Summer didn’t start its engines very efficiently on Memorial Day weekend.
Alongside being the day we remember those who gave their lives defending the United States and being the weekend of the Indianapolis 500, Memorial Day weekend is often seen as sort of a summer preview, or even the first day of summer culturally. But this Memorial Day and the early week following it have turned oddly damp and chilly — just plain clammy and raw, as moisture has been lifted atop cool air trapped against the mountains.
Amid intermittent rain and low clouds, Tuesday became only the second May 27 that didn’t reach 60 degrees at Roanoke, with a high of 56. The only other sub-60 May 27 dating back to 1912 reached only 54 in 1961. Temperatures got stuck near 50 in parts of the New River Valley and farther west and stayed below 60 even across most of Southside.
At least the additional rain is continuing to keep us out of the drought that developed through March and April, which is a good place to be going into summer, which often has a tendency to alternate between downpours and dry spells that can vary significantly over a few miles. Showery weather, with even a few thunderstorms, will continue the rest of this week until it turns warmer and drier, conveniently, for the weekend.
Of course, what we are experiencing now with an Eastern U.S. jet stream trough and these cool, damp days isn’t necessarily a template for what is ahead this summer, and we all know it will sizzle or be sweaty sooner or later.
There aren’t really a lot of obvious long-range, big-picture clues about how this summer might go for Southwest and Southside Virginia.
Sometimes we can look for signals in the state of the El Niño Southern Oscillation, the rock back and forth between cool and warm sea-surface temperatures — La Niña and El Niño, respectively — in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. We did that in this space last spring, and it actually proved pretty accurate — it was indeed a summer with a sharp hot spell in the early to mid part of July, the most widespread intense heat with upper 90s and 100-plus temperatures our region had seen in a dozen years.
On the whole, though, the equatorial Pacific oscillations provide only a vague picture of potential patterns over weeks and months, even murkier in summer than winter. And this spring, we have come out of a semi-La Niña, a cool dip in the equatorial Pacific that was later and weaker than forecast and didn’t even last long enough to be considered an official La Niña event. There aren’t many prior samples for a similar turn of events.
Based on some of the tendencies we’ve seen in spring, my money would be on a summer that is near normal to slightly above normal in temperature and normal to slightly below normal in precipitation, with a reduced chance of extreme heat compared to the peak of last summer.
We have generally alternated between patterns that have high pressure to our southeast and low-pressure digging to our west near the Mississippi River valley, spawning heavy rain and severe storms there while we are warm with less rain and storms, and one that has high pressure in the west and a jet stream dip into the East, bringing cool, showery spells.
Should this continue into the summer months, we would alternate between fairly hot, sticky periods with scattered showers and storms, and cooler periods with perhaps some briefly more enhanced showers and storms in the transition. It would not be as favorable for a massive high pressure dome forming over the central U.S. and expanding over us for weeks, like happened last July.
The National Weather Service seems to be of a similar mindset, as its 3-4-week forecast diving deep into June and its 3-month forecast for June-August both focus a large dome of hot weather over the western U.S. with perhaps a secondary lobe of heat, relative to normal, over the Northeast.
But what it may do on average over the course of summer may be little or no help with what I’m about to ask of you, Cardinal Weather readers, and myself, as even a milder summer can have a torrid spike of heat for a couple days at some point.
How to enter the summer heat prediction contest
The summer heat prediction contest basically follows the same format as the last snowfall prediction contest. Please read this carefully.
(1) Select THREE locations out of the 10 listed at the bottom of this column. These are the same as the snowfall contest except the John H. Kerr Dam in Mecklenburg County replaces Burke’s Garden in Tazewell County, putting our region’s often-hottest official sensor site in place of what is often the coldest and snowiest.
(2) Guess the highest temperature for each of those three between June 20 and Aug. 31.
(3) Email your guesses to weather@cardinalnews.org. Give me your name and where you live (general location — town, city, county or portion of county — not specific address). It is OK to include more than one entry on the same email, for different family members (no age limits!), or a group, or something of that nature, just make sure names are clearly labeled for each set of picks.
(4) Deadline for receiving entries is 11:59 p.m. on Thursday, June 19.
The winner of a $25 gift card for first place will be whoever misses the highest temperature by the fewest number of degrees for the best two of their three picks. If there is a tie, we’ll consider the third pick as a tiebreaker. If it’s still tied, whoever sends me their entry first wins.
If I get 100 entries, I’ll boost it to a $50 gift card for first place and $25 for second place.
Any and all winners, plus some close runner-up finishers, will be recognized in a September edition of this weather column.
Summer heat prediction contest locations
Remember, pick THREE of the following locations and guess what the hottest temperature will be between June 20 and Aug. 31.
These locations have been chosen for geographical distribution across Cardinal News’ main coverage area and for reliability of data.
To give you a general guide on what has occurred in the past, I’ve also included historic ranges of June 20-Aug. 31 highest temperatures for each location. Each of these sites have at least 30 years of data.
Good luck.
Abingdon: 87 (2004, 2009) to 100 (1998).
Appomattox: 90 (2004) to 103 (1977, 1983).
Blacksburg: 86 (1920, 2009) to 100 (1926, 1952).
Clintwood: 86 (2004, 2009, 2014) to 97 (2012).
Danville: 92 (1961, 1962, 2004) to 107 (1918, 1932).
John H. Kerr Dam: 93 (1965, 1967) to 108 (2007).
Lynchburg: 91 (1967, 1982, 1994, 2004) to 106 (1936).
Martinsville: 90 (1979) to 105 (1942).
Roanoke: 90 (1967, 1982) to 105 (1930, 1936, 1983).
Wytheville: 85 (2009, 2013) to 98 (1988, 2010, 2012).
My picks for summer
Just so I’ll have some skin in the game, here are my predictions for the hottest June 20-Aug. 31 temperature at all 10 locations.
Abingdon 93, Appomattox 96, Blacksburg 93, Clintwood 90, Danville 98, John H. Kerr Dam 100, Lynchburg 96, Martinsville 97, Roanoke 98, Wytheville 92.
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:
