Another political season has ended with Tuesday’s elections, the results and analysis of which you can read about elsewhere in Cardinal News. But the next winter snow season hasn’t really gotten going yet.
A week from now, you can cast your ballots in an entirely different kind of poll, one that could return a $25 gift card to you and considerable admiration of your prognostication prowess.
The fifth Cardinal Weather snowfall prediction contest — and 18th contest counting the entire Weather Journal era in The Roanoke Times — will start taking entries when my next weekly weather articles post on the Cardinal News website at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 11. Entries will continue being taken until Sunday evening, Nov. 29, at midnight.
Current weather: A vigorous storm system to our west will sweep in the likelihood of rain showers overnight Wednesday through Friday, probably ¼ to ¾ of an inch for most, but locally more. Temperatures will remain near or slightly above seasonal norms with 60s-lower 70s highs and 30s-40s lows into the weekend. We are waiting to see if this storm system represents the start of more frequent and still much-needed rainfall typical of El Niño cool seasons, and if expanding warmth in the stratosphere above the North Pole might help push a more wintry batch of cold air southward later this month or in early December.
I will go over the details of entry next week. Generally, there will be a list of 8 to 10 locations around Cardinal News’ Southwest and Southside Virginia coverage area, you’ll guess the Dec. 1 to March 31 snowfall for three of them, and email those to me. Fewest number of inches missed off the totals of the best two predictions wins.
So be thinking now if you want to go low, high, or somewhere in the middle with your numbers. We discussed a couple weeks ago how all of those are viable scenarios, and perhaps varying among them across our region, with a strong El Niño winter.
Seasonal tradition
This contest is something many people in the Roanoke and New River valleys, who have been playing since the latter days of the George W. Bush administration, have told me they look forward to almost as much as Thanksgiving turkey and Christmas lights.
In the last few years, we’ve been getting progressively more entries from other parts of Southwest and Southside Virginia. Still, Roanoke Valley entries have been 15 of 19 total contest winners (counting a three-way tie) and three of the last four since it moved to Cardinal News. New River Valley folks enter the contest frequently as well, but only one, a Radford woman in 2019, has managed to win during the three-way tie.
I would love to see a person from the NRV, or a Lynchburg or Wytheville or Danville or Galax or Abingdon entry, or someone from anywhere between the Cumberland Gap and Cumberland County and north to Interstate 64, break through as the winner this year.
The only non-Roanoke Valley winner in the Cardinal News era of the contest was from Sterling. The rest of Virginia — indeed, the rest of the world within reach of e-mail — is eligible to enter and win the contest also.
But do you want outsiders outguessing you on your own winter? The more entries we get from Cardinal News country, the better the chances the title stays in our backyard.
Youth movement
Also: Let your kids enter.
There was a period of time in my Roanoke Times days when the corporate interests took over the contest and limited entry to those 18 and over. That degraded the spirit of the contest.
When I moved the weather column to Cardinal News in 2022 and launched the contest anew, back to its more informal roots, restoring youth eligibility was a key priority.
A sixth grader won my first snowfall contest back in 2009; three years later, a seventh grader won. Three years ago, five eighth graders at Salem’s Andrew Lewis Middle School dominated the contest.
Parents, send in your kids’ guesses — I let whole families enter on one email. Don’t be surprised if they beat you.
Teachers, let your whole class guess and send in a spreadsheet.
There was a time when either Douglas Bleecker’s students at Lord Botetourt High School or his own children at home seemed to figure into the final standings every year.
If I get 200 entries, we’ll boost the monetary amount of the prize.
The first contest I ran got 211 entries in the fall of 2008. The number almost reached 1,000 by the mid 2010s but floated downward afterward as The Roanoke Times’ circulation downsized and then much of its content went behind a paywall.
At Cardinal News, with expanding readership and no paywall, we haven’t hit 200 yet, but this might be the year.
Incredibly, considering the numbers of people entering, the snowfall contest has had a repeat champion (Jamie Phillips, 2009-10 and 2010-11), and mother and son winners (Janice Weaver in 2016-17, Brad Weaver in 2024-25, with Janice Weaver nearly winning the 2023-24 contest).
New formats
The contest has had to change format over the years. The 2008-09 contest was only guessing Roanoke’s snow total and first 1-inch snowfall. Blacksburg was added the next year, and the contest pretty much held the same format through 2022.
Moving to Cardinal News, with its much wider coverage area, just those two locations weren’t sufficient. So we have posted up to 10 sites to choose from across our area, so everybody has at least one somewhat close to you.
The National Weather Service’s four major climate stations in our region — Roanoke, Blacksburg, Lynchburg and Danville — are included. The rest come from official volunteer co-op stations in other localities. Unfortunately, two of those that I have used, at Lexington and Appomattox, are no longer in service. So each year I have to change these up a little, and haven’t quite decided how many or which stations will appear in the contest this year.
I’ve also had to eliminate the first snowfall date portion of the contest, as the difference in how primary climate stations (midnight to midnight) and volunteer co-op sites (7 a.m. to 7 a.m.) register measurement dates just made this too confusing. The same snowfall one evening could go down as Dec. 10 at Danville but Dec. 11 at Martinsville.
The most popular topic
I could point to a lot of reasons this contest has had resonance over the years, but I think it boils down to just plain fun, and that snowfall is, beyond a shadow of doubt, the weather topic that consistently draws the most interest in all my weather postings in print and online over nearly a quarter century of writing about regional weather.
Snow elicits strong passions for and against it and generates much discussion, and of course, it’s incredibly difficult to forecast with anything resembling pinpoint accuracy, over a day or two let alone an entire season.
How our winters are perceived often boil down to how two or three weather setups play out with razor-thin margins dividing ice or rain from snow, or a near-blizzard from a sunny but cold afternoon.
When we open the gates on winter prognostication next week, dive in and see if you can join this list of past champions.
Snowfall prediction contest winners
(Roanoke Times)
2008-09 Austin Broyles, Lord Botetourt High School
2009-10 Jamie Phillips, SW Roanoke County
2010-11 Jamie Phillips, SW Roanoke County
2011-12 Casey Preuss, Faith Christian School
2012-13 Merle Spencer, Patrick/Henry county border
2013-14 Charles Cornwall, Cave Spring (originally from Buffalo, NY)
2014-15 Erinn Hokanson, Roanoke
2015-16 Bryan Soukup, Roanoke
2016-17 Janice Weaver, SW Roanoke County
2017-18 Gwen Bower, SW Roanoke County
2018-19 Gary Tegenkamp, Roanoke; Shannon Mills of Radford; Christine Hosey, Hot Springs.
2019-20 Patricia Walters, Salem
2020-21: No contest
2021-22: Nathan Sanford, Roanoke
(Contest shifts to Cardinal News)
2022-23: Hasan Shamim, Sterling
2023-24: Tavia Ruley, Andrew Lewis Middle School (Salem)
2024-25: Brad Weaver, Roanoke
2025-26: Bob Kolinski, Roanoke
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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