December needed just eight days to snow on us twice. March may get a lot of us above 80 twice in its first seven days.
And just like that, the coldest winter in over a decade for most of Cardinal News’ Southwest and Southside Virginia coverage area will flip over to some temperatures more like late May than early March.
The brief chill that brought us cold rain and a little bit of spotty sleet, snow and freezing rain (mostly north and west of Roanoke) on Monday and early Tuesday is being pushed away by a growing and intense dome of high pressure spreading from the southwest that will send temperatures soaring into the 70s areawide over the next couple of days and perhaps even lower 80s for some by Friday and Saturday.
This warmup, with most days in the 70s, looks to have some staying power, though it may collapse into a colder pattern in about 10-14 days or so. Such variance is almost inevitable sooner or later in March.
It is unclear this far out if a potentially colder latter half of March, should it materialize, will be truly a winter encore or just cooler temperatures that make it a bit nippier than many warm weather fans would want.
We can leave that for an iffy future for now. Those who have been awaiting this kind of warmth can bask in what is to come the next several days.
Equaling or exceeding the 80-degree mark looks to be probable for the Roanoke Valley and most places east of the Blue Ridge for Friday and/or Saturday, and some of those just to the west could even be on the bubble of 80.
If Blacksburg were to scrape 80 this weekend, it would be the second earliest in the year it has reached 80 degrees for the first time there, beaten only by doing so on Feb. 23, 2018. That temperature spike did nothing to stop a winter resurgence in March 2018, with Blacksburg topping 22 inches of snow in three events, its second largest March snow total on record, and really the last year our region had widespread significant snow in March.
February dates in 2018 (Roanoke), 2019 (Danville) and 2017 (Lynchburg) were the last time those locations hit 80 degrees earlier than this week could bring, one of only nine times at Lynchburg, 15 times at Roanoke, and 23 times at Danville that 80 degrees has been reached on or before March 7 in over a century of weather records.
A showery period by late in the weekend into early next week could get at least a little rumbly, as warmer temperatures may create the instability needed for some thunderstorms. States west of us may experience severe storms and even tornadoes, and that’s something that might end up on our radar, too.
Rain is still needed to ease long-term drought. Recent rainfall has at least shrunk the size of severe drought covering Virginia in the most recent U.S. Drought Monitor. It appears the heaviest rain in days ahead will remain mostly west and northwest of our region.
Wintry weather may or may not be over for most of our region, but winter has ended on the meteorological calendar, so we can at least start to wrap it up statistically.
Colder, snowier than last winter — at most places
Last March, we noted how the winter just past was the coldest in a decade and generally among the top third of coldest winters historically.
In most cases across our region this winter, which concluded on the meteorological calendar with the end of February, was a little bit colder.
One exception was Roanoke, where the December to February average temperatures for 2024-25 and 2025-26 finished in a dead heat, at 37.5 degrees. This is the first time in the entirety of official Roanoke weather data going back to 1912 that two consecutive winters averaged exactly the same temperature to the decimal.
Clintwood, in Dickenson County, was a rare location in our region that was a tiny bit warmer this winter than last, averaging 33.1 degrees this winter compared to 32.8 degrees in the 2024-25 winter. (You will see a similar theme in the listing of snowfall totals at the end of this column.)
Among other locations across our region, average temperatures listed in degrees Fahrenheit:
· Abingdon: 34.5 this winter, 35.2 last winter
· Appomattox: 35.9 this winter, 36.7 last winter
· Blacksburg 31.7 this winter, 32.1 last winter
· Burke’s Garden: 29.8 this winter, 30.2 last winter
· Danville: 38.6 this winter, 39.1 last winter
· Lynchburg: 35.9 this winter, 36.9 last winter
· Martinsville: 35.4 this winter, 36.3 last winter.
· Wytheville 33.4 this winter, 34.0 last winter
An interesting matrix to gauge how this winter rates hisotrically is the Accumulated Winter Season Severity Index, compiled by the Midwest Regional Climate Center. The AWSSI is calculated from temperatures and snowfall for sites nationally, even outside the Midwest region, and includes the four major climate stations in our region: Blacksburg, Danville, Lynchburg, and Roanoke.
The charts below will show that this winter, marked by the black line, rates as a “severe” (blue shade) to “extreme” (purple shade) at all four sites. The other lines mark the last nine winters. As you can see, this winter, owing to frequency of cold air and duration of snow cover compared to long-term norms, rates more severely than any for a decade, though at Danville, it may end up being relatively close to the 2017-18 winter, which had unusual March snowfall.
The AWSSI isn’t a perfect scale for winter, as it can’t really put freezing rain in the mix, as data for that precipitation type is not commonly recorded separately from rainfall at official weather stations. That absence would downgrade last winter, which was heavy with glaze ice. Sleet and snow are both counted as snowfall.
It would be interesting to return to these charts in weeks ahead to compare this winter to historic winters going as far back as the middle of last century.
The AWSSI doesn’t define winter strictly by a set time period, but rather as all the days between the first occurrence of a subfreezing high temperature and/or measurable snow and the last occurrence of one of those. So winter, possibly, hasn’t ended yet for all of our region.
Winter hasn’t officially ended yet for our annual Cardinal Weather snowfall prediction contest. Any snow that were to occur until March 31 counts in the totals.
Below is the current listing of totals for the sites across our region used in the contest, rounded to the nearest inch. In parentheses is the margin compared to last winter’s snowfall.
Again, you’ll see Clintwood standing apart as the only site with a deficit of snowfall this winter compared to last, though technically, Lynchburg was slightly less by a few decimals, both rounding to 12.
Abingdon 14 (+4)
Appomattox 14 (+1)
Blacksburg 22 (+11)
Burke’s Garden 36 (+10)
Danville 13 (+7)
Martinsville 12 (+8)
Roanoke 14 (+6)
Lynchburg 12 (0)
Wytheville 17 (+7)
Clintwood 28 (-8)
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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