Happy Monday and welcome to another edition of Beyond The Forecast!
Today is the final day of January and that means we only have one month left of “meteorological” winter. It seems like a good time to check in on our seasonal snow forecast and see how we’re doing!
Recommended Videos
Below, you’ll find the map that we released with our winter weather outlook back in November.
Here are the snowfall amounts each of our major communities have received thus far:
- Roanoke: 11.1″
- Lynchburg: 9.5″
- Danville: 9.0″
- Blacksburg: 12.6″
- Covington: 9.7″
If you cross-reference the totals with what we forecasted a few months ago, you’ll see that we’ve already exceeded the 3-7″ forecast in Danville.
All of the other cities still have a chance of being correct, but we can’t get much more snow and still be accurate! The weather pattern this season has certainly overperformed to this point.
You might be wondering why we’ve been snowier than expected. We’re blaming a positive Pacific-North American Oscillation for the cold and active weather in January.
Another question you may have. What does the rest of winter have in store for us?
Well, we don’t have any snowstorms in the immediate forecast, but it’s always possible to get more flakes in February. In fact, 32% of our yearly snow occurs during the second month of the year.
Historical data shows that snow can happen as late as March and April.
We still need more snow to reach our yearly averages in four of the five zones. As mentioned earlier, Southside has really overachieved with the snow they’ve seen this winter.
If another snowstorm starts to show up in our forecast models, we’ll be quick to let you know about it!
We are wrapping up the month of January on a cold note, but there could be some warmer air during the first few days of February! Chris Michaels tracks the warm-up and lets you know the next time we could get some rain in our daily forecast article.
You can always get specific forecast details for your zone, whether it’s the Roanoke Valley, Lynchburg area, the New River Valley or elsewhere around Southwest and Central Virginia, anytime at WSLS.com/weather. Know your zone!
In case you missed it, we’re posting great weather and science content on WSLS.com. Here are a few links from the past week to check out:
If you prefer your weather information delivered by social media, you can follow Your Local Weather Authority on Facebook and Twitter.
You can also keep up with me on social media. I’m on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok, follow along!
-- Justin McKee