Morning sun rays burst through trees at Meadows of Dan in September 2024. This particular September started with unusually cool weather in Southwest and Southside Virginia, as did September 2025, quite a contrast to the first two weeks of this September, among the hottest on record in our region. Courtesy of Tom Austin.
Morning sun rays burst through trees at Meadows of Dan in September 2024. This particular September started with unusually cool weather in Southwest and Southside Virginia, as did September 2025, quite a contrast to the first two weeks of this September, among the hottest on record in our region. Courtesy of Tom Austin.

As we wait for the advance of autumnal atmospheric patterns and El Niño to do their thing for cooler, wetter weather sometime in the indefinite future, we have started off September and meteorological fall hot and dry.

Dryness in 2026 is well documented. After fairly substantial erosion and reduction of regional drought coverage and intensity in a frequently stormy August, many locations in Southwest and Southside Virginia have taken a step or two back into deeper drought in the first half of September with only very spotty showers and storms on a few days.

We’ll get back to reassessing where we stand with drought in weeks ahead, as we also consider when, and if, the wet train of an El Niño-charged subtropical jet stream might get going.

Dry weather is causing some tree leaves to die off early, such as these in the Poor Mountain Natural Area Preserve in southwest Roanoke County, despite a lack of autumn chill so far. Photo by Kevin Myatt.
Dry weather is causing some tree leaves to die off early, such as these in the Poor Mountain Natural Area Preserve in southwest Roanoke County, despite a lack of autumn chill so far. Photo by Kevin Myatt.

The most distinctive weather element of early September so far has been how hot it has been.

It may seem that much hotter considering how it compares to early September in the previous two years. Your memory is not faulty if you recall a little bit of sweater weather having already occurred by this point in the two most recent Septembers.

It hasn’t been so hot this week, with even a couple of sort of cool mornings with some 50s lows, but it will be spiking again toward the lower to mid 90s the next couple of days over the lower elevations of Cardinal News’ Southwest and Southside Virginia region, with some showers and storms by Friday. Beyond that, there isn’t yet a clear sign of a summer-busting, fall-ushering cold front on the horizon through at least most of the rest of September.

A cumulonimbus cloud with a well defined cirrus anvil climbs in the distance past the Virginia Tech Montgomery Executive Airport in Blacksburg on Sept. 11. Courtesy of Hazem Sharaf.
A cumulonimbus cloud with a well-defined cirrus anvil climbs in the distance past the Virginia Tech Montgomery Executive Airport in Blacksburg on Sept. 11. Courtesy of Hazem Sharaf.

Among the hottest first two weeks of September

Roanoke has had its hottest first two weeks of September in 115 years of weather data, averaging 79.2 degrees, a half-degree above the same period in second-place 1961.

It’s been the second warmest first two weeks of September at Blacksburg, Wytheville and Chatham, third warmest at Danville, fourth warmest at Lynchburg, and fifth warmest at Burke’s Garden, to look at some regional sites with a century or more of weather records.

One important note about the early September warmth is that while many afternoons have been pretty hot relative to normal, especially in the first week of the month, it is warm overnight lows that are raising these averages more so than hot afternoon highs.

On a large scale, this was also true for the recent finding that the summer of 2026 beat out long record-holder 1934 as the hottest summer on record nationally. It was among the hottest few summers for afternoon high temperatures nationally, but it was the warmest for nighttime lows, and that raised the summer average temperatures to its record-setting 74.4 for June through August.

Septembers have started much cooler in recent years

Although summers and especially summer nights are generally getting warmer on a global scale in this era of changing climate, you don’t have to go way back into the past to find genuinely cool early September weather specific to our region that would have been more suggestive of a soon-arriving fall.

Just go back to the last two Septembers, in 2024 and 2025, and then one not so far back, in 2017.

This chart tracks average temperatures for Sept. 1-14 since 1912 at Roanoke. The box shows how there have been extreme peaks and valleys of hot and cool early September temperatures in the past decade. Courtesy National Weather Service.
This chart tracks average temperatures for Sept. 1-14 since 1912 at Roanoke. The box shows how there have been extreme peaks and valleys of hot and cool early September temperatures in the past decade. Courtesy National Weather Service.

For Roanoke, where this September’s first two weeks were the hottest on record, Sept. 1-14, 2025, by contrast were the fifth coolest first two weeks of September on record, averaging 66.1 degrees. That followed a year after the first two weeks of September 2024 being the 12th coolest, averaging 67.2 degrees. And, less than a decade ago, 2017 had the second coolest opening two weeks of September, at 64.4 degrees.

Some of the other century-plus data locations in Cardinal News’ Southwest and Southside Virginia coverage area are similar.

The Sept. 1-14 periods in 2017, 2024 and 2025 rank fourth, seventh and third coolest, respectively, at Lynchburg, and fourth, eighth, and third coolest at Danville.

The first two weeks of September 2025 were the third coolest on record at Blacksburg with three consecutive mornings dropping to 40. Burke’s Garden was 1 degree above the freezing mark, 33, on Sept. 10-11, 2025, but didn’t drop below 50 once in the same period this year.

The shelf cloud of an advancing thunderstorm rolls over River's Edge Park as seen through the windows at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital on Sept. 11. Courtesy of Tim Guilliams.
The shelf cloud of an advancing thunderstorm rolls over River’s Edge Park as seen through the windows at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital on Sept. 11. Courtesy of Tim Guilliams.

It all comes down to how high pressure has positioned late in the summer in the past three years.

The cool September starting periods of 2024 and 2025 followed cool August weather as high pressure set up over the western U.S. and funneled a steep southeastward flow out of Canada into the eastern U.S.

This year, the western high did set up to some extent, bringing us some periods of not-so-hot but showery and stormy weather in August. But the high pressure heat ridge kept rebuilding across the southern U.S. and finally built more strongly over much of the eastern two-thirds of the country in September, much like it had done in early July.

More above normal temperatures are projected for much of the U.S. over the next two weeks. Courtesy of Climate Prediction Center, NOAA.
More above normal temperatures are projected for much of the U.S. over the next two weeks. Courtesy of Climate Prediction Center, NOAA.

And that’s where we are now, with persistently rebuilding strong high pressure over much of the central and eastern U.S., and as yet, no silver bullet to break it down.

This month has a real chance to be the warmest September on record on a national level and perhaps on a regional level here also, or at least at some regional data sites.

There still looks to be some sweating weather left before we get to sweater weather.

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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Kevin Myatt has written about Southwest and Southside Virginia weather for the past two decades, previously...