This month got to the warning track of being one of the driest Octobers on record, but it doesn’t quite have the distance.
After Sunday, October was within five days of closing out being among the 10 driest at several locations within the Southwest and Southside Virginia coverage area of Cardinal News. But rain of varying amounts fell across our region on Monday and Tuesday, with more widespread rain the remainder of this Wednesday into Thursday. It looks like almost all of it moves out by trick-or-treat time on Friday evening, leaving us with breezy chill mostly in the 40s.
A deep dip in the jet stream has helped develop a complex low-pressure system that has dug far enough southward to scoop up thick subtropical moisture, which it is lifting over parked cold air pressed southward by high pressure in Canada.
If you think this sounds like something that would set up a winter storm, you’d probably be right if we were maybe five or six weeks later on the calendar. There may be some snow in the highest elevations of eastern West Viginia and maybe the western fringe of Virginia as the low pulls away and colder air is swung in behind the storm by late Thursday, but it looks minimal, if any happens at all. Especially, with the main low-pressure system tracking to our west, we’re a little early on the calendar for wintry implications, settling for just rather chilly rain instead.
This storm complex and the southerly dip in the jet stream will also deflect Hurricane Melissa far away from the U.S. East Coast after its powerful hits on Jamaica and eastern Cuba. It is looking very likely at this point that the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season will pass without a single U.S. hurricane landfall, but it has not been a weak season by any means with three Category 5 storms in Erin, Humberto, and Melissa.
Our region has needed a good rain for several weeks, with the New River Valley and areas from Roanoke and Lynchburg northward in moderate drought, and most other places considered “abnormally dry” in last week’s U.S. Drought Monitor.
A second straight dry October
At Danville, only 0.13 of rain had fallen this month through Sunday, which had that been the last day of the month, would have been tied with October 2000 for second driest October on record. The record driest: Last October. There was only 0.05 inch of rain in all of October 2024.
After the flooding deluge in the last few days of September 2024 from Hurricane Helene, many of us may have forgotten that the following month was among the driest Octobers on record at several locations across our region. The first couple of weeks of that was welcome dryness after Helene, but then it started getting a bit crispy again. It’s amazing how fast things can dry out even after historic flooding.
Rainfall through Sunday elsewhere in our region:
· Roanoke, 0.31, could have been 5th driest October in 113 years of records, with 0.02 in October 2000 as driest.
· Wytheville 0.49, could have been 7th driest October in 95 years, with 0.05 in October 1963 as driest.
· Blacksburg, 0.52, could have been 8th driest October in 131 years, with 0.02 in October 2000 as driest.
· Lynchburg, 0.54, could have been 5th driest October in 133 years, with 0.01 in October 2000 as driest.
· Appomattox 0.67, could have been 7th driest in 86 years, with not a drop in October 2000 as driest.
· Abingdon 0.71, could have been 5th driest in 55 years, with 0.13 in October 2000 as driest.
In this list, you will see a common theme in of 2000 having the driest October on record, excluding only Wytheville, where it was the second driest with 0.08 inch. The late 1990s and early 2000s brought depths of drought our region hasn’t seen since.
What that period and recent years share in common is a preponderance of La Niña conditions in the equatorial Pacific, or cooler than normal sea surface temperatures. This appears to be developing yet again, though it is expected to be weak and short-lived. There is some tendency toward warmer, drier weather for our region during La Niña periods.
The period ahead into early November doesn’t look especially wet, though there may be some more showers with fronts or perhaps something even soggier if a stronger low can develop. It does look likely to be pretty cold, though, with high pressure setting up over the western U.S. pressing colder air southward from Canada into the eastern side of the nation. The start of this pattern shift helped bring freezing temperatures to the majority of our region this past Friday and Saturday morning, effectively ending the growing season.
It would not be shocking at all if some places along and west of the Blue Ridge saw a few snowflakes flying through the breeze sometime in the next couple of weeks. But for now, we’ll just take the soaker to help quell the fire risk with coming windy cold fronts.
Snowfall contest upcoming
With these cold breezes and some whispers of snow, you may be wondering when the snowfall prediction contest will happen, especially since I previously said it would start sometime before Halloween.
Upon further review, we will begin taking entries with the Nov. 12 Cardinal Weather column and continue taking them through the Thanksgiving weekend, ending on Nov. 30. The guessing period for snow totals at 10 locations in our region (you’ll choose three, with the best two counting) will be Dec. 1 to March 31.
So be pondering what you think the winter ahead will be like (questions will not be asked whether you consult persimmon seeds, count fogs in August, or consider advanced computer model analytics) and we’ll get back to you soon for your best guesses.
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:
