports of trees blown down.

Another front approaching on Thursday may trigger showers but is unlikely to kick up as much of a severe storms threat as appeared to exist this past weekend.

Coldest winter in a decade

If you thought this past winter was the coldest in many years, that wasn’t your imagination.

For many locations across Southwest and Southside Virginia, the 2024-25 meteorological winter, lasting from Dec. 1 to Feb. 28, brought the coldest average temperatures the season had seen since the 2014-15 winter — in some cases, even the coldest since 2010-11.

On the spectrum of historical data, dating back to the late 19^th or early 20^th century, this winter fit in near the top part of the coldest third of winters at many locations.

Some examples from the National Weather Service’s major climate stations within and very near our region below, based on average seasonal temperature.

·       Blacksburg: 32.1 degrees, coldest since 2015 (31.8), tied for 33^rd coldest out of 121 winters.

·       Bluefield, W.Va., 32.0 degrees, coldest since 2011 (31.7), 18^th coldest out 85 winters.

·       Danville: 39.1 degrees, coldest since 2015 (38.5), 30^th coldest out of 100 winters.

·       Lynchburg: 36.9 degrees, coldest since 2015 (34.6), tied for 44^th coldest out of 133 winters.

·       Roanoke: 37.5 degrees, coldest since 2015 (36.4), tied for 37^th coldest out of 114 winters.

·       Tri-Cities Airport, Tenn.: 37.8 degrees, coldest since 2015 (35.4), tied for 39^th coldest out of 89 winters.

Regionally, this was apparently the iciest winter in 31 years, since the epic ice storms of early 1994.  

Comparing the 2025 ice storms to 1994 a few weeks ago in this space resulted in some pushback. To emphasize where perhaps I could have been more clear, the 1994 winter was on the whole a much colder and even more severely icier winter than this past one.

But on a regional scale, it appears this most recent winter produced the most widespread damaging ice over Southwest and Southside Virginia than any since 1994, with the February ice storm resulting in roughly two-thirds of the power outages across Virginia as the worst ice storm in 1994. Some localized areas have had destructive ice storms in the years between 1994 and 2025 — Christmas 2009 in some Blue Ridge areas south of Roanoke; Nov. 15, 2018, in parts of the New River Valley; Feb. 14, 2021 in some areas of Southside, for a few quick examples — but there doesn’t appear to have been another winter since 1994 that brought ice storm damage as widespread as that of January and February 2025.

With some localized exceptions, this winter tended to be somewhat below normal for snowfall for most of our region, owing to changeovers to freezing rain and sleet in the two biggest winter storms,  and the upper-level wind flow not quite coming together for widespread large snow events in three or four other instances.

Considering how a year ago we pondered the relatively snowless state of recent winters against the broader sweep of historical weather, how this cold and icy winter wasn’t for most of our region all that snowy deserves a deeper dive.

We’ll take that dive sometime shortly after the snowfall contest period concludes on March 31, and we make sure there isn’t an unexpected late plop.

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: