December will continue its fast wintry start with yet another widespread snowfall of 1 to 4 inches expected over most of Virginia on Monday, just three days after a very similar snowfall.
An upper-level disturbance zipping through and a weak coastal low are expected to develop an area of light to moderate snow, with a few locally heavy bands, across much of Virginia, starting near or shortly before sunrise Monday west of the Blue Ridge and continuing through much of the daylight hours as it spreads eastward.
Similar to the early Friday snow, the northern tip of the state looks to come in with less snow than most of the rest of the state, some places in the counties west of D.C. possibly missing entirely. Also, many of the southern rim of counties in the Southwest corner and in Southside could again be variable between very little and a couple of inches. One thing that is different from Friday is that cold air will be moving in and spreading through the atmosphere more widely and thickly across the region, with much less warm air advection aloft than what kept the Danville area and parts of northern North Carolina in rain longer than expected on Friday.
In between those northern and southern fringe areas, most locations are likely to get a couple or three inches of snow on Monday, with some spots getting a inch less or more.
As with Friday, when there were a few spots that got 5 or 6 inches, there is potential for narrow bands of heavier localized snowfall that may raise some locations to something over 4 inches. As with any forecast snow event, there is always some possibility the storm as a whole will be somewhat stronger or weaker with overall snow totals than projected.
Some light rain may occur at the start of precipitation in many locations but will quickly change to snow as colder air builds through the atmosphere. Because cold air is filling the atmosphere from the top down, with little or no injection of milder aloft, freezing rain is not expected to be a significant factor in this wintry precipitation episode.
Once temperatures dip to freezing or below at any given location on Monday, it is unlikely to rise above that mark the rest of the day, and many locations in Virginia will dip into the teens by Tuesday morning. But high temperatures will climb above freezing with sunshine on Tuesday, and even higher above freezing on Wednesday, with some spots poking above 50.
Snowfall has not been a frequent visitor during recent years in the first week of December for the Southwest and Southside Virginia coverage area of Cardinal News. In fact, Friday’s snow at Blacksburg (4 inches), Lynchburg (3.1 inches), Roanoke (2.8 inches), and Wytheville (2 inches) was the first snow of an inch or more in the first week of December at those locations since 2010, and the first accumulating snow of any kind in the first week of December since some of those stations recorded minor accumulations under an inch in 2020. Even Danville’s rain-mixed 0.5 inch was the most snow there in the first week of December since 2010.
If the Monday snowfall comes to fruition, it would be the fourth wintry precipitation scrape for western Virginia in nine days, including two marginal rain/freezing rain events that iced up some areas on Sunday, Nov. 30, and Tuesday, Dec. 2, and Friday’s snowfall.
The most memorable early December snowfall of recent years, and among those throughout recorded regional weather history, happened seven years ago when most of the region received 1-2 feet of snow on Dec. 9-10, 2018.
Nothing like that appears to be on the horizon, but there may be yet another chance of snow on wintry mix by Friday and/or Saturday.
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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