A week ago, it felt more like October than August as the sun rose on what is often a hot, sticky time of the year.
Lynchburg had its coldest Aug. 27 morning low in 133 years of official weather record-keeping, dipping to 48. The next morning, Lynchburg tied an almost 40-year-old Aug. 28 record low of 51, and Danville also tied its record low for the date at 53.
Cardinal News country’s icebox, Burke’s Garden in Tazewell County, dipped to a bone-chilling 36 degrees on the morning of Aug. 27. That was the coldest it has been on any August date in the ridge-rimmed crater-like valley since it dropped to 35 on Aug. 9-10, 1989.
Most locations in the Southwest and Southside Virginia coverage area of Cardinal News were in the 40s to lower 50s on multiple mornings last week when 60s lows are the norm. The days since then have not been hot, with mostly 70s to some lower 80s highs, and many 50s lows, even a few more in the 40s.
Seasonal shift or a temporary respite from heat?
It has been tempting to blow the whistle on summer, declaring it finished. The question has certainly been asked: Does a cool August mean that summer has given up its ghost and there won’t be any more hot weather the rest of September into early October?
Also, could a cool August portend a cold and potentially snowy winter?
The short answer to both questions is not necessarily.
In the first case, regarding summerlike temperatures, that may turn into a more solid “no” even as early as later this week. There will be a brief surge of warm highs pushing well into the 80s, possibly scraping 90 at a few spots, late this week. Another cold front is on the way to bring yet another breath of cooler drier weather heading into early next week, but it has been slowed down a little bit, and we’ll have a brief warm surge ahead of it. There may just be enough moisture to feel a little sticky and to blow up a few rounds of scattered showers and thunderstorms Thursday through Saturday.
Beyond the next cool downturn, likely starting Sunday and extending into the early to middle part of next week, there are some signals of warm high pressure building back by mid-month. This is vague at this point, but there may yet be some at least marginally hot, even sticky weather left before the pumpkin-frosting, pumpkin-spicing breezes settle in earnest for the fall season.
We’ll get back to the coming winter after looking at just how cool August was in our region.
How cool was August historically?
Several locations around our region recorded an August that was among the top 10 coolest in many decades of available weather records.
- Danville experienced its coolest August on record, going back to the start of its official records in 1917, with an average of 72.8 degrees.
- Roanoke’s August 2025 matched the 71.9 average of another cool August just 11 years ago in 2014, tying for third coolest August since the start of official data in 1912. Cooler Augusts occurred in 1946 (70.6 average) and 1927 (71.4).
- It was Lynchburg’s fifth coolest August, averaging 71.7, going all the way back to 1893. As with Roanoke, Augusts in 1927 (70.7) and 1946 (70.9) were cooler, as was 2014 (71.3). Besides 2014, the Hill City has also had one other cooler August thus far in the 21st century, in 2004, the fourth coolest on record with a 71.5 average.
- Martinsville had its fourth coolest August in the past 82 years, averaging 71.3, trailing 70.3 n 1992, 71.0 in 2004 and 71.2 in 2008. August 2014 was fifth at 71.6.
- Wytheville just completed its seventh coolest August in 93 years of records, averaging 67.7 degrees.
- At the region’s hot spot, the John H. Kerr Dam in Mecklenburg County, it was the 10th coolest August in the past 78 years, and the coolest since 1992, averaging 75.7 degrees.
Similar to how it was with an especially dry summer when other locations not far away were wet, Wytheville was something of an exception west of the Blue Ridge with its higher ranking for August coolness.
Generally speaking, while August was unseasonably cool across all of the Southwest and Southside Virginia coverage area of Cardinal News, the month didn’t rank quite as high for historical coolness west of the Blue Ridge.
At Blacksburg, August 2025 ranked as 25th coolest August in 133 years of data, averaging 68.3 degrees. The month also ranked 25th coolest out of 130 years at Burke’s Garden in Tazewell County, averaging 64.4 degrees. It was the 15th coolest August out of 55 on record at Abingdon, averaging 71.0 degrees.
The early month coolness tended to bank in from the northeast, more into the part of our region east of the Blue Ridge, and it was more about cloudy, damp weather that kept lows pretty warm rather than crisp mornings that would challenge historic records in the mountain counties. The late month had more of those cool, crisp nights, but it wasn’t enough to drive the month as a whole into truly historic territory the farther west you went in our Cardinal News coverage region.
So does this mean anything about winter?
Peering back through history, there are absolutely no iron-clad correlations between what happens in summer and what happens in winter.
Hot summers have been followed by mild winters, by cold winters, and by in-between “meh” winters. Mild summers have been followed by mild winters, cold winters, and “meh” winters.
So neither a hot, sticky July nor a cool August are much help as a determining factor for winter. However, some of the weather patterns we have seen in the past month may offer clues to longer-term recurrences that might have some impact on the winter ahead.
A couple things to consider as we move through fall toward the winter ahead.
(1) The abnormally warm sea-surface temperatures pooling in the North Pacific, below Alaska. If this continues into winter, it would potentially lead to warm high pressure building over this region, which in turn would circulate colder air over Canada into the Eastern U.S. We’ve already seen the effects of this past couple of weeks.
(2) We may have entered a cluster of years when high pressure “blocking patterns” in the far Northern Hemisphere, buckling the atmospheric flow to force cooler air farther southward, are again becoming a bit more common, after being seemingly scarce in the first half of the 2020s. This could lead to more frequent and deeper incursions of Arctic air in the colder seasons, as we experienced last winter.
Add into that the expected weak La Niña in the equatorial Pacific. Sea surface temperatures are already a bit cooler than normal in a stripe through that region and expected to dip a little more by the start of winter. While moderate to strong La Niñas tend to be correlated with milder winters in our region dominated by Bermuda high pressure, weaker La Niñas tend to be marked by more variable winter weather patterns, and even most milder La Niña winters have a sharp Arctic outbreak or two.
There’s plenty of time to ruminate on winter, as it’s usually no earlier than mid-October and often into November before we see the first snow flurries in the mountains. Perhaps some of you counted fogs in August or will be looking at woolly worms or split-open persimmon seeds.
We’ll be wrapping up the heat prediction contest and awarding winners in this space during the next week or two. Sometime before Halloween, we’ll pose the question about snowfall in the coming winter in the annual Cardinal Weather snowfall prediction contest.
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:
