A couple of warm days before the biggest push of cold air in current series arrives
These are NOT the projected lows for Friday morning — add about 10 degrees for that. This is NOAA’s graphical forecast map for Monday morning, behind a strong cold front due to push in Saturday. That front may trigger a few showers and storms, but moisture will be limited, and coverage is likely to be spotty. Before this front arrives, highs may push into the low 80s at Roanoke, and points south and east, today and Friday, with mid and upper 70s common at most other Southwest Virginia locations below 3,000 feet in elevation. Saturday’s front will bring the strongest push of cold air we’ve seen since at least early May. If conditions Monday and Tuesday morning are favorable for radiational cooling — something clouds interrupted on Thursday morning — there may be a few more lows in the 30s west of Roanoke than even the map shows, and possibly even some scattered frost. Though the weather pattern will be slow to make any large changes, the weekend cold front appears likely to be the strongest push of cold air during this particular series of Canadian imports.
September 20, 2012 - 11:08 PM
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Matt, I’ve ridden the Cass Scenic Railroad twice, once on honeymoon in 1980 and again about 20 years ago. Do the entire trip, Whitaker Station and Bald Knob. You almost need a jacket in July on the top, so take something plenty warm for up on the bald in October. I would think around Oct 6 or 13 would be good colors for that trip. You might try and work in a tour of the National Radio Astromomy Observatory right next door when you are over there.
Joe, the white oak acorn is the only one worth eating. Much milder.
Nice day for a drive to Hokieburg. Spoke to a meteorology class this morning. Fog playing with the ridges and a few noticeable spots of fall color.
Well the Chinquapin is actually an Oak..
That has its own long history as being
pretty good to nibble on…but lots of work.
Its a bush in the White Oak family.
Absolutely the best nut grown. While considered in the oak family, it’s not even close to the nuts folks are referring to. Not one person in 10,000 would even know what it was. Same family , different genera. And land use practices have about wiped them out here in our area Joe. Try to find a cup on the local farmers market anymore. Good luck.
Yeah, KM, I drove down to a certain “goof course” in western Pulaski County yesterday morn, and I noticed two trees (almost certainly maples) in the median strip of I-81 just after the rest area at mile 108 that had partially changed color. Pretty oranges and a hint of yellow with still plenty of green leaves. I think this is earlier than the previous 2 or 3 years. Also one on the DVGC golf course, same thing, a maple with some leaves having changed.
I did a quick look back at previous Septembers dating back to 2000, and this is the first one since 2003 I am pretty sure in which more than half the days after the 15th (I think it is a safe bet that this will verify for Sept. 2012) have been cooler than normal. I think the 3 years which had noteworthy 2nd-half of Sept. cool snaps were 2000, 2001, and 2003. IF that were a signal of how cold and snowy the following winter would be (relax, this is way too early for anything now to be a signal for winter ….. including wooly worms and the acorn crop), it would be a bad one for snow lovers. All 3 of those winters were less than normal for snow and warmer than normal, although I am not sure about the temps. Sept 2002 was the one before a snowy winter.
In fact Joe, I was at the hunting camp for a few minutes today and went to the only bush I know of in Bedford Co. Had a few poppin open and snatched[err, carefully picked a few out] a couple for old times sake. As good as they were 50 years ago. Sad. Callaway area hadem when we were kids like most all the countys, but only a memory now.
Just arrived home from Nags Head today,had a great time!Cool in the Morning and a cool breeze all day right on the beach.Left last Sunday first 2 days were sunny about 75.Tuesday night and Wednesday were stormy as the cold front was coming through,with rain.Thursday was mostly cloudy with the sun coming out at times,high in the low 70`s.Today was perfect of course as we were leaving,bright sunshine and the waves were much less choppy with bright blue skys.About 65 for a low.Near 70 as we left at 9:00 this morning.
The oak trees I grew up with in Arkansas mostly were southern red oaks. We had 2 massive such trees in our yard, 12-15 feet in circumference, 50-75 feet tall, approximately 200 years old (judging by rings from a similar sized that was cut down across the road). Acorns were very small compared to the white and chestnut oaks, and they tasted bitter, as I learned as a child. We just happened to live in a little pocket of bottomland hardwoods that weren’t logged out in settler days. I love the mountains and the piece of hillside Appalachian forest we now own, but I miss those big trees!
On the way back from Blacksburg today, I took US 460/11 through Shawsville and Elliston. The ridges to the west of those towns had a considerable amount of color on them — perhaps as much as 20 percent turned in spots. Lots of oranges and reds.
Hokie Trax -made a trip over to VT Airport to see the planes you mentioned. They were awesome! Got to see the P-51 take off and land. Weather was super. Thanks for the link in the previous thread that talked about them.
Snow showers in the forecast overnight and Saturday morning in the “arrowhead” of Minnesota as the cold surge pushes south.
Nothing to cackle about…
On Sept 21st 1894 its widely reported (whatever that means)
that during a tornado outbreak in Southern Minn / Northern Iowa
a heavy chicken house 16ft x 16ft was lifted off and placed wedged
between 2 trees.
The next day they looked inside and the hens were sitting on their nests
as though nothing happened.
Not even the windows were broken.
As to exactly where..I have no clue..though I spent a good bit of time
trying to find out exactly that. Be my guest!!
BTW, Kevin, THANK YOU VERY MUCH for posting that information about the polar vortex taking a once-in-several-generations dip all the way into the United States back on 1-21-85. That was awesome. Any way I could find out more about that event?? I remember we were living in Alexandria, VA, but I thought we were in northern Maine on a brutally cold January day for them!! Incredible ice and wind chill.
WD/…
thanks,,,Id bet you can still go to some
undeveloped area of Franklin County and find some
of those bushes.
It seemed to me they would grow up in areas
cleared of higher timber. They like rocky areas.
One place I remember them in particular were on the Northeast side
of Briar Mountain.
for all you survivalists..
and those who want to have a healthy dinner
cooked on your driveway!!
http://mcclungmuseum.utk.edu/archives/plants/images/ha-nuaco.jpg
Doug: Interesting maps on this site from NWS-Newport/Morehead City NC. Center of vortex moved from Great Lakes to Maine, but swirl of cold air around it dug deep into the U.S. Meanwhile, there was a strong high up near Hudson Bay, where the polar vortex would normally be when it’s cold in the eastern U.S.
http://www.erh.noaa.gov/mhx/EventReviews/19850121/19850121.php
As former college basketball announcer Dick Vitale might exclaim (sorry if you didn’t like his theatrics … I didn’t myself) about that article from the Morehead City, NC NWS folks: “AWESOME, BABY, AWESOME!!!” Those maps of the USA on the days near 1-21-85 were spectacular. Weird thing is, I don’t remember that winter as a whole being all that cold or snowy. Just truly unbelievably cold for a short time. I wonder what the NAO and AO indices were close to that time. Especially the AO must have gone extremely negative.
It is difficult to believe that the alltime low at Burkes Garden was not set on that date. Kevin, haven’t you mentioned on the blog (probably quite a few times over the years) that the alltime coldest temp ever in Virginia’s recorded history was on 1-21-85 at Mountain Lake? -thirtysomething? I see from that NC NWS link that the North Carolina state record was set at Mount Mitchell on that date, too, 34 below.
That was the official record low, Doug. But my storm-chasing friend Dave Carroll was on Mount Rogers that day backpacking (yes, on purpose, to catch the extreme Arctic air mass) and said his portable mini-thermometer recorded at least -35.
Burkes Garden was “only” -4 that day — 7 degrees WARMER than Roanoke. The extreme temperatures came from cold air advection (wind moving the air) rather than radiational cooling (clear sky, calm winds, cold air sinking to surface), so it was a situation favoring elevations over valleys for the lowest temperatures. Burkes Garden’s bowl shape may have even insulated it just a bit from the frigid winds.
I just clicked on the AO-NAO-PNA etc website, and was able to look up the daily readings of the AO from January 1985. They had dropped all the way to -1.79 and -1.69 on the 10th and 11th, but had dropped back to only -0.88 by the 15th and dropped still further after that. hmmmm
While I was on that page, I looked up what the AO was doing in mid-December, 2009, when we had the huge snowstorm on the 18th-19th. Got a whopper of a surprise. It was positive!! Really spiked on the days of the event, to +2.17 and +2.16!!! It was +1.05 on the 16th and +1.79 on the 17th. It was in positive territory for all but one day between the 3rd and the dates of the snowstorm. ????????? I will go look at what the NAO showed for those two key dates.
The NAO had been fairly negative about a week or ten days before the 1-21-85 supercold outbreak, but nothing record-breaking. It varied between -1.18 and -1.79 between the 4th and the 12th. -0.88 on the 13th, then around 0.7 for the next three days, then really climbed all the way to positive territory after that.
If you remember, Doug, it wasn’t really all that cold in the days leading up to the December 2009 snowstorm. Roanoke was in the low 60s on the 9th, 14th and 15th. In fact, Roanoke had a high above freezing EVERY DAY of December 2009, including the snowstorm days (barely at 33 on Dec. 18, then 37 on Dec. 19).
If you look at the weather maps from January 1985, the blocking high pressure system was centered more around Hudson Bay or central Canada, and the polar vortex got underneath it and trapped. That location for high pressure wouldn’t register a huge negative reading for either Arctic or North Atlantic oscillations, which depends more on high pressure over the North Pole and near Greenland, respectively.
Much of the 1985 Arctic outbreak had to do with extremely cold air becoming trapped and then rushing south when the dam broke. That’s why it was a relatively quick, extreme event in a winter that wasn’t otherwise all that noteworthy locally. Roanoke had 10 inches of snow for the winter, most of it in February.
My location in northeast Arkansas got more snow than that in 1985 — at least 17 inches I can think of, with two 7-inch snows and a 3-inch powder snow that came in behind the extreme Arctic front itself. Never will forget squeaking around in that snow the next day (snow is more high pitched when compacted the colder it is) with temperatures hanging around zero at midday and howling Arctic winds blowing it into drifts (3 inches turned into 1-2 feet in piles, wind-bared ground nearby). I was in 9th grade, missed a ton of days between snowstorms and a bad case of the flu, so I remember it well.
NOAA threw me a big curveball. Once you click on the NAO (or AO), one of the options is Daily NAO (or AO) levels since 1950. So one clicks on that, but the next page shows the history of all 4 (AO, NAO, PNA, and AAO) oscillations. OOPS. I will correct the above info about the AO in another comment.
NAO for mid-January 1985: Dropped to -1.38 on the 17th, then to -1.61 and -1.63, then to -1.46 on the 20th before receding.
Dec. 2009: NAO was at roughly -2.1 for 4 straight days between the 11th and 14th, then dropped back a bit to -1.7 and -1.8 on the days (18th and 19th) of the event. -2 readings are very negative for wintertime.
Thanks, KM, for the usual superb explanations.
Thanks Joe. You’re right about disturbed ground. In Craig and Bot. county where there was heavy logging until the 80′s or so, chinks would sprout on most drag roads where the equipment had cut a road, along with long dormant American Chesnut trees. The roots can lay dormant for years and jump up in disturbed new ground.
Talk about a MAMMOTH CORRECTION!!! I just looked up the AO numbers for Janaury 1985 (the ones I used above were the AAO — Antarctic Oscillation!! LOL!). I bet they were the most negative numbers the AO has had during the almost 63 years of data. Fasten your seat belts: The AO was already incredibly negative on the 13th at -2.4, then dove to -3.1 on the 14th, paused at -2.97 on the 15th, but then decided to go searching for the Titanic!! The stupendous readings for the next 6 days: 16th was -3.93, then -4.89,-5.69, -6.23 on the 19th (the lowest), -5.58, and -4.22 on the 21st itself. Then a quick rise toward more reasonable levels.
Of snowstorms and Dec..
Previously I mentioned Mt Weather..
Mt Weather was somewhat “exposed” to what its function
was due to weather.
TWA flight 514, a 727 crashed into Mount Weather on Dec 1 1974..
It was controlled flight into terrain (CFIR is the term used)
there were thunderstorms in the area and the flight opted not to try to land at Washington National. They chose to land instead at Dulles.
They were in and out of the bases of the clouds around 2000ft after passing the Winchester area. They impacted near the top of the Mountain at 1670 feet. Thsi flight is one of the reasons commercial aircraft all now have as standard equipment GPWS ..ground proximity warning systems..
…What many people dont know is that same day and the same storm system
another 727 was lost .
Northwest Airlines had dispatched a 727 to Buffalo (NW 6231)
to pick up the Baltimore Colts from the game that day.
They got into severe icing and their instruments became unreliable. They went into a low speed stall and spun from 24000ft to ground level in 83 seconds. 3 crew died.
As for the description of this storm…look to the latter part of this from NWS Detroit.
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/dtx/1886-1974.php
My word, the AO readings for December 2009 and early January were also spectacularly negative. It was at -2.61 on 12-10-09, then another deep sea hunt. The AO bounced around between -3.3 and another hugely negative -5.82 (on Dec. 21st) for the entire time between 12-11-09 and 01-10-10.
And they had another, similar deep nosedive for most of February 2010!!
Guess who is going to start watching the AO very closely?!?!?!
My gosh, I just found 3 straight days in mid-January 1977 (14th-16th)
… when the AO dropped to the -7.3 range!!! That was the month in which Ohio was declared a disaster area because of its extreme cold.
Wow, this is fun. Last one on old AO readings (at least for a while), I promise. Feb. 1-15, 1978. The epic eastern New England blizzard of 1978. AO readings were between -3.0 and -5.3 right through the 15th of FEB.
Those numbers would make more sense considering the level of Arctic air being dislodged southward in each of those situations.
By the way, on both the 10-day and 14-day GFS AO outlooks, the AO is supposed to go quite negative, down to about -2 in a couple of days, then return to neutral by Sept. 30th. And KM has already mentioned that we could have a return of some warm days during the first week in October.
Only the 10-day NAO outlook shows any substantial downturn in the NAO, again for just a few days, before returning to very slightly negative numbers in early October. But snow fans, take heart. There is no sign of an end to the long-lasting negative situation of the NAO since May 2012.
Dopp Carol – glad you saw the planes. I was not able to sneak out to go over there today but will see them on the flyover tomorrow.
I remember that cold outbreak in Jan. 1985. I had been in coastal TX for 6 months on an internship for grad school and flew into Roanoke near that cold time. My son was about 16 mo. old and neither of us had proper coat to wear, having left Virginia in August. I had a blanket wrapped around him and over his head and when we hit the cold air outside the plane he gasped from the cold the way babies do. I hurried him in to the terminal. For about two weeks, I didn’t take him outside because of the intense cold – he wasn’t used to it, having been in a much milder and more humid climate for those months.
WD…
I dont think its the disturbed ground lending to the new growth
so much is it is cutting the canopy from overhead
allowing the sunlight in..
Just my opinion.