“We need rain!”
“Storms every day are ruining my summer!”
The back-and-forth between these two camps lit up the replies on my @KevinMyattWx account on X/formerly Twitter and Kevin Myatt Weather Wonders page on Facebook a good part of this summer, and at times, they were both right.
There is not a short and simple way to characterize the weather across the breadth of Cardinal News’ Southwest and Southside Virginia coverage area for the entirety of this summer, which ended on the meteorological calendar with Monday’s last day of August, marking a June 1 to Aug. 31 period for weather records officially considered “summer.”
Summer lingers on through the Sept. 22 autumnal equinox on the traditional calendar, so we might consider these first three weeks of September we are in as summer’s twilight.
This week’s weather certainly is in line with a summer that hasn’t ended, as we are seeing some of the most persistently high temperatures we have seen since before July 4, as hot high pressure has expanded over us from the west.
Locations in the Roanoke Valley and east of the Blue Ridge may reach the mid 90s to near 100 on this Wednesday afternoon through Friday, before a weekend cold front brings scattered showers and storms (some issues for the late part of the VMI-Virginia Tech game, perhaps?) and then cooler weather for next week.
For now, it looks more like a backing-off from these very hot temperatures rather than a truly fall-like injection of coolness.
So, as we wait for fall, let’s recap summer.
Different strokes for different folks
Summer in Cardinal News country didn’t have an overriding theme that was true for most places most of the time. Drought, storms, and heat waves entered the conversation at various times.
If you are in Southside Virginia, this was a decidedly hot and dry summer. It was Danville’s hottest in 16 years (78.1-degree F average) and fifth driest (6.89 inches of rain) in over a century of weather records.
The John H. Kerr Dam in Mecklenburg County tied a summer seasonal record for most number of days to reach or exceed 100 degrees, at 12, previously reached in 2010. It was the second hottest summer by average temperature, at 81.5, in 79 years of data, beat out only by 82.7 in 2010. It was also the 10th driest summer at the dam with 7.26 inches of rain over three months, Incidentally, Kerr Reservoir/Buggs Island Lake behind this dam is nearly 9 feet below full pond, far below any recent year at this time.
For many places in and near the New River Valley, you might call it a sticky and stormy summer.
With nearly 15 inches of rain (14.72) it was Blacksburg’s wettest summer since 2020 and in the top third of summer wetness in over 130 years of data. It was also the 20th hottest summer of 132 years with data, averaging 71.6 degrees.
Underscoring how difficult this summer can be to characterize even over relatively small distances, Radford, about 15 miles down from Blacksburg on Interstate 81, only measured 5.92 inches of rain, the driest summer in 21 years.
The lake at Gatewood Park west of Pulaski has been one of the more extreme measuring sticks for long-term drought, dipping 21 feet below full pond as of Aug. 20, even though Pulaski itself has had nearly 11 inches of rain this summer, in the middle of the pack for 88 years of records. Pulaski County and most of the New River Valley have moved from moderate drought to only “abnormally dry” in recent U.S. Drought Monitor maps, but Gatewood Park’s lake hasn’t responded yet.
For the Roanoke Valley, it was pretty hot — tied for 12th warmest in 115 years averaging 76.6 degrees, though a little cooler than four recent summers since 2020 — and fairly stormy. Roanoke began July with three consecutive 100-degree days for the first time in 43 years, but never got higher than 94 after July 5, and didn’t even make it to 90 for 18 straight days from July 19 to Aug. 5.
Why Carvins Cove keeps dropping
Roanoke’s rainfall totaled a reasonably decent 10.31 inches, 39th driest, or near the bottom of the middle third of 115 summers.
But, similar to Gatewood Park, the heaviest storms have largely been missing the watershed of the Carvins Cove reservoir to the city’s northwest, now 18.6 feet below full pond.
Some Roanoke-area residents who have witnessed multiple downpours have been flummoxed as to how the reservoir keeps dropping, but there are at least three answers to that. (1) The rain has been quick streaky and spotty downpours rather than widespread soaking rain, not as efficient in flowing across the breadth of watersheds and filling up reservoirs. (2) It’s summer; tree canopy and plant roots are still absorbing and siphoning a lot of water that would flow more readily into reservoirs after leaves fall off. (3) The rain we have gotten, especially in late July and August, has been sufficient to keep Carvins Cove from falling into the truly dangerous territory it did in the early 2000s, which Dwayne Yancey described in some detail in a column earlier this week entitled “When is it time for the Roanoke Valley to panic about the water levels at Carvins Cove? Here’s what the data shows.”
Lynchburg was a little less hot than Roanoke, historically, but much drier. The summer average temperature of 76 degrees ranks as 27th warmth out of 134 years of records. Rainfall totaled only 7.69 inches over 92 days, the driest summer since 2017, and 26h driest since the early 1890s.
Lynchburg’s official weather station is at its airport on the south edge of the city. Many of the storms that rumbled across Bedford County tended to stay north of the U.S. 460 corridor, going more into Amherst County than southward. Lynchburg seems to be a rough dividing line between some fairly heavy soakers to the north and the relative desert of Southside Virginia.
It was sort of a “mid” summer for temperatures and rainfall for most areas in Southwest Virginia along and west of the Interstate 77 corridor — not remarkably wet or dry for most locations, and temperatures averaging a little warm but not excessively on the hot side.
Wytheville along I-77 actually had a lor more rain this summer, with over 12 inches, than in either of last two, with 6.4 and 8.49 inches, respectively. It was, however, also Wytheville’s 13th hottest summer out of 94 in continuous records, averaging 71.4 degrees.
Burke’s Garden not far to the northwest had its 30th hottest summer out of 131, at 66.9 degrees, but middle-of-the-pack 52nd out of 131 for rainfall at 14.12 inches.
More variable after early July heat wave
Across our region, it was a little bit different summer at different times in different places, but the overall tendency averaging the extremes comes out toward the hot and dry ends of the ledger.
After the brutal late June and early July heat wave cooked all of us pretty well, the rest of summer was much more variable, both week to week and place to place, as high pressure edged westward and we moved into the northwest flow up and over the dome of heat to our west.
Storm clusters tended to form to our west and northwest and slide across our region, weakening and becoming more sparse, most but not all of the time, as they passed east of the Blue Ridge.
That largely explains the west-to-east disparity in rainfall amounts that was enough to pull many areas west of the Blue Ridge out of the darker shades of drought, even totally out of drought for many west enough of I-77, but not enough to get areas to the east back to anything better than moderate or severe drought.
Some of these storm clusters proved quite damaging, especially around Aug. 10-11. There was also some serious flooding in Carroll County on Aug. 2, and spotty reports of brief flooding in heavier storms across our region intermittently through late July and August.
A mid-August heat wave encompassing much of the South into the Carolinas nosed into Southside Virginia, but was stymied farther north by stubborn fronts and intermittent storm clusters. That boosted summer average temperatures higher up the historic rankings in that area.
And that brings us to an early September heat wave that is covering more territory across our region as we wait for it to break and, somewhere down the road, more fall-like temperatures to settle in.
There is one more piece of summer-related business we need to wrap up: Figuring out who won the summer heat prediction contest. We’ll get to that very soon.
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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