The rising sun brightly illuminates high-level clouds in a red hue over the Blue Ridge in southern Roanoke County on the morning of Oct. 15. Photo by Kevin Myatt.
The rising sun brightly illuminates high-level clouds in a red hue over the Blue Ridge in southern Roanoke County on the morning of Oct. 15. Photo by Kevin Myatt.

After the catastrophic flooding from the inland effects of Hurricane Helene, it would have been tempting to utter a wish that it would never rain again.

That, of course, would not be a good thing, but other than some sporadic mountain showers (some of which weren’t just rain) with last week’s cold front, it has largely been what has happened since the first couple of days of October.

This week’s weather is, in most reasonable senses, absolutely splendid for the Southwest and Southside Virginia coverage area of Cardinal News. Days will be a bit warm with lots of 70s highs, maybe even some scraping 80. Nights and mornings will be cool with many 40s lows. Skies will be mostly blue with bright sunshine. It will turn a little cooler toward the weekend with a cold front — a mostly dry one, maybe a few weak mountain showers.

This is the kind of late October weather that, following ample rain weeks ago and a cold snap last week, is gradually turning the colors on the leaves toward their autumn peak and likely keeping them in place for many days to come, without high winds or heavy rain to knock them off more furiously.

Trees are turning along the re-opened Blue Ridge Parkway through Rocky Knob Recreation Area at the border of Patrick and Floyd counties on Sunday, Oct. 20. Photo by Kevin Myatt.
Trees are turning along the re-opened Blue Ridge Parkway through Rocky Knob Recreation Area at the border of Patrick and Floyd counties on Sunday, Oct. 20. Photo by Kevin Myatt.

The foliage show may yet be quite spectacular in much of our region, especially in the lower to middle elevations that had fewer leaves blown off by Helene. Trees were still mostly green when Helene’s 40 to 60 mph gusts hit, which probably pulled down a few more limbs than a winter wind whistling through bare trees would, but the trees weren’t stripped of leaves as a similar storm in late October or early November would have done. Some areas near the North Carolina border along and west of Interstate 77 may have seen more leaf removal from the winds than farther north.

But those winds did knock down a lot of trees and tree limbs in our region’s forests that have been drying out, and soon a layer of leaves will be accumulating that will also dry out quickly atop the ground. This raises the specter of wildfires with any windy cold fronts, especially if we don’t see any significant rain soon.

Three weeks and a day into October, rainfall totals for several Southwest and Southside Virginia locations are in stark contrast to the preceding month, running 10% or less of September totals in many spots, with no solid prospects for rain through the next week at least and quite likely longer.

Of 14 locations scattered across the region and examined for rainfall for this article, only Appomattox has seen more than an inch of rain — more than 2 inches, in fact, at 2.08 inches — in October to date. That’s a comparatively large 19.8% of the 10.48 inches that fell in September. But all of that October rain fell in the first three days of the month when we were still dealing with Helene’s leftovers swirling around a sluggish upper-level low, which dumped more rain toward Central Virginia at that point than on previously hard-hit areas of Southwest.

Dark clouds dump showers of rain as seen from Harvey's Knob along the Blue Ridge Parkway near Buchanan on Sept. 19. This was part of the rain from Potential Tropical Cyclone 8, which helped bolster September rain totals in our region before they were raised dramatically by the inland effects of Hurricane Helene. Courtesy of Tina Gibson.
Dark clouds dump showers of rain as seen from Harvey’s Knob along the Blue Ridge Parkway near Buchanan on Sept. 19. This was part of the rain from Potential Tropical Cyclone 8, which helped bolster September rain totals in our region before they were raised dramatically by the inland effects of Hurricane Helene. Courtesy of Tina Gibson.

Danville, by contrast, has had only three-hundredths of an inch of rain thus far in October, less than half of 1% of the 5.16 inches in September, for both months the least rain of the 14 sites examined. There is every reason to believe at this point that this month will be in contention for driest October on record at Danville, going back to the start of its official weather records in 1917. The current record-holder is 0.13 inch in October 2001, an extremely dry month across our entire region during the second part of the two-phased extreme turn-of-the-century drought our region suffered from 1999 to 2002.

Getting 0.10 inch of rain at Danville before the goblins go home on Halloween night looks doubtful.

Other locations across the region with comparative rainfall in September (listed first) and through 22 days of October include:

·       Abingdon: 10.69, 0.30;

·       Blacksburg: 6.73, 0.61;

·       Burke’s Garden: 11.93, 0.75;

·       Clintwood: 7.88, 0.29;

·       Covington: 7.62, 0.53;

·       Galax: 9.70, 0.11;

·       Lynchburg: 6.02, 0.20;

·       Martinsville: 9.12, 0.29;

·       Richlands: 10.28, 0.93;

·       Roanoke: 8.61, 0.91;

·       Saltville: 10.99, 0.45;

·       Wytheville: 10.73, 0.24.

Abnormal dryness clings to the western and eastern fringes of Virginia in last week's U.S. Drought Monitor, with the potential for expanding again with likely dry days ahead more than three weeks after Helene's heavy rains. Courtesy of National Drought Mitigation Center.
Abnormal dryness clings to the western and eastern fringes of Virginia in last week’s U.S. Drought Monitor, with the potential for expanding again with likely dry days ahead more than three weeks after Helene’s heavy rains. Courtesy of National Drought Mitigation Center.

On balance, though, the vast majority of our region remains outside of any official drought rating. Last week’s U.S. Drought Monitor map (link will be updated on Thursday morning) only shows a narrow strip of western and northern Virginia in “abnormally dry” conditions, along with the Eastern Shore and Northern Neck areas of eastern Virginia. If you look closely, there is a tiny patch of “moderate drought” in the extreme northwest corner of Virginia.

The western and northern Virginia long-term minor dryness, which includes much of Giles, Craig, and Alleghany counties, is the eastern fringe of a large and more severe drought affecting much of West Virginia and parts of the Ohio Valley. Dryness is not just a regional concern, as many locations in the central and eastern U.S. are having one of their driest Octobers on record. The weather pattern has featured large stagnant high-pressure systems that have kept the jet stream flow and tropical systems far away from most of the nation.

West Virginia remains in much more dire straits with respect to lack of rainfall, especially northern sections that have gotten much less rain than southern and eastern areas closer to Virginia in August and September tropical systems. Courtesy of National Drought Mitigation Center.
West Virginia remains in much more dire straits with respect to lack of rainfall, especially northern sections that have gotten much less rain than southern and eastern areas closer to Virginia in August and September tropical systems. Courtesy of National Drought Mitigation Center.

Dryness in our region now is not so much about the growing season — it officially ended west of the Blue Ridge with three subfreezing mornings last week and is on its last legs with some frost and just-above-freezing mornings to the east — though if general dryness continues through the winter it could become a more pervasive problem entering spring and summer. A La Niña is still forecast to develop with cooler waters in the equatorial Pacific, which is loosely correlated to many drier winters in our region.

Even without official drought based on water tables, stream flows and soil moisture, surface fuels like fallen leaves, dried-out leaves, and tree limbs blown down by Helene could bring an enhanced wildfire threat in weeks ahead without substantial rain.

The Helene floods have dominated our consciousness of late, but we’re only a year removed from a rampant fall wildfire season that included the 11,000-acre wilderness-singeing Matts Creek fire in our region, and just six months past wildfires that destroyed 18 homes in and near the Shenandoah Valley to our north.

We entered October desperately wanting the rain to go away, but we may soon be needing some cold November rain.

Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS has been rising higher in the western sky shortly after dark, but becoming fainter, now barely visible to the naked eye. This photo captured the comet above clouds rolling over the mountains as seen from just outside Abingdon on Oct. 14. Courtesy of Ernie Braganza.
Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS has been rising higher in the western sky shortly after dark, but becoming fainter, now barely visible to the naked eye. This photo captured the comet above clouds rolling over the mountains as seen from just outside Abingdon on Oct. 14. Courtesy of Ernie Braganza.

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. Sign up for his weekly newsletter:

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