Showery weather may move in a bit earlier than expected this week, as I turn blog over to Kathryn Prociv a few days
I enjoyed seeing several of you at the National Weather Service Open House in Blacksburg on Saturday — frequent blog commenters Doug Griggs, Doppler Carol and HokieTrax among them. Many good conversations about weather, speaking both as The Roanoke Times weather blogger and as a Virginia Tech storm chaser. A good reminder of how passionate many people in our region are about weather.
We went from a cloudy, gloomy Tuesday with temperatures even colder than January norms (30s and low 40s) to sunshine and above-normal temperatures in the upper 60s and low 70s over much of Southwest Virginia on Saturday. Expect a similar day on Sunday, but things will be different by Monday. The next cold front appears to be moving in faster than previously thought, so Monday and particularly Monday night and early Tuesday will likely be our showery period, not later on Tuesday as earlier thought. This afternoon’s North American Model’s “simulated radar” map puts a broad line of light to moderate showers through the region shortly after midnight in the wee hours of Tuesday morning. Again, we’re not talking about huge amounts of rain with this, likely well less than an inch for most — tonight’s Hydrometerological Prediction Center 3-day rainfall map shows 0.25 to 0.75 inch amounts across Southwest Virginia. Also, while a rumble or two of thunder may not be entirely out of the question, the best upper-level wind dynamics will be tracking with the low-pressure system into Canada, so there is little to no threat of severe storms. Once the front clears, we’ll be getting back to more typical November temperatures, even a little colder than normal through the last 3 days of the week with highs in the 50s and lows in the 30s.
There are still lots of questions about how a potential Thanksgiving week system may evolve moving across the country. I know that’s of concern to anyone traveling for the holidays. Maybe there’ll be a little more certainty about it by the time I get back on the blog Thursday. In the meantime, Kathryn Prociv will again be filling in for me Monday-Wednesday.
November 10, 2012 - 9:39 PM
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Very few people will read this, probably, since it is late on a quiet Saturday evening, but just a reminder. Monday is a federal holiday (Veterans’ Day Observed), so no mail delivery then.
They (Channel 7) just posted today’s highs and lows at SW Virginia’s Big Four. ROA reached 72 (WAY ABOVE NORMAL HIGH!!!) and BBURG reached 70. Enormous spread between the high and morning low of 26 at Hokieburg. It sure felt fabulous out there at the NWS parking lot this afternoon, seeing KM once again and getting the chance to meet Mr and Mrs Doppler and HokieTrax Lady.
And looks like we may have another big-spread day tomorrow. Temp dropped like a rock during early evening. Took the dog out at 8:25 when temp had already nosedived to 55, and could actually feel the cooler air tumbling down the steep road in front of our house. THAT was a rarity.
Jay Webb of “7″ announced that the high ridgetops (well, maybe not you, so much, “Bi-polar Carol”, but certainly wd and to a lesser extent me) will be quite a bit warmer than the valleys tomorrow morn. Sure enough, it is 47 at RRA according to Jay, 41 is displayed on the icon in the bottom right of their screen, but I have stopped dropping and am at 53.
Excellent observations all, Doug (and those you quoted). A fairly typcial temperature setup in mid-late fall when air is relatively dry (wide temperature spreads) and we get southwest wind flow around a central U.S. low bringing warmer air to the ridges and not penetrating the valleys as much.
Roanoke’s high of 72 today was 11 degrees above normal. Blacksburg’s 70 was 12 above normal.
It was well worth the time to duck out of my office today to go over to the Hokieburg NWS Open House and meet Kevin, Doug, Bi-Polar Doppler Carol and her Man of the House in person. Wished I had the time to do one the tours but did get to see the storm chase set-up and some cool video. I did enjoy seeing a photo of Blondie Boy too.
I’ll be interested in next weekend’s weather (doing archaeology in the Shenandoah area) and then the Turkey Week system as I will be traveling. Then the UVa game since I have tickets for me and my sons to go (and oh my, they beat Miami!) Weather affects everything we do it seems!
Models tonight kinda playing around with another nor’easter-type storm for T-giving Week that mostly affects north of us. But again, details are sketchy this far out.
I won’t be quite as extreme in this online hiatus — I may drift on here a few times, approve some comments, maybe even throw a comment in here and there. But I won’t be on here much from now through Wednesday night.
48.0*
Glad everybody had a good time at Blacksburg yesterday!If i didn`t live so far away I would have loved to be there and meet everyone!This is a great blog to be a part of!Love to read everyone`s post.Low this morning was a cool 34.Calling for a high up here in the mid 60`s.Everyone have a great Sunday.Mike!
It doesn’t look as smokey this morning up here on the ridge so maybe they are making progress at putting out the fire on Pilot Mt.(NC).
Yes, it was a little warmer this morning: 41 F. Now the sun is shining and it looks like it will be a good day to get out and enjoy the outdoors before the rain tomorrow. I figured it would rain because on they way home yesterday, we ran the car through the car wash. I even washed a couple windows too. We probably will get lots of rain now.
Enjoy your hiatus Kevin.
At 9 AM—40*/Rke 45* B-Burg and 57* on top of da Knob.
Doug — Have a well-deserved holiday on Monday, and thank you for reminding us that it is a holiday. I’d forgot and I had planned to go to the bank as well as purchase stamps at the Mendota Post Office. That will all hold until Tuesday!
Thanks, Eva lady, and also thanks for checking in. I ALWAYS, ALWAYS enjoy hearing from folks more than 75 miles from Roanoke, such as you, Ricko, clarkdocvet (down near Galax), the Hobackster of course, Ken in Marion, Kelly Hoge (boy, I wonder how cold it has been in Burke’s Garden some of these mornings!!), Mike in Marshall, Jared from NE of Charlottesville (Greene County, right?), I’m in DC, and last but just about most, El Capitan Glen Quagmire of Louisa County. Apologies if I omitted anyone.
I played golf this morning for the 2nd time with the great Other John.
REST of this too-long comment is about golf. We played The Meadows Course in the western side of Christiansburg this time. Absolutely bizarre golf course. OJ had played it before, and had warned me that “a couple of holes had sort of been jammed in there, they aren’t too good.” What an understatement. With the lack of rain, previous frosts, rock hard ground and STEEPLY sloped fairways, balls were rolling off the fairways at an amazing rate. Each of us hit balls that landed in our fairway but rolled not only off our fairway but through woods that had no grass underneath them and on into another fairway. We definitely entered the Twilight Zone of golf courses, no exaggeration. 13th hole is without a doubt the worst designed golf hole that I have ever played. They should put up a sign on the tee box: “WARNING! This hole was designed by Lucifer.”
I took a look again at the NAO outlooks, and now it looks like there is real doubt about much of a NAO downturn starting around Turkey Day. More on this tomorrow afternoon. The 14-day GFS NAO outlook still shows a dip into neg readings starting on NOV 21st for 3 days around -1, but now there are two days (24th and 25th) where it recedes to about -0.6 or -0.7. And several of the spaghetti strands on the NAO ensemble show a rebound back into positive country. Rats ….. there is hope for all you snow lovers. LOL
Huge disagreements about the future of the AO. Definitely positive for at least the 9-10 days, but the 14-day GFS AO outlook shows a nosedive there as well around Turkey Day. But big majority of the Ensemble spaghetti strands for the NAO show it remaining positive, not going neg at all.
This crazy old Yankee (actually Red Sox fan!!!) will try to monitor both of those “oscillations” as much as possible, especially given the apparent crucial importance of the NAO levels for November.
A slight smokey smell returned around 4 this afternoon. It has not been as strong as yesterday and there is no smokey haze. I just checked online with a NC newspaper and as of 7 pm tonight the fire was 70 % contained. It had burned over 700 acres.
Any form of moisture would be good this winter – well, ice would not be good but we need moisture. Snow would be the best- Doug Griggs.
When will the rain start tomorrow? Obviously the further west you are, the earlier it will begin. But remember fellow weather fans, this incoming system will have to overcome an awful lot of dry air at the bottom of the atmosphere. Wherever we live, we could have at least an hour of virga (my opinion) before it reaches the ground. Meaning that the radar could be showing rain already occurring, but not really reaching the ground.
TWC shows only a 10% chance of rain here in ROA until 6 PM. For Christiansburg, the jump from 10% to 30% happens at 3 PM. Not sure that I believe it, but TWC shows the rain chance jumping to 30% at 4 AM tomorrow for Wytheville (??).
I am watching the Houston Texans at Chicago Bears NFL game now, and this IS a weather related comment. They are playing in what appears to be a steady rain. The liquid has been a factor into making this game an impersonation of a bakery … there have already been 5 (count ‘em: FIVE!!) turnovers, and the game still has about 8 minutes before halftime! If this keeps up (it won’t), we could have about 13. Wait!! That’s a “Baker’s Dozen!” …… yuk,yuk …. or perhaps some of you are mumbling “Yuck, yuck.”
Hey, KP, where are you? I guess we do not get the rhyming lady until tomorrow.
I forgot to tell how bizarre the temp changes were this morning on my drive up I-81 to Christiansburg. It was 45 on I-81 in Salem and going past the rest area west of Dixie Caverns. I decided to check the car thermometer when I got up the last of the four hills on I-81 at Exit 118, and was stunned, shocked. Nearly always when driving to Draper, Cburg was a few degrees cooler than Salem/Glenvar. Once in a blue moon it might have been a couple of degrees warmer. Today it was 57*!! And stayed that way to Exit 114 and onto Route 8 into downtown Cburg. But as I headed west (technically “South”) on Route 11, the temp dropped back to 52*. I should have known that I was entering the Twilight Zone right then and there ….
I just looked at the CPC website, and the most eye-catching thing there is not the short-term stuff, but what has already happened and what is going to continue to happen in the Nation’s Breadbasket. Severe drought there, no improvement in the foreseeable future, and below normal precip there on both the 6-10 and 8-14 day. They better get plenty of snow and rain this winter, or next year’s crop productions will be WAY off, or at least off to a terrible start.
Update: the football game just produced a strawberry one …. another turnover. A total of 6 in just one half.
Haha, Doug, I like your description of #13, among other holes…very appropriate! Playing The Meadows makes Auburn Hills look like a 5-star course…enjoyed playing though, course conditions and quirks notwithstanding.
Bummed I couldn’t make it to the Open House. Got hung up at the vet office most of the morning and into the afternoon with a very sick cat.
Hoping for some decent rains. Looks like a solid rain in Chicago at Soldier Field. The weather is sloppy, and so is the play…lots of turnovers.
And thanks, Doug, for all the info and research into the NAO…very interesting reading. I’d like a good winter…not too much like last year, but not like 09-10 either. Cold enough to kill off the bugs would be nice. And an average snowfall I’d find to be acceptable. But we’ll see…
Boy, was I ever overlooking something about the NAO, and it happened over a couple of recent years. The NAO was positive in March 2009, flipped a bit to a teeny negative value overall in April, then very positive in May 2009, went very negative in June and July 2009 and was just a bit negative in August, then a big positive number of +1.51 in September. From October 2009 THROUGH January 2011 it was negative for the entire time, although it was barely negative for NOV 2009. That was a streak of 16 consecutive Neg NAO months, and I am fairly sure the longest such streak in the 60-year database. I think that it is extremely unlikely that it will do it again, but if it does, it could be 2009-10 all over again.
It is 54 this morning up on Doppler Ridge and cloudy. I checked the radar and that is a big swath of green heading this way. Let’s hope we get some of that moisture. What are the chances of it turning out to be a Blue Ridge Jumper?
I went through our rain logs, and going back through October 10th, we’ve had just 0.75″ of precipitation up this way. It hadn’t made itself known with all the frost and cooler weather, but I really noticed it yesterday afternoon when I ran the mower through the yard to clean up some leaves…the dust was about as bad as I’ve seen it since the summer of 2008, when we first built the house and I was struggling to establish the lawn amid the drought that summer.
A quick look at the rain shield coming towards us (will be a few hours yet), inside individual cells moving NE at 60 – 70 mph!! So going to be windy with these storms.
Well, here in SW Roanoke County (at least along Rte. 419 between Cave Spring and Southwest Plaza/Grandin Road intersection), we have the opposite of what I yakked about possibly happening later today. Instead of having rain show up on radar, but not actually falling near the surface, we have a light shower (but heavier than lonely raindrops) that does NOT show up on radar.
C’mon Other John, you knew how dry it has been from the condition of that “tarmac” golf course we played yesterday!! :>) :>) :>) OJ made a very funny comment. On the Lucifer hole (of course it was the 13th), he commented that there was nothing but hardpan along the extreme right-hand edge of the fairway. Why? Because that is where all the golf balls roll to. No exaggeration. I hit what I thought was a great drive. because it climbed to the top of a steep little hill on the left hand side, actually in the rough, then started kicking right into the steeply sloped fairway. That ought to end up great, I thought, somewhere in the right half of fairway. Wrong. It was right next to a tree to right of fairway.
So KP – the NWS is showing partly sunny for this weekend for Luray area – at least Sat. and Sunday. Any thoughts on that Monday? I’m doing archaeology those days, making hotel reservations and hoping Monday isn’t rainy. Weather.com is showing ‘few showers’ 30% chance on Sunday and 20% chance on Monday. Of course it is a week out…
Spent the weekend in Pigeon Forge, TN with my mom and sister. As much as I love snow, I really enjoyed being able to shop in the warm weather. It hung around 68-70 on Friday and Saturday both. My dad and brother-in-law left Friday for Montana, where they are hunting for the week. First phone call from my dad is him cussing, it was -15 degrees with wind chill and already 2-3 inches of snow on the ground. Apparently in Big Timber they are expecting another 6-12 inches of snow today. I told him to build me a snowman and take pictures LOL.
I have looked at today’s issue of “As the NAO turns,” the favorite soap opera of one Doug Griggs, and the GFS NAO outlooks still shows the NAO going negative on the 14-day graph, starting next Wed. Stays very negative around -1.0 for 3 days, then weakens on the 24th-26th to about -0.6, -0.5. Last day the 26th is the closest to neutral, about -0.3 I guess. IF such a brief nosedive “verifies,” and if it indeed returns to neutral on the 27th or 28th, then it will be very similar to the brief “V” of October 1st-7th. Except that after that one returned to neutral for a day or two, it went negative again and eventually led to the very negative numbers of late October and the first few days of NOV.
Here is the link to the page from which you can click on either the GFS Outlooks or the “Ensemble mean NAO outlooks.” I think that the latter one is a terrific double entendre for us Snow (and Very Cold) Haters, because the negative NAO in the true winter months can be “very mean” to us. I hope that at least a couple of you got a smile or chuckle out of that ….
More in a separate comment. The link: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/pna/nao.shtml#forecast
If you click on the Ensemble sentence on the link above, please check out what the “500 mb Z” outlook graph looks like. It is the top graph of the 4 on that page. If you compare what most of those spaghetti strands look like, and compare them to the 14-day GFS outlook graph, you can tell that the GFS strand is one of the most negative strands of the group. A couple of the strands have the NAO staying positive after the 16th, 2 or 3 others have the NAO only going a tiny bit negative, while the GFS and perhaps 3 others are the ones showing a nosedive to the -1.0 level. Hopefully there will be a much better consensus for the November 21-26th timeframe among all the strands by this Friday.
“Stay tuned for the next exciting (???) episode of ‘As the NAO Turns.’”
I just issued an All Points Bulletin for one Kathryn Prociv. Comments from this morning have still not appeared here. I hope that you are OK, KP.
So I think I will go see Bond … James Bond. Skyfall is playing at an East Salem cinema only 3 miles from here. Has anyone out there already seen it? I better bring rain gear with me. A big wall of rain is hitting Washington County now, and will soon be dumping on Rick in Wytheville.
I think Carol has the right idea. Looks like a dry slot lining up from Asheville to Atlanta with our area in the crosshairs. Would be surprised to get two tenths out of this event.