UPDATE 3:10 PM: Advisories expanded to Roanoke Valley for snow/sleet overnight/early Saturday
UPDATE 3:10 PM: WINTER WEATHER ADVISORIES expanded to include Roanoke, Botetourt and Rockbridge counties. Temperatures appear likely to be a little colder than earlier projected in the lower levels of the atmosphere, therefore a little more snow/sleet may fall in these areas with accumulations near 2 inches common and locally up to 4 inches. The advisory continues for counties to the west as well. END UPDATE
Winter weather advisories have been posted for the counties west of Roanoke (Craig, Montgomery, Floyd and westward) tonight and Saturday for the potential of 1-4 inches of snow/sleet mix as a rather complex but not-well-organized storm system lifts some moisture into marginallly cold air in the lower layer of the atmosphere. Wintry precipitation is not expected to be limited only to these counties, but is currently expected to accumulate an inch or less — below the advisory threshhold — in the counties farther east, including the Roanoke Valley. Forecast guidance overnight has lessened the available moisture slightly, and has emphasized the northern piece of the system more than the southern piece, which may allow it to pull a nose of slightly warmer air aloft from Roanoke and Blacksburg southward for a while that would introduce more sleet and some patchy freezing rain into the equation. It also may focus the chance of deeper snow more to the north, with the 2-4 inch amounts more likely north of the New River Valley, and the 1-2-inch side of things from the New River Valley south. Many areas may start as rain, and locations south and east of Roanoke may stay mostly rain.
Expect the arrival of precipitation around mid to late evening in Southwest Virginia. Much will depend on just how intense the stream of moisture from the Gulf is — heavier precipitation reaching our region or more of a southern stream influence with the storm could shift amounts higher and more toward snow. The plume of moisture is already visible in the lower Mississippi River Valley this morning on Radar / Future Cast (pulling back the magnification on bar at the left).
Temperatures will warm well above freezing Saturday afternoon in most of the region, so anything that falls will quickly melt. And there remain one or two more possible systems to watch next week, with borderline temperatures again likely for each of those.
December 28, 2012 - 5:57 AM
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I will of course be watching this system and approving comments to post from time to time, but my overall time on the blog will be limited today (non-weather, non-work reasons). This doesn’t look to be a major system, but could yet offer a surprise for some local area with more snow than expected. Small streaks of heavier amounts sometimes develop within a poorly organized storm such as this one — and of course, so do dry slots. Be sure to monitor the National Weather Service web site for updated advisories.
http://www.erh.noaa.gov/rnk/
20* this morning in Woodlawn…wish it would start now…
26.1*. Mr. Griggs, how’s dawg doing?
Like I told another poster, kids were sledding off my backyard til dark last night.
Kevin is up with the chickens this morning. Thanks for the early update.
Any chance of snow around turkeycock mtn area or just rain?
‘Morning from up here on Doppler Ridge. Still no power(29 hours and counting). The most we have gone without power up here was 36 hours back in 2008. It was a balmy 18 this morning outside and 64 inside away from the woodstove. Thank goodness for no wind. It looks like it will be sunny today so maybe some melting will be going on.
We will be spending the day getting ready for Round 2. Bringing in wood to top off the indoor stack; dumping ashes on our ice covered driveway; getting more candles and some munchies at the store. Also, I am thinking it is time to dust off the wood cookstove in the basement. Tina, I have all of the makings for French Toast but need a way to cook it.
Time to get busy – everyone stay safe out there. I will check in later this afternoon when we fire up the generator again.
Yes, the Terrys Fork Wunderground Station is the one right at the bottom of the Doppler and can give you the weather info from up here.
This looks like the makings of a third snowless winter! Every time a system looks good the models change the last 24 hours and Boom, nothing but wintry mix or rain! I read about how winters in Virginia were so bad from my grandparents time all the way back to the founding of our country. Now it seems we get one good winter a decade since the 70s! Example 88, 96, and 2010. I can count the number of snowy winters on one hand the last 3 decades. Oh well maybe we will move back into a snowy pattern like it was for the founding fathers.
Thanks for the update, Kevin. I am traveling I-81 and I66 to NOVA on Sat for a family get together. Hoping to leave late morning. Planning on parking the car at the top of my very steep driveway tonight.
I’ll be checking in
Jared, even Roanoke hasnt had a snowless winter since 1920.
Giles and Greene both probably get some snow tonight.
Kevin from Turkeycock mtn, I’m also in Franklin County and from reading this blog, I’ve surmised that our county may have all the above. Wintry stuff from Cahas Mtn and Bent Mtn all way down the Parkway to Patrick County, maybe a spit or two of wintry stuff here in Rocky Mount, and mostly rain in your southeastern corner of the county. Just my personal guess.
I’m talking about decent snows 6″ plus. These 1 inch snows that melt the same day are getting old. Guess I need to move to Alaska! LOL
Saturday AM I am driving through WV to Columbus OH. Will there be snow all the way?
DC, if your power don’t come back on, give me a shout[Kevin can give you my e-mail] and I’ll try to get you a generator for a couple of hours. At your temps tho, anything in the fridge or freezer would do fine in a cooler outdoors with ice packed around it. I’m sure you got that!!!.
Not yet above freezing in Blacksburg at 11:00. Clouds locked in. Can’t see reaching the forecasted high of 43 unless major warm air moves in.
http://blueridgeweather.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-difficult-forecast.html
Here’s my latest thoughts. Thinking low end amounts!
Jared French of Greene County -
You told me you were ready for summer and had already given up on winter! Don’t worry we (my wife and I) have a baby due in February. We’ll probably have lots of snow the day she decides to come into the world!
Come on, Kevin, I don’t think Jared meant actually literally snowless. But let’s face it, we’ve had some pretty weak winters in recent years. Especially to somebody like me who remembers the winters of the 60s and some in the 70s.
DT has a video on facebook giving his thoughts on the recent storms and the potential for next week.
One thing’s certain. If it intends on getting to 46* like 10 and wunderground is calling for, it’ll have to hustle. 36* here now. Several degrees colder today might have bearing on whether it starts as rain and changes or starts as snow. That can be a biggg difference on totals in anything but a hard and heavy snow. At least an inch or two.
I’ll be fooled if WWA isn’t issued for Rke area shortly.
DT says 12z NAM comes in much stronger! Does this mean higher snow totals?
Of note here, not a single PWS out of 35 listed on wunderground for our area, is reporting a temp higher than 38* and that’s in Moneta. Also, deer were moving everywhere here at daylight. Reckon they know something we don’t?
Gdad: The bonus snow years of the 60s and the weak snow years of 2000s (minus 2009-10, and to a lesser extent 2002-03 and 03-04) have been well documented and oft discussed on this blog and in my column.
Cloud cover is holding the temperature down today. Since the lower levels are most critical tonight, that would be a factor in favor of more of the precipitation being frozen.
Going back to the those 1970s winters Gdad mentioned — unlike the 1960s, those were not generated primarily by big snowstorms, but by getting lots of small to medium snows. There wasn’t a single 12+ snowstorm in Roanoke between Christmas 1969 and February 1983.
The historic frequency of 12+ and 6+ snow events often seems to be overstated. A 12+ snowfall, on average, happens about twice a decade in Roanoke. It happened five times in the 1960s, three times in the 1990s, twice in the 1980s, once in the first decade of the 2000s, and never in the 1950s or 1970s. That’s 11 in six decades — just a bit less than two a decade.
Our historic average for 6+ events is about once in 2 winters. Using that, the 2000s aren’t off the pace at all. Since I’ve been here, there were two 6+ snows in 2002-03, one in 2005, three in 2009-10. (Feb. 19 last year was close, but officially measured 5.5 for ROA). That’s six 6+ snows in a dozen years.
My overall point: I would argue that it’s not the bigger snow events that have been lacking in many years of the 2000s, compared to history, but rather the many small-medium events that helped pump up the numbers in the 1970s and added to the top of the big storm numbers in the 1960s. The weak years of the 2000s have had just one or two light snow events, while the big year, 2009-10, got 38 of its 43 inches out of just 3 storms. Where are all those underappreciated 2-4-inch snows?
NAM does look a little more moist and more organized, Jared. Temperatures similar. Could increase snow amounts for at least some areas, if it verifies.
I assume you mean Roanoke and the “offical totals” from downtown. My thoughts observations, and personal feelings lump the “offical totals” in one group: Throw them in the trashcan. Ask anybody that lives outside the city limits what happened. And as far as no 12″+ snows in the 50′s, that’s a joke, exceptin for the “offical totals from a heat trap”. Again, landfill material.
Looks like I might have to go back to the Burger King and talk Jared down again if this doesn’t pan out. I see where we have a WWA in effect for Greene now.
I guess you can look at our weather from another standpoint, if it snowed all the time like it does in MA, VT, NH, etc, you wouldn’t think anything of it and basically look at it as a nuisance. Here it is more of a novelty, something to enjoy, and look forward to. Do I wish we had more of it, sure but my days of getting worked up about it not snowing are over, not like I have any control over it anyway.
OK, so I don’t know any history here really, as I am not a very frequent comment reader… but I read DT’s facebook updates, and it seems like he’s very aggressive with the totals, then I come here and things are very conservative. Usually the truth is somewhere in between.
But his latest map is saying the storm to occur Dec 29-30th, and NWS, Weather Channel, Wunderground, and everyone else reads that its going to snow late tonight into tomorrow (28-29th). I can only assume that his guess maps are supposed to be totals after everything is done?
I like to look at what’s happening long range (Euro Model) and then look at GFS closer, and still cant make heads or tails of what to think of this weekend. All I know is that at some point between 12:30am sunday and 12:30pm, i have to be on the interstate and I’m hoping it’s all gonna be happening tonight as opposed to tomorrow night!
Of course you’re going to get more snow at a higher elevation. But for meaningful records, you have to have apples to apples comparisons. Find another site with continuous records in an outlying or high elevation area. Unfortunately, most snowfall records historically around here are Swiss cheese. Roanoke’s record base is not perfect — 1997-2003 filled in with a co-op site, pre-1947 at various locations (didn’t even mention those decades for that reason).
In the last 20 years, even Blacksburg has had only 1 12+ snow that Roanoke didn’t — January 25-26, 1998.
Don’t you have some VDOT records you look at? What do they show in the 1950s?
Scott: This blog is usually not considered the conservative snow prediction site. NWS/Channel 7 are usually considered more conservative.
But probably it is compared to DT on this event. That said, my main hangup about bigger totals is whether there will be enough moisture to support that right here. I could see a 2-4 snow occurring if the moisture is a little more robust that has been projected on most of the models. I think the temperature profile will support snow after some rain/sleet to begin.
Overrunning events — Gulf moisture thrown atop cold air — are tough. I’ve seen them dry up, and I’ve seen them go bonkers.
For Jared:
http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc289/blriesenbeck07/keep-calm-there-will-be-a-snow-day-soon.png
Scot, DT is greaft for wide sweeping forecasts. I always come here when we get close to a weather event. I think the local guys do a better job then.
Radar shows some pretty hefty echoes headed NE out of the Miss Valley with some good training into the Gulf. Should make for a few interesting few hours at least.
Current temp at CHO is 40 with a dewpoint of 25. I’d like to see that dewpoint lower as the snow we had on Christmas Eve I think was partly attributable to strong evaporational cooling. The afternoon temp is lower though than it was on the 23rd, so hopefully the clouds can hang in there a couple more hours to allow the sun to go down.
Strictly speaking, this isn’t a weather forecast site. I don’t offer detailed day by day forecasts like real meteorologists do. But of course as we near an event I throw out some possibilities of what could happen. And mostly we just talk about it.
I do notice the NWS in its discussion earlier was considering extending the winter weather advisories to Roanoke and northeastward based on colder thermal profiles on the short range models.
I had to go find Turkeycock Mountain on a map, my namesake who lives there. You’re pretty far south. Would suspect you start as rain and probably change to sleet and snow at times later. The higher up you are, the better your chance of frozen stuff.
Top of Cahas Mountain will add white to the white that’s already there.
Is snow, I mean, ice pack have a relevance in how precip falls/sticks? I think it has been keeping temps low here in B’burg in addition to mostly cloudy skies. Still an inch of ice pack just outside of town.
I think that after that “big” winter, we’ve all become gun-shy about predicting big snow amounts due to all the “busts” we’ve had since then, thus the conservative attitude here.
A Winter Weather Advisory has just been issued for Roanoke Co.
Snow/ice on the ground helps hold in low-level cold air, so yes Matt Blacksburg, it is a factor. And not even just for those who have it literally in their yard. Having white mountains all around will even help hold in colder air in the region.
Roanoke and Botetourt no included in the Winter Weather Advisory
WWA advisory issued for Rke Co. at 2:38 PM. Kevin, in no way was my post intended to take away from what you researched and posted. I try to dig up facts as long as I’m confident they will be accurate but I couldn’t carry your playbook around. Thanks, I know you have more important things to do besides holding our hands. That wasn’t the reason for my post. I’ll let the weather settle down before I post on the subject again and it should shine some lite on why I have posted negativly on the matter. Another time. Thanks again for your hard work.
I think we’ve been conservative because we’ve had mostly pretty mediocre storm systems in winter after 2009-10.
My records don’t go back earlier than around 1970 for VDOT or personal.
No offense taken, WD. Just threw something out for thought — is it the bigger storms that were lacking in winter most of last decade, or little ones? What I posted was hardly proof of anything. And yes we’ll take it up another time
I live on Turkeycoc Mtn Kevin…not many neighbors its very quiet;) clear day i can see hanging rock nc very easily…old bootlegging country;)
Sounds like my kinda place, Kevin of Turkeycock
The Temperature is still sitting at 34 here in Radford so we didn’t get anywhere near the forecasted high today.
Kevin..
Hollywood and Penhook would be ashamed of you.
The Bondurants (Lawless) were heating up the skies and stream
beds all along the base of Turkeycock back in the 20-s and
30-s. My fairest weather friend has gotten lost in my home county!!
I would have found it sooner or later, Joe.
Anybody see this as starting closer to daylight or a little later than earlier? Also the coldest part of the day normally. Hope so cause I shorely hates fer one to snuck up on me whiles I’m sleeping. I like to see it comin from several miles away so I can sound the alarm.
I think it might be a little earlier, actually. 10 p.m.-midnightish.
Think it’s mostly over by sunup, too. Fast moving.
If you ever do go wandering through there
And get a whiff of Mountain Laurel infused
with a yeasty bouquet. Turn around.
Yes…NWS has it moving into Roanoke
(from the SW)at 05Z…10-11 pm..
starting as a light rain snow mix..
changing over to snow about 1am…precip moved
out by 9 am.
There are old stills in these hills they have been stripped but still around for memories!!!
Just posted new for the evening. I do plan to take a break til about 7 p.m. or so. Been a long day — sick child, doing better now. So not much sleep last night — and probably not much tonight with winter weather on the way.