There is a reason it seems mighty early to be talking about 90-degree high temperatures. Because it is.
Many locations in Southwest and Southside Virginia from the Roanoke Valley eastward across the relatively lower terrain east of the Blue Ridge, and maybe a couple spots farther west, are expected to reach or exceed 90 degrees one or more days in the Wednesday to Saturday period this week. It will be in the 80s everywhere else, excluding somewhat cooler high ridgetops.
High pressure ballooning over the Southeast U.S. is bringing an early “heat wave” somewhat similar to what much of the Western states experienced in the latter part of March.
A late weekend cold front will cut down the heat wave, and there might even be some frost in outlying areas by Tuesday morning next week.
Long term, there are growing signals of a cooler and perhaps damper pattern setting in by late month into early May, but this is iffy at this point, and even more unclear than temperatures is whether it might be wet enough to ease ongoing drought.
First April 90s in more than a decade
South Boston in Halifax County has already reached the 90-degree mark this year, back on March 11, when most of our region soared into the 80s and then many locations experienced snowfall the next day.
Any day 90 degrees or above this week would be the earliest since 2013 at Roanoke and Lynchburg, when it reached that mark on April 10, and the earliest since 2010 at Danville and Martinsville, when the year’s first 90-plus high temperature came on April 2 and April 7, respectively.
Lynchburg managed a 90-degree high as early as April 24 in 2022, but for the most part, the recent first 90-plus days have been coming in late May and June.
Lynchburg and Danville didn’t reach 90 until July 2 three years ago in 2023. That was tied for latest on record at Danville with another year in the last decade, 2017, and it was the fifth latest and the latest in 50 years at Lynchburg.
90s highs haven’t been getting earlier
While many regional climate statistics have tilted to warmer temperatures earlier, longer and more often, consistent with warming global trends, the advent of the year’s 90-degree day has not trended similarly in our region.
In more than a century of weather records, the first 90-degree day has averaged May 10 at Danville, May 20 at Roanoke, and May 24 at Lynchburg. But since 2000, the average first 90-degree day has been much later at Danville — May 25 — and a few days later at Roanoke (May 24) and Lynchburg (May 27).
It’s even stranger over the past decade, when the two July 2 dates for the first 90 have pulled Danville’s average first-90 date all the way to June 6, while Lynchburg’s has been June 2 and Roanoke’s is May 30.
It’s not that recent springs have been cool. March to May 2024 was Roanoke’s warmest spring on record for average temperature, with 2025 and 2019 each in the top 10. 2022, 2024 and 2025 are among the 10 warmest spring seasons on record at Lynchburg, and spring seasons in 2024 and 2025 ranked 12th and 15th respectively at Danville.
Five-year average spring temperatures are the warmest they have ever been in recorded weather history going back to 1912 at Roanoke, and the warmest they have been since the 1940s at Lynchburg and Danville.
Little correlation between April heat and summer highs
The recent seasonal warmth is not coming from early extreme heat spikes so much as it is two factors: The month of March leaning to being warm rather than wintry in recent years, and some frequently sticky, rainy patterns in May with warm low temperatures.
We could probably use some sticky, rainy patterns in May given how dry it’s been. But for the next few days, the region will be unseasonably hot and continue to be extremely dry.
Oh, and in case you wonder, having 90-degree weather in April appears to have no significant correlation to how hot the summer will be. Previous examples of 90-degree weather in late March through mid-April in our region have been followed by summers scattered across the spectrum from very hot to abnormally cool.
The rest of spring and summer will still be up in the air, no matter how hot it gets in April.
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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