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The Weather Journal blog and column will be on break for the remainder of this week. The blog will return around Nov. 25, and the column will return in The Roanoke Times on Nov. 27.

Abundant rain from the coastal low that was formerly Hurricane Ida is causing flooding in many locations in Southwest Virginia, including the Roanoke River. Click here for a Roanoke Times article on the flooding, and here for the National Weather Service in Blacksburg.

Going on leave for the next 2 weeks, I said I wouldn't get on the blog unless something extraordinary happens, and that appears to be on its way as Hurricane Ida defies a weak Atlantic tropical season and November norms and takes aim on the northern Gulf Coast. Hurricane warnings are out for portions of the Mississippi, Alabama and Florida Panhandle coasts. Ida will eventually be running over cooler water and into shearing winds aloft, but may have enough momentum to reach the Gulf Coast intact as a hurricane before becoming "extratropical." What happens to Ida's remnants afterward could be very important in Virginia's weather, as it has the potential to become an extratropical nore'easter type storm that could bring windy rain up and down the East Coast by mid-week ... or possibly only to parts of the Southeast, mostly staying to our south, if it is suppressed by a cold front advancing across the nation.

I will not be able to follow this closely the next few days, but you can on the following Web sites:

National Hurricane Center

Hydrometoerological Prediction Center rainfall forecast maps

National Weather Service-Blacksburg

The Weather Journal blog and newspaper column are on hiatus through Thanksgiving. I am taking some leave to deal with some family matters.

On the weather front, it's probably a good time to take a long break, before winter gets rolling. I might jump back on here if something extraordinary is happening, but otherwise, don't expect to see blog posts for nearly 3 weeks.

Tropical Storm Ida has formed in the Carribean near the Central American coast. It will likely soon move over Nicaragua and Guatemala, and though the National Hurricane Center is giving it some chance of regaining tropical storm strength later this week as it nears the Gulf of Mexico, there's a good chance it will rain itself out over the higher terrain of those countries. Late season tropical systems flooding the higher terrain of Central America can be very deadly, the extreme example being the 11,000-plus killed in 1998's Hurricane Mitch. 

While Ida is unlikely to affect the U.S. as an organized tropical system, there's some chance its subtropical moisture could get pulled into the U.S. as new Pacific cold fronts and low-pressure systems move across in the next 7-10 days or so.

UPDATE 5:15 PM: A frost advisory has been issued for Wednesday morning generally for the Roanoke Valley and regions south and east, those that were only brushed by freezing temperatures for a couple of hours back on Oct. 19. END UPDATE

Near-freezing temperatures are expected in the Roanoke Valley on Wednesday morning and sub-freezing temperatures are likely in many other parts of Southwest Virginia as a dry air mass and lengthening nights allow for rapid temperature dropping after sunset. Freeze and frost advisories have not been issued since cold mornings on Oct. 19 and 20 effectively ended the growing season in most areas. Still, if you have any plants you've put back outside in some of the sunny, warmer days, get them in tonight.

Well, this time last week I was suggesting that the week ahead would have pleasant temperatures and little or no rain. Instead, we had a couple of rounds of soaking rain. Let's try again this week: Once more it looks like a week of fairly normal temperatures (cool 30s and 40s in the morning, up in the 60s in the afternoon) with little or no rain, possibly through next weekend. There is more reason to be confident this week because there isn't a front hanging around along the coast and into the Gulf of Mexico that could serve as a focus for a low to develop, and high pressure looks to have firmer grasp on much of the nation. After last week's active weather week that included flooding rain, snow and severe weather across much of the country, this looks like a quiet week ... but we'll see if it changes.

If you haven't gotten in your Halloween activities yet, you're probably going to get soaked if it involves being outdoors the rest of this evening. A large area of rain moving out of West Virginia will soon overtake the area. While we saw some showers earlier, this will be a much more widespread and heavier rain ... though not a torrential one. Most places in our region are expected to get 1/2 to 1 inch. Once this rain pushes out, the week ahead looks like a treat, with dry weather, cool mornings and warm days. A prolonged period of mild to warm and dry weather may be in the offing the next 10 days or so ... but last week's projected dryness was spoiled by a storm that fired in the Gulf. We'll just have to see if there are any spoiler this week.

Today in my Weather Journal column I gave a few of my thoughts about the winter ahead.

(By the way, I intended to predict a first snow on Dec. 13 for Roanoke, not Dec. 3 as was published. However, since it published that way, I am stuck with that as my pick. As it's published, I actually picked an earlier date for Roanoke to get a 1-inch snow than Blacksburg, by one day, which I would not have done.)

But today is also the first day I'm taking entries for the snowfall prediction contest, now in its second year. Austin Broyles of Lord Botetourt High School won last year's contest, with school kids completely dusting the adults for the top spots.

The instructions to enter are below.

(1) You must give the following information to be entered:

Your name

City or town of residence (nearest town or section of county if rural). School affiliation is OK for students.

Projected date of first 1-inch snow in Roanoke, as reported by the official snowfall measuring station at WDBJ (Channel 7) studio.

Predicted total inches (rounded to nearest whole number) of snowfall between Nov. 15 and April 15 in Roanoke.

Projected date of first 1-inch snow in Blacksburg, as reported by the National Weather Service office.

Predicted total inches (rounded to the nearest whole number) of snowfall between Nov. 15 and April 15 in Blacksburg.

(2) E-mail above information to weather@roanoke.com before the end of Friday, Nov. 6. Entries will not be accepted after midnight on Nov. 7.

(3) Each entrant’s score will be calculated by adding the number of inches off each snowfall seasonal prediction and the number of days off the first 1-inch snow predictions. The lowest score wins.

It is OK to send multiple people’s entries on one e-mail, such as a family or a classroom. It is also OK to send an attachment … such as a Word document or an Excel spreadsheet … with many individual entries, as long as you identify the group they are coming from (such as a school).

The first 1-inch snow means the date on which there is at least 1 inch of snow on the ground. That means that if it snows nine-tenths of an inch before midnight on Dec. 12 and one-tenth of an inch after midnight on Dec. 13, Dec. 13 is the date that will count.

We are using official statistics, which means that sleet also counts as snowfall. If there is an inch of sleet, it counts as a 1-inch snowfall whether or not there are any snowflakes mixed in, because it will be recorded as an inch of snowfall in official records. Glaze ice from freezing rain does not count as snowfall.

Winter is getting an early start in the Rockies and High Plains, where "the biggest snowmaker to hit Colorado's Front Range in October since 1997" is under way. Click here to read the Associated Press article. This same powerhouse low could become a severe weather producer the next couple of days  and also spread more heavy rain through the central U.S. It will pull a Pacific cool front through our region by the weekend, triggering a few showers around Halloween.