The Cardinal Weather summer heat prediction contest has a repeat champion, sort of.
Diana Dymacek of Lexington was one of three contestants who tied for first place in last summer’s Cardinal Weather heat prediction contest. She lost out on a tiebreaker from being the official winner to receive a $25 gift card.
This summer, however, she was alone atop the leaderboard, not needing the tiebreaker — which was an especially good thing, for reasons explained below.
By correctly predicting 100 degrees as Roanoke’s hottest temperature between June 20 and Aug. 31, and being only a single degree off predicting Blacksburg’s hottest to be 95 (it was 96), Dymacek’s total of being one off on her best two of three guesses combined won the contest over three other contestants who each missed by two.
Dymacek won despite having the third site she picked a temperature for be entirely scratched from the competition.
The co-op weather station previously at Appomattox, one of 10 sites chosen for temperature prediction across Southwest and Southside Virginia in this contest, has ceased providing official data this summer. This appears to be much like Dymacek’s hometown of Lexington, which has been without a co-op weather observer for two years, despite having weather data on record as far back as the 1890s.
(If you live in those areas and have any interest in being an official weather observer for either Lexington or Appomattox, please contact the National Weather Service office at Blacksburg at the email linked here.}
In the contest, the loss of the Appomattox reports affected a handful of entries — another reason it’s good we take the best two of three guesses, with the third guess only coming into play if there is a tie. Thankfully for Dymacek, there was no tie this time.
Runners-up in the heat prediction contest include Alison O’Brien of southwest Roanoke County who guessed Lynchburg at 100 (highest was 101) and Roanoke at 99 (highest was 100); George Kosko of Hollins who guessed Roanoke at 99 and Blacksburg at 97, one off on each; and Pam Stump of Fincastle, who guessed 101 at Roanoke and 104 at the John H. Kerr Dam in Mecklenburg County, which topped out at 105.
The nine sites in the contest all recorded their highest temperatures between July 1 and July 5, sometimes on multiple days. Those were 96 at Abingdon, 96 at Blacksburg, 91 at Clintwood, 103 at Danville, 105 at the John H. Kerr Dam, 101 at Lynchburg, 100 at Martinsville, 100 at Roanoke, and 97 at Wytheville.
The Kerr Dam’s 105, recorded July 4 and 5, appears to be the hottest temperature of the 2026 summer in Cardinal News’ Southwest and Southside Virginia coverage area. The Kerr Dam reached as high as 104 on June 13.
Last week brought another shot of heat that led to the hottest September temperatures in 72 years at multiple locations in our region, including three consecutive days of 100-plus temperatures with two days hitting 102 at Danville. Lynchburg’s 100 and Roanoke’s 99 on Sept. 4 were the hottest September temperatures since 1954 at both of those sites.
But that heat wave happened after the contest cutoff on Aug. 31, so wouldn’t have counted in the contest, and the peak temperatures were not quite as high as those of early July, anyway.
The contest drew 25 entries. Snowfall prediction is just a lot more fun than heat prediction, apparently. It often draws more than 100 entries.
We’ll start taking entries for that in about a month or so. With the history of El Niño winters being either feast or famine for snowfall in our region, this could prove to be an especially challenging winter to try and predict snowfall.
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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