With a mild break this week after last week’s brief touch of winter, we are in the middle of the winter guessing season.
I’m not going to offer up a full winter forecast in this space today, partly because I don’t want to overly influence your own guesses in the ongoing Cardinal Weather snowfall prediction contest, which takes snowfall guesses through Nov. 29. The rules are posted at the end of this article and in last week’s Cardinal Weather column (linked here), which also included some numerical averages for 10 locations that could help guide your guesses.
I’ve long ago soured on the concept of a “winter forecast” because winter isn’t a single entity, but rather a series of phases that can be very different from one another. But, nonetheless, I’ll eventually offer up my own numbers for the 10 contest locations, and maybe even a map like all the TV stations like to do, perhaps next week.
But not today.
Instead, we’ll ponder four pairs of opposing concepts that can shape our expectations, and potentially the ultimate outcome, of the winter ahead.
The short-term forecast
The aurora borealis made its third brilliant appearance in Virginia skies in the past 13 months last week, particularly vivid when visible between the clouds on Tuesday, Nov. 11, less brilliant but more visible with clear skies on Wednesday, Nov. 12. Click here for some photos from last week’s show, plus many more from aurora displays on May 10 and October 10 in 2024.
After some showery rain on Tuesday into early Wednesday, the next several days will generally be mild with mostly 60s highs and 40s lows, and perhaps some rain on Friday into early Saturday. Conditions remain relatively dry, however, so outdoor burning could be in danger of spreading, especially during breezy periods. Major changes in the atmospheric pattern may bring better chances of rain on Thanksgiving week, likely preceding a sharp downturn in temperatures to start December.
1. Early trend defines season vs. Winter pouring itself out early
There is already a lot of internet buzz about what looks likely to be a decidedly cold pattern setting up over the eastern U.S. as we move into December.
It is obviously too far away to settle many details, or even offer up the broader cold forecast without some uncertainty, but a series of dominoes appear to be falling that will lead to a colder pattern, including “stratospheric warming” high over the Arctic and blocking high pressure in the northern latitudes that will force cold air southward and trap it for several days or possibly multiple weeks. Depending on how the jet stream configures around this colder air mass, winter storms affecting even southern latitudes in the eastern U.S. may result.
Whether this starts near Thanksgiving or a few days later right at the Dec. 1 start to meteorological winter, or even a few days later than that, is also up in the air this far out. Be aware, winter is (probably) coming, fast and furiously.
Let’s just suspend caution for a minute and say this Arctic outbreak sets in for the first three weeks or so of December, with at least a couple of wintry precipitation episodes for our region. Does that set the tone for recurrence though the winter, or does winter “pour itself out” before Christmas and most of the rest of the winter is mild?
There are historical examples of each of those. The last time we had a regionwide major snowstorm, on Dec. 9-10, 2018, with 1-2-foot totals common, the rest of winter produced only a couple of middling mixed precipitation events amid long stretches of mild temperatures. Winters like 1983-84 and 1989-90 went into the deep freeze in December with below-zero temperatures, but there wasn’t much cold weather after New Year’s Day. And the 1950-51 winter was essentially over the day after Thanksgiving with the mighty Appalachian Storm that buried areas along and west of the Blue Ridge in a half-foot to over a foot of snow.
But sometimes, like the 2009-10 winter that is that high bar for snow in the 21st century in most of our region excluding some of Southside, deep Arctic plunges and winter storms in December do indeed set the tone for an entire season of repeating cold air masses and wintry precipitation chances.
2. La Niña vs. Recurring blocking patterns
Current expectations in the equatorial Pacific Ocean are for colder than normal sea-surface temperatures to take hold in weeks ahead, triggering a La Niña event.
La Niña trends toward milder winters with lower snow totals for our region, historically, though not across the board in all cases. La Niña winters are often punctuated by short but sharp Arctic air blasts — the record-setting well-below-zero cold on and around January 21, 1985, happened during a La Niña — but the brevity of cold air masses combined with unfavorable storm tracks usually keep windows for snowfall in our region short.
But there are questions about how La Niña-like this La Niña really will be. It is expected to be a weak La Niña that may wither by early January, leaving the equatorial Pacific with slightly colder than neutral temperatures the remainder of the winter. That would sort of be the opposite of last winter, when La Niña was expected to develop but didn’t really show up much until late winter, and then very weakly.
Besides La Niña being marginal, something that intervened in our cold, icy last winter was the propensity for strong high-pressure blocking in the northern latitudes forcing cold air southward. Coupled with warm water temperatures in the Northern Pacific that induced high pressure to form there, the atmospheric pattern kept a replenishing supply of Arctic air in much of January and February so forceful that it pushed one snowstorm to the Gulf Coast.
We have seen similar blocking patterns recur since last winter. For instance, because of similar weather patterns, our hot, sticky summer pretty much shut off to start August and then did so again in late August after a slight resurgence of heat.
We are already seeing strong signs of the cold being forced southward in similar fashion to start December, raising the question of whether this is something that will define our winter, possibly pushing the southern storm track into a location favorable for winter storms in our region during the cold spells.
3. Climate change vs. Natural cycles
It is fairly evident to anyone who has lived through it that winters have generally been getting milder and snowfall less frequent in our region over the past few decades.
Since the early 1980s, the 5-year average winter temperature — the mean of daily high and low temperatures from Dec. 1 to Feb. 28/29 over the five previous years — has risen more than 7 degrees from 33.9 to 41.2 degrees at Roanoke and a little more than 6 degrees from 34.0 to 40.3 at Lynchburg. Five-year average winter snowfall has dropped from 21 inches to 5 ½ inches at Roanoke and from over 20 inches to nearly 7 at Lynchburg over that same general time span. These locations have longer and more consistent data than most stations in our region and also represent sort of a median between colder, snowier Southwest areas and milder, less snowy Southside locations, but the general trends are similar in most of our region.
It is worth noting that similarly mild winters were common in the 1930s and similarly low snow totals were occurring in the 1950s before the cold, snowy 1960s and the extremely cold, almost as snowy 1970s. So while the decline in snow totals and rising of winter temperatures in recent decades are consistent with global climate change, there may also be some long-term decadal variability involved.
A warming climate trend, however, does not mean that every individual winter in succession is warmer or less snowy than the one before it, and there are still ups and downs based on a variety of natural cycles, or just how short-term weather setups happen to play out year to year.
The 2009-10 winter is not ancient history and stands among the region’s most severe historically with 3 to 5-foot season totals common along and west of the Blue Ridge. Danville’s 2018-19 winter was one of only six on record to top 20 inches of snow, largely powered by 15 inches in the Dec. 9-10, 2018 storm. Roanoke had 20 inches or more of snow in three consecutive winters barely a decade ago from 2013-14 to 2015-16, the first time that had happened since the late 1970s.
So after mild and particularly low-snow winters dominated the first few years of the 2020s, was last year’s coldest winter in a decade, snowy in some of our region’s western and northern fringe areas and not so snowy but very icy elsewhere, the start of a new cycle of colder and, possibly, at least somewhat snowier winters in the mid to late 2020s?
We shall see.
4. Persistence forecasting vs. ‘We’re due’
Neither of these are thoroughly scientific concepts, but often do influence weather prognostications, amateur and professional.
Persistence forecasting is basically what has happened is likely to keep happening, until there is proven reason for a significant redirection. It is a little like a crudely stated version of the very scientific concept of inertia, that something in motion will continue on its course of motion, or something at rest will remain at rest, until duly influenced by an outside force.
Persistence forecasting in this case is that most winters since 2018-19 have been mild and/or not very snowy, so that until something happens to prove otherwise, that is the safest forecast for this one.
But then there is the opposing thought that “we’re due” for a snowy winter or, at least, a single major snowstorm. The idea that since something hasn’t happened in a long time, it’s about time it did. Like if you roll a die 10 times without a single 6, surely it’s about time a boxcar turned up, right? Mathematically, the next roll is no more likely to be a “6” than any of the previous 10, individually.
Major snowstorms that dump a foot or more of snow on roughly half or more of Cardinal News’ Southwest and Southside Virginia region occur about twice a decade historically. There were none of these from 1998 to 2009. But then there were four from 2009 to 2018. There have not been any in the seven years since.
So there may be the thought that it’s about time for a major snowstorm, especially given that the atmospheric pattern was very close to yielding one at least three times last winter. A single widespread, major snowstorm would raise this winter to a level we haven’t seen in a while, and combined with a couple more fairly large dumps and/or several medium ones could put this winter in elite territory.
Are we “due” for that? Or will it persistently continue with either a mild winter or a cold one that leans more toward mix and ice episodes rather than snow?
We’ll start finding out soon.
How to enter the 2025-26 Cardinal Weather snowfall prediction contest:
(1) Select THREE locations out of the following 10: Abingdon, Appomattox, Blacksburg, Burke’s Garden, Clintwood, Danville, Lynchburg, Martinsville, Roanoke, Wytheville.
(2) Guess the total snowfall between Dec.1 and March 31 rounded to the nearest inch for each of those three locations.
(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, a school class, etc., just make sure names are clearly labeled for each set of picks.
(4) Deadline for receiving entries is 11:59 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 29.
The winner of a $25 gift card for first place will be whoever misses the total snowfall from Dec. 1 to March 31 by the lowest number of total inches for the best two of their three picks, snow totals rounded to the nearest inch. 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.
For more on the contest, including historic data for the 10 locations that may help guide your picks, click on the Nov. 12 Cardinal Weather column linked here.
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.
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