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The New River Current ran a weekend story focused on energy bills. National Weather Service meteorologist Robert Stonefield is quoted, stating that El Nino increases the chances of having a milder than normal winter. And I've stated the same thing myself a few times before in Weather Journal columns over the years.

But a few weeks ago, I looked back on El Nino winters historically and found that it wasn't that clear-cut. In fact, winter months in previous El Nino winters were about evenly split between significantly above normal and significantly below normal in temperature, with a few close to normal. For Roanoke, El Nino winters have included our snowiest month (January 1966) and coldest winters (1977-78) on record, as well as a massive snowstorm in February 1983. The years of stronger El Ninos, like 1991-92 and 1997-98, tended to have a warmer and wetter winter than the more moderate El Nino winters, which this is projected to be as of now.

So I don't know if I'm quite ready to say that less money will be needed for heating this winter based on previous El Nino winters. Historically, wet seems a somewhat stronger bet than warm. Maybe in about another 4-6 weeks we can have a better idea how strong El Nino will be and what other factors might come into play.

I still remember the perfect blue sky. I marvelled at it driving into work that morning eight years ago, and looked up at it through the day at The Roanoke Times building where I was doing a stint as an interim metro editor.  A cold front had pushed through the previous day, and a cool, dry Canadian air mass covered most of the United States. It was a perfect day ... except it wasn't. Not after about 9 a.m.

The weather didn't really matter at all that day ... except it did. I've long wondered how much the perfect weather played into the terrorists' choice of Sept. 11 for their attack on New York and Washington in 2001. There were no atmospheric disturbances at all to complicate their mission to fly hijacked planes into buildings. Their targets were in perfect view, easily seen in the crisp visiblity.

And the weather mattered a lot when it came to the national "ground stop" order to land thousands of planes after the attacks that morning. Not only were there no major storm systems, but almost no inclement weather of any kind anywhere in the U.S. Imagine how much more difficult the already gargantuan task of landing every airplane in U.S. airspace would have been with major hubs affected by heavy rain or wind or thunderstorms.

It's always that flawless and cloudless sky I come back to. Sept. 11, 2001, was the first of a long string of perfect weather days, progressively cooler into the weekend after 9/11, an early taste of fall. It was a sky not only unmarred by clouds, but unscarred by jet contrails -- except for military flights -- for a few days after 9/11.

And it was that blue sky I lost myself in many weeks that turbulent autumn as I hiked mountain trails during a dry fall with golden leaves. The world had gone mad, but serenity and sanity could still be found.

In Friday's Weather Journal column, I take a look ahead at winter by taking a look back at how other El Nino winters have played out in Roanoke. The results might surprise you.

As we watch whether the current Tropical Storm Danny will become a hurricane, and whether it will move close enough to affect the coast from the Carolinas to Maine, you may be scratching your head thinking that you have heard about a Hurricane Danny in the past.

Indeed, there have been two Hurricane Dannys that made landfall in the United States, each of which were Category 1 storms coming ashore in the north-central Gulf of Mexico before the remnants crossed the Southeast. The August 1985 Hurricane Danny came ashore in rural southwest Louisiana with 90 mph winds, but its main effects were inland flooding due to heavy rain and a prolific outbreak of tornadoes in the Southeast, including 34 in Alabama alone. Three people died from Danny's effects. More detailed National Hurricane Center information related to Danny 1985 is linked here. (Gotta love those 1980s-era typewritten reports!)

The July 1997 Hurricane Danny, with a very small area of hurricane-force winds around its eye, crossed the Mississippi River delta of Louisiana before making a second somewhat stronger landfall near Dauphin Island/Fort Morgan, Ala.  The slow-moving storm dumped more than 30 inches of rain in parts of south Alabama, and then spread heavy rain and a smattering of tornadoes northeastward through the Carolinas into the Tidewater area of Virginia. A total of 4 people were killed. Danny 1997 did a very unusual thing, re-intensifying into a tropical storm over southeast Virginia before it re-emerged into the Atlantic. A more detailed National Hurricane Center synopsis of Danny 1997 is linked here.

There were also Dannys in 1991 and 2003 that remained over open water. You see a pattern here: Every 6 years, there is a new Danny. That's because the National Hurricane Center's storm name lists are rotated every 6 years. Names are removed only if the World Meteorological Organization determines that a storm had such a major impact that no other storm should carry that name, for at least 10 years (though effectively, the retirement has been permanent). It's a Hall of Fame of sorts, or rather, a Hall of Infamy. Here is a listing of retired storm names.

Danny, neither in 1985 nor in 1997, has been deemed worthy of name retirement. We'll see if it does something in the next days to get taken off the list. Othewise, it will be re-appear for the fourth named storm of the 2015 Atlantic tropical season.

UPDATE 4:45 PM: Tropical Storm Bill has developed in the eastern Atlantic. The National Hurricane Center is projecting it to strengthen into a hurricane and be near Puerto Rico by Thursday, while Tropical Storm Ana is forecast to move to near Florida about the same time. Stay tuned, the tropics are heating up. END UPDATE

UPDATE 10:30 AM: Tropical Storm Ana has formed from the westernmost of the two systems in the eastern Atlantic (the one that was a tropical depression, then diminished to a remnant low, then reformed). At this time, it is projected to move on a path that could threaten Florida by late next week, though it is not forecast to strengthen rapidly. Click here for the latest on Ana.  Also, just now upgraded, is Tropical Storm 3, the easternmost of the two waves. This was the big one that came off Africa. It is projected to be a hurricane near Puerto Rico by late next week. Click here for the latest on TD3. END UPDATE

We're still watching and waiting in the Atlantic, where there are four different disturbances that have tropical potential, two of which (the two farthest away from the U.S.) are given a high probability by the National Hurricane Center of becoming tropical depressions. The system circled as No. 1 was actually already a tropical depression, got right to the verge of becoming Tropical Storm Ana, then weakened to a remnant low ... but it is showing signs of organizing once again. The one circled as No. 2 is the big mass of clouds that came off Africa a couple of days ago, also given a high chance of achieveing depression status. The other two ... one just west of Florida, the other on the eastern side of Cuba ... are relatively disorganized waves that have low chances of becoming depressions.  If any of these become tropical storms, with winds of at least 39 mph, the first names on the list are Ana and Bill.

As of today, August 14, we are at the average date of the first hurricane in the Atlantic basin. It will obviously be a later-starting season than normal since we haven't even had a named storm yet. But it's possible the Atlantic may blossom with activity suddenly the next few days.

If you didn't see it in the paper today, here is my retrospective on Hurricane Camille in 1969, particularly its post-hurricane flooding in central Virginia. For more on Camille, visit the Virginia Department of Emergency Web site, which is also soliciting memories of the storm.

Also, the National Weather Service in Blacksburg is hosting a town hall meeting in Lexington on Tuesday night from 7 to 9 p.m. Click here for more information on that meeting.

Thankfully, compared to the terror of Camille 40 years ago, our weather looks extremely tranquil well into the next week. Expect highs in the 80s, lows in the 60s, and only a few scattered afternoon and evening showers and thunderstorms.

With temperatures projected to push the mid 90s as early as Sunday, let's take a quick look back at our cool July before we move on.

First, here's a map of the United States from the National Climatic Data Center depicting July temperatures based on statewide averages. The darkest blue shade from Pennsylvania west to Iowa -- most of Big Ten country, plus West Virginia -- depict the coldest July on record in those six states, dating back to 1895. All the states in the next lighter shade of blue, including Virginia, had July temperatures among the 12 coldest on record, or "much below normal."

In Roanoke and Blacksburg, this is how July stacked up (some data problems at the National Weather Service led me to listing some different rankings earlier, but those have been squared away now and this is what stands for July).

* Tied for 7th coolest overall average temperature in Roanoke, dating to 1912, with an average of 73.3 degrees, equalling that of July 2000. (Top 10 list here)

* Fifth coolest average high temperature in Roanoke of 82.6 degrees. (Top 10 list here)

* Fourth coolest overall average temperature in Blacksburg, dating to 1952, of 68.4 degrees. (Top 10 list here)

* Third coolest average high temperature in Blacksburg of 78.2 degrees.  (Top 10 list here)

The National Weather Service in Blacksburg also notes that having only one day at or above 90 degrees in July at Roanoke was the first time there had been so few 90-degree days since 1950. (Click here for a weather service summary about that and other facts about the cool July).

So that's the way it was in July.

Due to some weather data issues and other problems, I've scrapped what was on this blog entry altogether and recapped July on a later entry that can be found by clicking here.

We're about to shift out of the mode of posting photos of late April snow (some links posted in the comments of my last entry) to watching how high the mercury can climb. Thursday will be a nice spring day in the upper 60s to mid 70s, but the next four or five days after that are likely to be in the 80s. As high pressure builds in at the surface and aloft, we'll get a setup similar to a summer heat dome going, with stable air aloft inhibiting clouds and precipitation, and bright sunny skies each day to push the temperature up. Various forecasts are currently peaking Roanoke in the mid to upper 80s on Saturday, but I think there's even some chance we could scrape 90. Even if we do, it won't be setting any records. Record high for April 25 is 95 set in 1925, it's 93 for April 26 set in 1915, and it's 95 for April 27 set in 1957. Roanoke's earliest 90-degree day was March 19, set in 1945.

Blacksburg's records for those three dates are 88, 86, and 90, respectively, all set in 1957, so those probably will stand, too. (Blacksburg's records go back to 1952, Roanoke's to 1912).  That must have been a torrid late April in 1957 ... all of Blacksburg's record highs between April 25 and May 1 date to 1957.

In Friday's Weather Journal column, looking at Thursday's winds but primarily reviewing the Feb. 10, 2008, windstorm, I only got to use a very small portion of my Q&A with Stephen Keighton and Phillip Manuel of the National Weather Service in Blacksburg. If you are interested, I have posted the entire e-mail conversation we had regarding the Feb. 10, 2008, windstorm in the extended entry below (click on "Read More" if you are in full blog mode). Read more »

UPDATED 8:30 PM: The winds are dying down, and the high wind warnings have hours ago been replaced with high wind warnings. I have added a short statement on impacts from Stephen Keighton, science officer at the National Weather Service in Blacksburg, in the extended entry below. END UPDATE

UPDATED 1 PM: A list of wind damage reports from the National Weather Service in Blacksburg is in the extended entry below  (Click on "Read More" if you are looking at the full blog) END UPDATE

The wind is roaring through Southwest Virginia overnight and throughout the day Thursday. Expect frequent 25-35 mph winds with some gusts topping 50 mph, occasionally 60 mph. There are, as of this writing at 11:30 p.m., already thousands of power outages in far western Virginia and especially in West Virginia (AEP outage map linked here), largely due to wind related to the initial squall line. But now a longer siege of wind sets in, as the air is propelled by strong low pressure to the northwest. Expect some additional scattered power outages and a few limbs down here and there, but this will likely not be of the caliber of the Feb. 10, 2008, windstorm ... which I plan to look back on in Friday's Weather Journal column in the newspaper. The winds will gradually subside overnight Thursday. Temperatures will still be relatively mild behind this not-so-cold front, likely in the 50s or lower 60s Thursday and Friday, but additional storm systems and frontal passages over the next few days will gradually get us back to seasonal temperatures next week.

Current conditions (including wind speeds) at locations in Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina

Latest warnings, adivsories from National Weather Service-Blacksburg

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