Mild, mostly dry week ahead; indications of colder weather by early the following week
December is coming in like a lamb in Southwest Virginia, with warm, dry, mostly sunny days. Widespread highs in the 60s are likely in Southwest Virginia Sunday through Tuesday, with some 70s possible at Roanoke and points south and east on Monday and Tuesday. A front arriving at midweek will trim the temperatures back some, to 50s for highs mostly, and back into 20s/30s for lows after a couple mornings that may stick in the 40s and even some 50s. It appears that most of the rainfall will stay north and west of us this week, with perhaps some showers pushing in with Wednesday’s front. While December is beginning mild, cold air continues to build in Canada over a thick snowpack, and it is only a manner of time til some — or a lot — of this cold air oozes southward. A storm system developing next weekend or early the following week may be able to pull a chunk of this Arctic air southward by early next week, but it remains uncertain whether this will be the start of a long-term cold pattern, or at least, a step toward something colder. We’ve only just begun this winter.
December 1, 2012 - 11:28 PM
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I’ll probably be pretty light on the blog the next few days. Will approve comments and pitch in a little from time to time. Seems like a good time to catch our collective breaths before this winter gets going in earnest. I think there’ll be lots of busy times on here soon enough. Whether that translates into lots of snow, or just lots of chances, time will tell.
Zach Crizer has now issued a brief story on the fire near us. A house was destroyed by fire on Midway Drive, which is an even smaller side street than Mount Laurel, on the left of Sugar Loaf Mountain Road going up the hill (southbound). I called the county police non-emergency number about 9:40, and the dispatcher said that no one died. Family has been displaced, of course.
Luckily no one was hurt. Did you know them Mr. Griggs? Keep us posted if you will. The story this AM was it was probably a total loss, so I’m sure they lost everything. Something like that is always terrible, but at this time of the year, it’s tragic. Let us know if your area gets a drive going or whatever.
Nope, we don’t know them or even their names. I will try to stop by the house (what is left of it, I suppose) this morning. Check your e-mail inbox, please, wd. I am about to send you a private message. And thanks very much for your concern.
Took a drive by about 10:20 AM, and the foundation, brick walls, and north side of the roof all seem intact, but the damage on the south (back) side of the house may be worse. All windows are completely gone, and there seemed to be LOTS of smoke damage inside the main part of the home.
I just looked at the weather forecasts for the 11 cities hosting NFL games during daylight hours today, and got a shock. The lowest high temperature (according to wunderground forecasts)? Green Bay, but even there the forecast high is 48*!!! It is the only city with a high below 50! Even Buffalo (54 and rain) and Chicago (cloudy, 63!) and Denver (Partly Cloudy, 66!) do not qualify. Only other game below 60 is the NY Jets hosting Arizona in East Rutherford, NJ; 57*, cloudy, 40% rain chance. Only other definitely wet game besides Buffalo is in Oakland, 63* and 100% rain chance.
Keepem coming jest like today. I love it.
Kevin, or anyone else who may know where to access this data. I want to find out the average number of days where snow was in the ground each winter and how far back that data goes. I am just curious because my mom keeps insisting that back in the 30s and 40s that snow would start falling in November and would stay on the ground until the spring. Now keep in mind that my mom’s memory isn’t the best but I am thinking there had to be a winter with a lot if snow or long lasting snow pack that seated this memory in her brain and was just wondering if it was on the books.
Then again she is of the generation that walked to school uphill, both ways, in the snow.
Tina…I don’t know specific data, but I think the 30′s was a mild, dry period for much of the USA, including Virginia. I heard it was very little snow that decade and not much in the 1940′s either. Snow, from what I’ve read on this blog before picked up in earnest in 1960 and the 1960′s had prolific snow and cold winters as well as the late 1970′s. Kevin can give you much more detail but just repeating what I have learned. After the late 1970′s our other JACKPOT WINTERS in my lifetime have been….1982/1983, 1986/1987….the GRAND DADDY of them all, March of 1993 simply due to one major blizzard and blizzards are RARE in Roanoke…not heavy snow albeit…but blizzard, 1995/1996, the early 2000′s yielded many moderate snows and FINALLY….our big winter several years ago of 2009/2010!
December of 1989 started out promising, very bitter cold, historical cold with one good snow….January of 1990 hits and boom, that was all she wrote. 1993/1994 was also known for bitter cold and some snow, but several crippling, historic ice storms!! I <3 talking about winter weather.
Tina: Snow on the ground data is among the spottiest of all. But I can tell you from available snowfall data that the 1930s especially had lots of low-snow winters, with 4 years in single digits at Roanoke. Nothing over 21.6 inches at Roanoke in the 1930s until 34.5 in 1939-40, when there was 8 inches in November and 9 in December. That may have been one your mother remembers. There were some winters in the 40s that had pretty heavy snow — 37 and 33 inches in 1946-47 and 47-48.
Neither of those decades, though, can hold a candle to the 1960s when it comes to frequent and heavy snow. People who grew up around here in the 1960s and remember it snowing a lot more are right on the money. But there is good reason to believe the longest lasting snowpack in Roanoke/Blacksburg recorded history may have occurred in 2009-10. It lasted longer on the ground consecutively than any of the 1960s years (the big 1960 snow year was almost all after Valentine’s Day, so not a winterlong thing like 2009-10) and also the 56-inch winters (at Roanoke) of 1996 and 1987, which had big snows, but were followed by warm spells. I would suspect 1917-18 might challenge for snow longevity if there were better snow cover records from that year.
Following up on the snow cover records comment — below are periods of consecutive snow cover for Roanoke and Blacksburg. While the top ranked snow cover streaks are in other years, 2009-10 has 2 streaks at both Roanoke and Blacksburg in the top 10, with Blacksburg’s ranking 2 and 3. Again, snow cover data is spotty at times, especially in the first half of the 1900s.
Roanoke’s streaks reflect the airport, and I know my part of the Roanoke Valley had longer lasting snow cover streaks both times that winter than the airport. (Yes, it’s strange, but daily snowfall records are measured at WDBJ, but daily snow cover is reported from the airport)
Roanoke
# of days / start date / ave value inches
1. 26 1-13-1978 4.5
2. 24 1-30-2010 8.3
3. 20 1-24-1948 6.1
4. 19 1-23-1966 9.0
5. 16 3-03-1960 7.3
6. 15 12-13-1989 4.5
7. 12 1-22-1987 10.4
8. 12 1-10-1968 4.3
9. 11 12-18-2009 7.3
10. 10 2-07-1979 4.6
Blacksburg
1. 36 12-28-1967 5.6
2. 34 1-30-2010 8.9
3. 29 12-20-2009 5.5
4. 29 1-13-1978 6.7
5. 27 1-16-1966 19.1
6. 19 12-21-1962 3.6
7. 18 1-05-1977 3.8
8. 17 12-13-1989 3.8
9. 17 3-3-1960 13.0
10. 16 2-16-1954 4.8
BTW … large chunks of snowfall/snow cover data are missing for Blacksburg from the 1959-60 winter, which is why it doesn’t show up in this list or in the top 10 list of heaviest snowfall winters. Newspaper data from the day suggests 79 inches fell in Blacksburg that winter, compared to 75.4 in 1995-96. (1959-60 is Roanoke’s record snowfall winter at 62.7 inches.)
Speaking of snow cover and big snow years, how big were the snowfall totals for Blacksburg and ROA during the 1965-66 and also the 1968-69 winters? I was in high school (those winters were my freshman and senior years, respectively) then up in eastern Mass. and both of those winters were huge up there. Especially January in 1966 and late January and most of February in 1969. It took what seemed like forever for spring to arrive after those two winters. In fact, the entire winter of 1969 was enormous, because I remember having a job for a couple of weeks around Christmas in 1968 at a grocery store and they had created a monster snow pile of at least 16 feet in the parking lot.
Dummie Dougie should have looked at the list of snow-cover records first. January 1966 had the 4th-longest streak at Roanoke and 5th longest at Blacksburg. And last few days of 1967 and of course many days in JAN 1968 was the longest streak at Blacksburg. Weird, because 1967-68 was the one light year for snow of my high school years, and we had an early spring that year, too. But 1968-69 must have been not too bad down here in SW Virginia.
It tried to sprinkle in Hokieburg this evening, enough to streak all the dust on my car and make it look really dirty.
Dear HokieTrax, getting only enough rain to make your car dirty is what I call adding insult to injury.
A bulletin for you cold and snow lovers. Christmas may be coming about 12-15 days early. Take a look at the Ensemble PNA Outlook: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/pna/pna_index_ensm.shtml . Many of the spaghetti strands are going into positive country in about a week or so. That is also reflected at the end of the 10-day and 14-day ensemble graphs. The GFS is not one of the models predicting an increase all the way into positive levels, but at the very end of the 10-day and 14-day GFS PNA outlooks, the last day practically gets to zero. Anyway you slice it, the PNA’s run of several weeks in negative territory seems to be ending. Tolleris and Myatt predict.
And still more good news for the 90%: AO GFS outlook: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao_index_mrf.shtml Going diving again. Also reflected in the big majority of spaghetti strands on the AO Ensemble outlook: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao_index_ensm.shtml All of the multi-day graphs there all show a continued run in minus territory for the AO, although not quite as negative as what it was Friday and yesterday. Lower than -2 then.
Finally, the NAO. It will hover slightly positive (a tiny win for us snow haters, before we probably start to lose) for roughly the rest of this week (at least according to the red spaghetti strands in the attached link to the Ensemble NAO outlooks). The link: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/pna/nao_index_ensm.shtml Then the NAO joins its friend AO and returns to its months-long home in negative territory. Look at the right side of the 10-day and 14-day graphs.
The GFS NAO outlook shows roughly the same sort of movement as the ensembles. Warmup for the next few days, all the way into positive levels on the GFS 7-day, but then a dive into quite negative numbers about a week from now according to both the GFS 10-day and 14-day graphs. The last day of the 14-day GFS NAO graph has the NAO going fairly deep sea, all the way to nearly minus 2.
The fact that we saw any raindrops reach the surface tonight makes this an overperforming system. Says something about how dry it is when sprinkles constitute an overperforming weather system.
It is also extremely warm for 11:30 PM on Dec. 2nd. 57* here now. I call it a bit of a make-up for the cold November. But I will be paying for it within about 9 days at most.