The rains came, and the creeks, rivers and reservoirs rose.
The remnants of Hurricane Isaias pouring tropical moisture over a dome of cooler air banked against the mountains led to widespread rainfall amounts of 1-4 inches over most (not quite all) of Cardinal News’ Southwest and Southside Virginia coverage area on Saturday and Sunday, with some amounts topping 6 inches near the Blue Ridge.
Carvins Cove outside Roanoke rose 2 feet, getting back to less than 20 feet below its full pond, still the emptiest it’s been in 24 years. It and other area reservoirs may still rise a foot or two in the next few days with continuing runoff.
Many streams in the region swelled with Sunday morning’s heavy rain, and a few went over their banks, but the prior dryness and relative lack of extremely torrential inch-plus-per-hour type rains for extended periods kept this from being a significant flooding episode in our region.
Don’t think that this past weekend’s tropical-induced rainy spell is the start of frequent rains that start another great reservoir fill-up like we discussed happening with El Niño in 2002. That may come, down the road, but not yet — there is no sign of a follow-up soaker in sight, maybe a few showers on Thursday.
Don’t think that today’s spike of warmth — somewhat defying what was written here a week ago (maybe a few places will in fact make 90 on this Wednesday) — will last either. A cold front passing through on Friday will sweep that out by the weekend, so much so that many places in our region may be frosty by Sunday morning. (Might a few high ridges near the West Virginia line even see a few flakes of snow late Friday or early Saturday?)
And don’t think this weekend’s cold snap of 30s lows (maybe some 20s) and 50s highs is the start of “it getting cool and staying cool” for the fall. We’ll warm back up to at least 70s highs again next week.
We are seeing a bit of a wavy pattern with ups and downs as we move into mid- and late October, but as yet, passing jet stream troughs are not digging into rich moisture stores of warm seas south and east of the U.S., nor is there a rich subtropical branch of the jet stream common during El Niño cool seasons carrying wet storm systems across the southern tier of the U.S.
This past weekend’s rain with Isaias was essentially a one-off, not part of a chain of storms, and originating from something that is uncommon in the Atlantic Ocean basin when the equatorial Pacific waters have warmed into an El Niño.
In fact, as has been widely noted, Isaias was the latest on record in the satellite era (1960) for a season-first hurricane, reaching Category 3 strength with 120 mph winds before coming ashore on the Gulf Coast in the Florida Panhandle as a Category 2 storm with 105 mph winds. At landfall, the storm was already starting to transition into a more comma-shaped extratropical look rather than the pinwheel pure-hurricane form.
Isaias broke up the Atlantic tropical no-hitter. Since the late 1800s, only 1907 and 1914 have had no reported hurricanes anywhere in the Atlantic basin, and considering there were no satellites in those years, it’s highly possible a hurricane was missed somewhere it didn’t come ashore or pass over a ship.
While for the most part this was a needed rain for our region, though perhaps not always wanted on a weekend, depending on tropical remnants will likely not be a winning formula for finally getting out of this long drought.
The relative rarity of Atlantic tropical systems during El Niño, which tends to strengthen winds aloft over the Atlantic and shred the tops off of developing tropical systems, and the high-end potential for tropical systems to cause more mayhem than we would like to see argue against the desirability of having repeated occurrences of them be how we could catch up on missing rainfall.
While there wasn’t much flooding, no obvious gusty wind issues, and only a few reports of rocks or mud sliding into roadways for our region, we weren’t far north of a pretty significant tornado outbreak in the Carolinas. The cool, stable air trapped against our mountains kept the swirling air aloft from manifesting into twisters for our region.
We would be better off with frequent 1-2-inch type rains rather than bigger dumps a little less often.
This tropical rain didn’t cover our region perfectly.
There was a small zone in Southside where many spots got less than a half-inch east of Danville, areas that were too far east for most of the initial waves of moisture swept northward by Isaias’ post-tropical circulation and too far north and west for the bulk of rain with a late band of storms that moved across the Carolinas into Hampton Roads.
This little area of relative dryness happens to be right where some of the most extreme drought is painted on recent U.S. Drought Monitor maps for Virginia.
Upstream rains raised the rivers flowing through the region, but some places didn’t get the soaking they needed for short-term soil moisture.
My email and social media throughout late summer and fall have often included reports from people in designated drought areas who think they are getting plenty of rain and people in areas supposedly removed from drought that still have low water levels in ponds or wells.
Like is often said about politics, all weather is local. Your backyard microclimate may vary somewhat from the larger region around you. But, in general, we still need more regular rain to quell a long-term drought and refill reservoirs and the underground water table, though perhaps we’d prefer the rain to start tiptoeing around our weekends a little more.
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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