The big melt started Tuesday.
With bright sunshine and high temperatures in the 50s and 60s, the deep Arctic chill of nearly three weeks has broken. The “glacial” shell that has persisted over most of Cardinal News’ Southwest and Southside Virginia forecast area has finally been dented substantially, even erased in some places.
Atmospheric furniture is moving around again. Most significantly, rather than have a high pressure ridge over western North America and a deep-digging stream trough over the East, that pattern is flipping 180 degrees. This will focus cold and snow in the Western U.S. — including many locations that are experiencing a historic snow drought and one of the warmest winters on record — while the East warms up.
One caveat is the widespread snow cover and lingering cold air in Canada and the Northeast U.S., which may still allow incursions of colder air in days and weeks ahead, starting with a truncation of what could easily have been a warm week currently. We will revert to near-seasonable temperatures for the rest of this week — pretty cold, not bitterly so, with 40s most days and 20s-30s lows at night.
In the “Where does winter go from here?” segment at the end of this column, we consider three scenarios for what might happen with the rest of winter, extending into March.
Second ‘hard’ winter in a row
Considering last winter’s repeating cold waves, major ice storm damage to trees and power lines, and frequent if not deep snow and sleet, this is the second consecutive legitimately “hard” winter our region has experienced after almost a decade when our winters were mostly mild.
Over the past week, there has been more snow, but it has been streaky rather than widespread. A band of 2-4 inches about 10 miles wide from Galax to Gretna on Wednesday. A dump of 3-5 inches from Farmville to almost Richmond on Friday, with less east and west. And much of New River Valley and areas along and west of Interstate 77 getting two rounds of snow Friday for 1-3 inches. Most other places in our region got less than an inch total in the past week.
The Valentine’s Day weekend will likely bring a wet storm system, and temperatures will be marginally cold enough to throw some question into whether this will be all rain, some sort of wintry mix at least for a short time, or even a plop of wet snow for all or part of our region.
A mostly or all rain storm might spare us new wintry headaches, but pouring rain on still- frozen ground, lingering patches of snowpack, and mountain streams that may have ice blockages could bring a risk of flooding. That may seem ironic consider we are still in long-term drought over most of Virginia, with the ongoing melt generally being helpful.
Beyond this weekend, next week looks to be more consistently mild than this one will be. We may not get all of the snowpack off this week, but almost all of it will probably be gone by late next week, even if there were to be a little added to it some places this weekend.
Statistical context for our Arctic outbreak
There is no statistical category that can properly capture the overwhelming feature of this particular winter, and that is the sleet content of the snow cover and its hard-packed refreezing that produced an inches-deep solid white shell over much of the landscape of Southwest and Southside Virginia for over two weeks. Snow and sleet are one category called “snowfall” in official records.
But the duration of snow cover, in itself, is in elite historical company for several locations.
Danville’s 15 straight days of snow cover that ended Monday was the third longest such stretch in over a century of records, trailing a stretch of 17 days in January-February 2000 and 19 days in March 1960.
Tuesday ended 17 consecutive days of snow cover at the official weather stations at Roanoke and Lynchburg, tied for the seventh longest such streaks at both locations. Those streaks trailed only 25 days (Roanoke) and 26 days (Lynchburg) from January-February 2010 as the longest such stretch so far in the 21st century. Each location recorded its longest snow cover stretch in more than a century of records, 31 days at Roanoke and 29 at Lynchburg, in January-February 1978.
Abingdon’s weather data only goes back to the early 1970s, but its official 10 days of snow cover ranks as tied for sixth longest. A “missing” data report on snow cover from Jan. 30 raises the possibility that the real snow cover streak may be as long as 16 days, which would be third longest on record.
Season snowfall totals are not extraordinary, but still notable, especially given recent low-snow winters.
Blacksburg went over 20 inches for the season, 21.5, for first time since 2021. The 20-inch mark is near the median for Blacksburg going back to late 1890s, with 66 of 134 winters reaching 20 inches or more. The last four winters below 20 total inches were the longest such stretch since the 1950s.
Burke’s Garden in Tazewell County has had about three feet of snow, its 35.7 inches topping last winter’s 34 and the most since 2021.
Most locations in our region have at least broken into double-digits for seasonal snowfall, and it is the snowiest winter in many locations since 2018-19, which featured a nearly regionwide foot-plus snowstorm in early December.
The winter as a whole, so far, going back to the start of meteorological winter on Dec. 1, has been among the coldest of the past quarter-century and even for over a century of records.
If winter had ended Monday, it would be 17th coldest on record at Roanoke (35.6), tied for 13th coldest at Lynchburg (34.1), tied for 16th coldest at Blacksburg (30.2), and tied for 10th coldest at Danville (36.7). It would be the coldest winter thus far in the 21st century at Danville and second or third, trailing 2009-10 and/or 2002-03, at the other three sites.
But of course, winter didn’t end Monday, and Tuesday’s warm surge appears to be the start of a longer period of generally milder weather ahead that will lift the average temperatures some for this winter by the time we get to its end on Feb. 28 (remember we’re talking meteorological statistical winter here, not the calendar season).
We had some sleety “glacier” last winter, too, but not quite as deeply or widely impactful as it has been this winter. However, last winter’s freezing rain, especially in February, was far worse than this winter’s has been thus far, aside from in and near Washington County with the Jan. 24-25 winter storm.
Where does winter go from here?
For the past three years of this weather column in Cardinal News, I have issued a “rest of the winter” rundown of scenarios near the end of January or very early in February. Though a bit later than I like this to be, let’s repeat that exercise here.
Here, we will focus on only three general scenarios that could happen with the rest of winter, which we will extend into March, not the meteorological cutoff at the end of February.
- Winter is mostly over: 30% chance. This doesn’t mean absolutely no cold air or wintry precipitation now to the end of March. It just means that, as of now, there is no surefire signal of any long-lasting cold re-establishing itself, so it’s within reason that we could go the rest of February and March with only short, moderate pushes of cold air and very limited and minor wintry precipitation surrounded by long seasonable to mild periods. Let’s give this about a 1 in 3 shot.
- Mostly normal to mild, but 1 or 2 sharp wintry interludes: 50% chance. This is the scenario favored here for the rest of February and into March. While the overall trends and many signals point mild, there is simply too much cold air hanging north of us over extensive snow cover. The atmospheric pattern will lend itself to some volatility with storm systems crossing the U.S. Sooner or later, some of that cold gets pulled down significantly for a few days, and we probably blow up a significant wintry precipitation episode a time or two more. A big snowstorm to cap a hard winter? Don’t rule it out.
- Winter comes back hard: 20% chance. Last winter, there wasn’t much indication of a resurging Arctic air mass as January turned to February when we pondered this, yet it happened several days later. Weather futures get very blurry beyond about a week, and there are occasionally random signals amid the noise that there could yet be mechanisms that re-establish widespread Arctic chill and snow/ice systems toward the end of February into early to mid-March. When hard winters happen, they tend to not take hints on when to leave.
The lean here is to a significantly milder pattern in weeks ahead, but don’t turn your back on Old Man Winter. He might bounce back off the ropes with a haymaker.
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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