Despite our recently departed Arctic chill, it’s been a warm, dry winter over much of the U.S.

Just a few days ago, I could stand atop ice solid enough on my yard to hold my full weight without me breaking through, while comfortably wearing short sleeves.

Continued warmth and weekend rain have melted much more of that long-lingering “sleetcrete” shell now, and most of it other than some amazingly resistant remnants in shaded hollers, forested hillsides, hardened drifts and parking lot mounds will be gone this week with 60s high temperatures widespread across most of Cardinal News’ Southwest and Southside Virginia coverage area.

Snow and sleet melted rapidly between Monday, Feb. 9 left), and Wednesday, Feb. 11, in Salem as temperature jumped into the 50s and 60s after two weeks that were mostly below freezing Courtesy of Doug Griggs. — Snow and sleet melted rapidly between Monday, Feb. 9 (left), and Wednesday, Feb. 11, in Salem as temperature jumped into the 50s and 60s after two weeks that were mostly below freezing. Courtesy of Doug Griggs.

Our temperatures will get colder headed into next week, with up-and-down between milder and colder periods continuing into early March.

Some snowflakes will fly through the mountains behind a cold front late this weekend and early next week. There is some chance this could turn into something a bit more robust with wintry precipitation in our region with a couple of tweaks in the atmospheric setup, but for now, a widespread or intense winter storm is not expected in our region.

While we’ve had a decidedly “hard” stretch of winter in our region and much of the eastern U.S. before the thaw of the past week, it has very much not been that way over a large part of the nation.

Also, it might be hard to get our minds around how most of our region was in moderate to severe drought last week even though we were actively melting a glacier into our soil and waterways. That dryness is a theme across much of the U.S., including Western states where annual winter snowpack is severely depleted.

Warmer than normal temperature anomalies for December and January are much stronger in Western states than corresponding colder than normal anomalies in the East, resulting in an anomalously warm winter so far across the 48 contiguous states. Courtesy of National Climatic Data Center.

A warm winter nationally

We highlighted here last week how this winter, if it had ended with three weeks left, would rank respectably among the coldest historically for multiple locations in our region, and among the top two or three coldest since the start of the 21^st century.

But panning out to a wider view of the contiguous 48 states reveals a much different picture.

The average temperature for December and January — the first two months of meteorological winter — ranked as the sixth warmest on record nationally (minus Alaska and Hawaii) for that period, a little more than 4 degrees above the 20^th century average.

Warmth has been extraordinary for many states in and near the Rocky Mountains and westward, more than 7 degrees above the 20^th century average for Utah and Wyoming. Meanwhile, many states in the East were below 20^th century average temperatures for the first two months of winter, but not nearly to the same degree as the western warmth.

A full moon lights up a frozen section of the Blue Ridge Parkway near the James River during the late January run of Arctic temperatures and accumulating snow and sleet. Courtesy of Randall Woodford.

It is fairly common to have patterns where one side of the nation is warm and the other is cold, owing to the wave physics of large-scale atmospheric flow. A ridge of high pressure over the West is often counterbalanced by a jet stream dip over the East. For the short term, we have flipped into something of its opposite, with a cold jet stream dip in the West and the warm high pressure ridge over much of the East.

But for much of this winter so far, the warm temperatures underneath the ridge in the West have been more extreme and persistent than the cold temperatures underneath the trough in the East.

So that is why this is going to be another of several recent warmer-than-normal winters nationally, generally following the changing climate trends of many recent years.

The U.S. Drought Monitor map for the Untied States, based on Feb. 10 data, issued Feb. 12. A new one will be issued Thursday. Courtesy of National Drought Mitigation Center.

Dry despite the melt

It has also been a dry winter in the West, with many mountainous areas experiencing extremely low amounts of winter snowpack, a major issue once we get to wildfire season and also for summer water replenishment.

Here in Virginia, mountain snowpack is not a major component of our water supply in warm seasons, but the recent widespread snow/sleet accumulation can help us understand its importance in regions where it is.

Last week's U.S. Drought Monitor map focusing on Virginia. Severe drought now encompasses much of the middle part of the commonwealth along and east of the Blue Ridge. Recent widespread snow melt and weekend rain may have improved conditions somewhat, but little widespread change is expected when a new map is issued Thursday. Courtesy of National Drought Mitigation Center. — Last week’s U.S. Drought Monitor map focusing on Virginia. Severe drought now encompasses much of the middle part of the commonwealth along and east of the Blue Ridge. Recent widespread snow melt and weekend rain may have improved conditions somewhat, but little widespread change is expected when a new map is issued Thursday. Courtesy of National Drought Mitigation Center.

Partly because what would be 1 to 2 inches of liquid rain from Jan. 24-25 and Jan. 31 winter storms has been locked up in that snowpack, rather than flowing into streams, water tables and the soil as it would have if it had been rain, our official drought levels worsened in the latter part of January.

In the two-mile-high-plus mountains of the West, that same effect is a benefit on a larger scale, winter snowpack locking up moisture typically hangs on deep into summer, sometimes through it, slowly dripping out its water content during drier months.

Melting the snowpack we’ve had won’t solve our drought, even adding ¾ to 1 ½ inches of rain to it as we did on Sunday, and possibly some more showers over the next couple of days.

Snow melt and weekend rain did make the Roanoke River run higher and more turbulent than it has been in several weeks, as seen from the Roanoke River Greenway in Salem. Courtesy of Doug Griggs.

Our regional drought is the result of many months of below-normal rainfall, likely related at least partially to the ongoing but weakening La Niña, the cold stripe of water in the equatorial Pacific that influences climate patterns worldwide. The tendency with La Niña is for drier patterns with fewer strong southern stream storm systems to tap warmer waters off the Gulf Coast and Southeast U.S. coast, and therefore less precipitation in our region.

It will be interesting to see how and if the U.S. Drought Monitor maps change for Virginia on Thursday’s new issuance with the recent snow melt and rainfall.

There may be some improvement, but the region will still be in need of some more frequent moderate precipitation systems to stave off the worst effects of drought headed into the tandem spring wildfire and growing seasons followed by the heat of summer ahead.

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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