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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.